A Comparison of the Fat Talk Experience in Young and Middle-Aged Women

Fat talk occurs in both young and middle-aged women. However, little is known about correlates of fat talk or about factors that may strengthen or interrupt the fat talk/body dissatisfaction link. The current study builds on the existing fat talk literature by examining levels of fat talk between young adult women and middle-aged women, strengths of correlates of fat talk across age cohorts, and potential moderators of the relationship between fat talk and body dissatisfaction. Participants were 358 young adult women, age 17-25, and 358 middle-aged women, age 35-63; these were daughter-mother dyads and thus multilevel modeling was used to account for the lack of independence between daughter and mother observations. Participation involved an online survey about core study constructs. Future research should use both longitudinal and experimental designs to examine fat talk in middle-aged women to better understand the causal effects of fat talk across the lifespan.Master of Art