Want to Help Women? Cut Out the Fat Talk

You know you've done it. You've murmured seemingly harmless judgmental comments about women's bodies, such as, "She should not be wearing that dress." Or you've focused too much on a woman's looks: "You look great! Did you lose weight?" instead of commenting on what really matters: "You look so fit and healthy."

This, apparently, is called "fat talk," and is like emotional waterboarding for the girls and women you love. That's why you might want to think about pledging to eliminate "fat talk" from your vocabulary this week as part of the second annual Fat Talk Free Week.

The initiative, sponsored by Delta Delta Delta sorority, the Center for Living, Learning and Learning, and the Academy for Eating Disorders, "is an international, 5-day public awareness effort to draw attention to body image issues and the damaging impact of the thin ideal on women in society."

I can hear some of the scoffing now; all those little comments might seem like no big deal. But put yourself for a minute in the place of, say, your 10-year-old daughter who's lingering nearby. Here is what those comments tell her: "You have no right to show your body unless it is perfectly thin" and "Being skinny is what makes you worthy of praise."

Now, I'm not trying to say that we should advocate for a full-throated embrace of obesity-chic, but when 81 percent of 10-year-olds like your daughter live with the persistent fear of being fat and 51 percent of them feel better about themselves if they are on a diet, we should take a moment and think about what our thinness-obsessed culture is doing to the girls and women we love.

Imagine if the messages these girls regularly received were more like, "Being engaged and confident is what makes you look good" or "Being strong and healthy is what makes you worthy of praise." It would be a very different world for them.

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