Went shopping in Vintage shops today, apparently every 10 years the companies add an inch

[EleanorReally]

so what was size 10 in the 1970s is now size 6.
to make us feel better!
Does that mean there were less size 20s in the 1970s? or equivalent.
how come,
there must have been sedentary occupations.
what is to blame?
fast food,
sugar in everything?

I remember going home from university and my mum commented on my weight gain during the term. I weighed 7 1/2 stone. I lost the extra she thought I should. My waist was 22” and my hips 33”. At my lightest I weighed 6 1/2 stone and was size 8. Most shops had sizes between 10 and 14 and it was quite difficult to find less than 10 or more than 14.

I have some clothes I wore in the 70s in my teens / early 20s. I'm 61 now and weigh roughly the same as I did at 21. I used to buy size 12/ 14 then and still do.
I need a size 12 for top and waist but a 14 for hips.
None of my 1970s clothes fit now, the size 12s are considerably smaller than my current size 12 clothes. I can get into them but they are too tight to wear.

Most food was pretty horrible. No incentive to over eat. Loads of stews and that kind of thing to utilise cheap cuts.

People frequently comment on my dd, aged 20 and 5ft3". She weighs just over 7st and feels perfectly normal, she's not a big snacker and eats mostly healthy meals. Yet people comment that she's far too skinny, she's not, she's a healthy weight for her height and gets very frustrated with clothing that never fits properly.

Vanity sizing is true, but I also believe that people are getting bigger. As a teenager in the 1980s I struggled to get shoes for my size 8 feet, and had to wear men’s, or go to specialist shops.

It’s much easier to buy high street shoes that fit now, although I am now classes as a 9 - my feet are the same size though: I still have 2 pairs of shoes from then which fit fine, and I found a load of my footprints which i did as part of my A level Physics project recently - and they line up perfectly with my feet now.

In the 80s, I wore a size 8 and it was too big. You didn't get clothes small enough to fit me. I had 21inch waist, 33inch boobs and my hips were about the same. I had a 1950s party dress, which fitted perfectly and was a size 10. Now I weigh double what I did then and I'm "only" a size16. I don't think my current size existed when I was a teenager.

I think a lot of it has to do with the abundance of readily available food now. Growing up, we didn't really snack much and we had to eat what my mother had, basically.
I remember, on a Wednesday, the day before payday, my mum and one of her friends would club together for a bag of potatoes, a half pound of corned beef, a loaf of mother's pride and a cabbage, or some tomatoes if it was summer. That would be dinner for both the families, so 10 people. Can you imagine that now?
We ate home grown salad all summer with a few potatoes and either a boiled egg, a bit of cheese or a slice of cold meat. In winter we ate soups, stews or stories padded out with bread and butter. Sometimes, as a treat, we had egg and chips, but only one egg except for my dad who got two.
Nowadays, food is everywhere you go and most folk don't think about the seasons. Snacking has been normalised and there is far, far more processed food about.

Yes, I think portion sizes are increasing without people noticing, then it just becomes accepted and expected. There was a thread on here a week or two ago which questioned children being hungry.

Showed very clearly the change in portion sizes, with PP's saying their toddler eats 4 fish fingers and older children up to 10!

We didn't have much money around. A box of 10 fish fingers was a meal for the whole family. My DP's 3 each, my DB and I two. ( with accompanying veg)

Absolutely, leith, a box of fish fish fingers, some chips and two tins of peas did three kids and my dad when we were growing up. My mum didn't eat the fish fingers because she can't stand them. She would just fry herself an egg.
Even now, my kids, all adults, don't eat any more than 4 fish fingers each. I can't imagine anyone eating 10 at a time, although 2 of my son's can eat about 20 chicken nuggets at a time, yuck!

Vanity sizing - yes. But also remember this: We’re also 4 inches taller than we were 50 years ago and our feet are 3 sizes bigger.

Some of these comparisons are looking at the post war generation - rationing was active until 1954 and production was still depressed for many years after. People were under norished. Now we are over nourished and that effects your height, shoe size etc etc

So yes to vanity sizing but there is also a wider context.

Imagine if you went back in time to the 70s and showed yourself all the food and drink that is available today! You’d be shocked.

How many flavours of ice cream could you name back then as opposed to now?

I never tasted a pizza until I was an adult! I expect most children today would put pizza as one of the most easily identifiable foods.

Sizing of clothes has gone to pot. Whatever size you were you were the same size in all shops now you could vary by four sizes difference from store to store.

People weren't under nourished during the war. They ate considerable less because of rationing, but there was oodles of advice about recipes and the nutritional status if the population was better than at most other times you care to look at. Underweight could be a problem though, which is why codliver oil was regularly recommended, and the government introduced milk to schools. But even if you think I'm underplaying that, the change was a decade or so earlier - rationing ended in the late 50s early 60s and the timelines just don't fit with the rapid change to sizes.

When sizing was regulated (until the mid 1980s) it would be periodically revalourised. But in the late 80s and 90s it was a free for all and related to vanity and nothing else. And even though I think that has slowed down, the legacy remains.

Another factor is the introduction of stretch fabrics. Before, you knew you were getting larger if your fixed waistband started cutting in. With stretch, you could expand quite a bit before that factor kicked in, and as clothes were relatively considerably more expensive, there was an automatic incentive to knock off a couple of pounds (lbs) rather than spend quite a few (£)

I've suspected this for a while now. Back in the late 70s/early 80s,I was a size 12. Yet women I see nowadays wearing that size look considerably larger than I remember being. E.g. a friend of mine is 5 ' 2" tall,weighs 11 stone and is a size 12. Yet to fit into that size,I was 9 stone and 5 ' 6'' tall. If I'd been a couple of stone heavier,there is no way I'd have got into a size 12.

Sewing patterns have the sizes on. Look at patterns from decades ago and you'll be surprised.
Waists sizes in clothes are much bigger now.

I am surprised when I am out and about as to how many people look overweight. Children especially.
I blame the relatively low cost of food, the trend for eating several meals in a day, eating out and takeaways, and the need to be 'hydrated'. Portion sizes are now much larger than they used to be.

International sizes on sewing patterns are a big shock to anyone who's used to current shop sizes. A chain store size 10 is more like a 16 on a sewing pattern.

People weren't under nourished during the war.

Are you sure about this?

I have wondered. People say everyone was wonderfully healthy, but I'm not sure it's true.

Portion sizes are certainly bigger in restaurants these days But as to how much you serve yourself, if you are heavier, you will likely need to eat more calories, so people will of course have bigger potions.

Also re people being overweight - I don't mean in the obese category, but in the overweight category. What of it? I have struggled to get below 12 and a half stone since having children, and I'm 5'7" and an hourglass size 14 - 39-29-39. I've always been fit and active and am almost on a permanent diet. Any time I am not actively losing weight I'm putting it back on again. But my health stats are very good, I have low blood pressure, perfect cholesterol, and my waist is below the diabetes risk. Why would I offend anyone in being the size I am, or not be catered for properly in the shops?

I have a lovely size 10 linen dress from New Look, purchased in the late '90s (back when they sold clothes made from natural fabrics!) It's now equivalent to about a current size 6.

I have this vintage dress pattern, the 32 inch bust, 25 inch waist, & 34 inch hip measurements on my copy are designated as a size 12.

floribunda, your waist to hip ratio suggests that you are healthy, your medical stats look good. Weight is just a number IMO.

If people aren't careful about what they eat then they are likely to be fat.
I don't really care about counting calories and don't but if I eat out or eat takeaways then the pounds will pile on. Slim friends and fat friends have different eating preferences. Including the skinny human dustbins and the eat-like-a-bird chubsters.

Chopin - yes. The sewing patterns are a shock compared to shop sizes.

People say everyone was wonderfully healthy, but I'm not sure it's true

The main evidence is longevity. Medical advances played a part, but the bottom line is that the generation was generally in better nick

Sewing patterns have stayed fairly constant (nonvanity sizing). So the shock shows just how much 'easing' of sizes has been going on.

Of course people were undernourished during the war. Perhaps not the middle classes, but certainly the working classes were. My father talks about him and his friends sucking on coal and other ridiculous things, such as asbestos, to see if they could get anything out if it. As a teenager, he worked on a farm in the Midlands. Apparently, by law, the farmers had to give Italian prisoners of war 3 meals a day. Not so their own workers. My mother talks of how she and her sister had to share an egg. That was their protein.

Dad was over. 6ft and he looks painfully thin in the few photos I have of him as a young man.

The main evidence is longevity. Medical advances played a part, but the bottom line is that the generation was generally in better nick

But how on earth would that make sense? The NHS was founded in 1948!

@beelaidee - YY, I think it would have been very different for different people! There's a naive assumption that rationing ensured everyone had access to the same basic diet, but obviously they didn't, and couldn't.

In 1982 I was 18, 5'5" tall and weighed 7st 12.

I was a size 10 because that was the smallest size that existed. It was often a bit big and I often wished there was such a thing as a size 8. Then the size 8 was invented and it was too small for me to get into.

Now I am a stone heavier and still wearing a 10.

We are also taller so factor that in too. Growing up you didn't see 6's in shops to be honest. My dd has a few clothes of mine from the 90's and definitely one size difference

Just recently I’ve noticed waist bands seem to be getting bigger. I’ve had to return or sell on some pairs of jeans because it’s a belt or risking them falling down! I was a size 14 in the 80s and thought I was very chubby (waist 28”). Nowadays I’m a 10 most of the time with a 29/30” waist. Agreed about portion sizes and the availability of lots of high calorie food. The food even in the 80s was very limited; didn’t get a McDonalds in our town until the early 80s, likewise a Pizza Hut. Mr Corvid and I regularly find meals out mean sharing starters etc as the portions are massive.

Am I missing something?

I do agree waist bands are getting bigger and I'd think most of us have been noticing it for a while - but what do waist sizes have do do with jeans these days?! Jeans don't sit on the waist. I grant that they once did, and I have some lovely retro high-waist jeans myself, but if you are comparing like for like, you can't compare jeans worn just above the hips with jeans worn sitting at the natural waist. Of course they'll fit differently!