There are so many gains from fat talk. It signals submissiveness -- to one's conversational partner, to society. It fishes for compliments (oh, no, not you!) and in a wierd way, it exonerates with a half-hearted helplessness that often gets masqueraded as "self-acceptance.

First friend: “I can’t believe I ate that brownie. I am so fat!”

Second friend: “You must be joking — you are so not fat. Just look at my thighs.”

The second friend’s reply, an “empathetic” self-deprecating retort to maintain the friendship on equal standing, includes reflexive praise of the first friend’s body, supposedly feeding the first friend’s hungry cry for affirmation, Dr. Corning said. But to do so, the second friend has eviscerated herself, a toxic tear-down by comparison.

| NYT

And who said women are the greater sex !?



Rob Poh |

As a graduate student, I had the dubious pleasure of watching primates in social troops behave as primates do. Undoubtedly the experience of those years has shaped my perception of humans-as-primates. Monkeys certainly, and it seems to me humans, interfere with each other's socio-sexual lives. Doing well? Here, let us fix that for you. Fat-talk looks to me an awful lot like the incessant low-level harassment primates employ to keep one another in check while jockeying for social advantage. To some that will sound critical or even cynical, but it seems to me that fat-talk is just one expression of social behavior that tries to balance cooperation and competition.

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Both sexes do a certain amount of 'our gender only' behavior regulation. Men, a little less, I contend, because they're not nearly as dependent on being liked by members of their own sex, as women are. Guys instead tell larger than life stories about themselves to one another. There's an understanding that the stories are hyperbolic. The dance carries its own limitations. Men don't beat up on one another much once they mature because that's just a stage in their lives. Also, they avoid judging one another once they mature because they've learned from experience its not healthy to judge. There is pressure to succeed by a male standard but usually not enough to create neurosis. I think it comes down to emotional support. Rightly or wrongly, men often try to get along without it. Women seem to have a whole series of emotional needs that have been nurtured during socialization stages of their early lives. I have had women tell me they feel sometimes the need to escape this. That its a relief to have men to work with because the world of women is so constantly challenging.

There’s a line from the Lovin’ Spoonful: ‘You came upon a quiet day, and simply seemed to take your place.  

| Mr.Black
 NYT :: Discovered at age 64; a Brooklyn Artist