From the "Duh" Department...

What I already knew: That when women talk about “feeling fat,” it makes them feel even fatter.  What I didn’t know: That even ivory-tower researchers can have a sense of humor.

The latter becomes clear when you see the title of a recent study published in Psychology of Women Quarterly: “If You’re Fat, Then I’m Humongous!”  Of course, in deference to the gods of jargon there is a more conventional subtitle: “Frequency, Content, and Impact of Fat Talk Among College Women.”

We all know fat talk.  Show me a woman who has never said her butt feels big and I’ll probably see: a) a supermodel—no wait, even they think their butts are huge; b) a member of an alien species from the fabled Planet of the Babes; c) someone who gave up long ago and evinces a passion for muumuus; d) a woman from the .001% of the population who grew up with a sane notion of body weight and size.  The befuddling question is: Why do even smart women do this?

For the record, the study’s startling findings included: college women who engaged in “fat talk” (disparaging their own bodies) are more dissatisfied with said bodies and also more likely to have “internalized an ultra-thin body ideal” than those who try not to fat talk quite as much.  Oh, and that 90% of college women engage in “fat talk.”  (Are 90% of college women fat?  Stupid question—of course they are!  Why else would they say they are?)   One more thing: That there was zero association between a woman’s actual body size and how often she complained about her body size to her friends.  You’ve seen that, too: the skinny bitch who bemoans her tummy/thighs/batwings.  She’s lucky to be alive, don’t you think?  Considering the 90% of whale-like college women just dying to sit on her and crush her to death.

The study did hold one surprise, though: even as it showed that fat-talkers felt worse about their bodies after an orgy of verbal self-flagellation, more than half the participants reported that they firmly believe fat-talk actually makes them feel better about their bodies.

So I ask you: is that why we do it?  We feel, in some proto-Puritan fashion, that beating up on ourselves, confessing our mortal and fleshly sins, will wash away the past and give us a fresh start on perfection?  (Tomorrow begins the diet…)  Or that we are finally reaching some kind of ironic acceptance after all, and dissing our saddlebags is proof of that?  Or that joining a sisterhood of self-confessed pudges has made us realize that we don’t give a damn about those 5, 10, 25 pounds after all?  (The standard response noted by the researchers, by the way, was to deny that the fat-talking friend was fat, “most typically leading to a back-and-forth conversation where each of two healthy weight peers denies the other is fat while claiming to be fat themselves.”)

The answer is: none of the above.  As the study ultimately showed, fat talk is negative, period.  Picture if you will a bunch of guys pounding beers and ogling girls, or pounding beers and watching basketball.  If the talk turns to looks, they’re either talking about chicks, or they’re dissing their friends’ looks—not their own (the diss bounces off like rubber, too).  “Hey man, those extra twenty-five pounds look good on you!”  “Larry, you’re getting a gut, bro!”

Of course when you say you’re fat, you feel fat.  How can your head be telling you that your body is just fine, thank you, if your mouth is trash-talking it?  Would you say those things about a friend?  (Well, maybe a bitch like me, but a real friend?)  Then be your own bff, and shut the hell up.