Why Have I Gone From ‘Fat Talk’ to ‘Old Talk’?

Back in college, it was a little like doing the dozens, the old insult-trading game in which the goal was to best one’s opponent. Only in this case, both players may have ended up feeling bad – even if they had been trying to be supportive. Sometimes called fat talk, it has been tied to body-image disorders, and a journal, Psychology of Women Quarterly, once offered this example:

“Ugh, I feel so fat.”

“OMG. Are you serious? You are NOT fat.”

“Yes I am, look at my thighs.”

“Look at MY thighs.”

Many baby boomers who recall conversations like this may be glad to look back at those days in the rearview mirror. But if in that mirror the only thing you notice is “Oh, no! Another wrinkle!” then maybe you have not really traveled all that far.

“I’m pretty sure that women don’t graduate from body-image concerns when they graduate from college,” said Carolyn Black Becker, a psychology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio

Dr. Becker is an author of a new study in the Journal of Eating Disorders suggesting that for some women, “old talk” is the new fat talk — and may be a signal for the same type of physical and mental health problems, including binge eating and depression. For the study, researchers surveyed more than 900 women, ages 18 to 87, and found that while fat talk tended to decrease with age, old talk often came in to replace it, and that both were reported by women who appeared to have a negative body image. (While the problem is much more common in women, men, too, can be at risk, researchers say.)

Dr. Becker began looking into the issue after the owner of an exercise studio who did not allow fat talk asked how she should handle women who said things like “I look so old” and talked about “Botox parties.”