Status Updates From “You Just Need to Lose Weig...

Research shows that these exchanges [social negative body talk] make us feel worse. Such talk creates greater body dissatisfaction.

“The office break room, a dressing room, and meals with friends all become sites for expressing discontent with our bodies. I hate my thighs. I’m not swimming, nobody needs to see me in a bathing suit. U look amazing, I look terrible! Comments like these abound, often seen as a way of blowing off steam, releasing the disappointment we feel about our own bodies, & hopefully making us feel better in the process.”

“Implicit bias powers what psychologists call ‘Normative Discontent’, the idea that people socially express bodily dissatisfaction, especially with regard to their weight. This is buttressed by a series of powerful social scripts to which many of us have become accustomed: voicing disapproval of our own bodies and expecting others to do the same.”

“Whether we mean to or not, most of us have learned to stigmatize fatness and that stigma often translates to both personal dislike of fat people and promotion of explicitly anti-fat rhetoric and policies.”