Twiggy… omg

[Newsenmum]

I knew she was skinny but I never knew how bad it was! Looking at those photos of her in the 60s is painful.Why do we do this to ourselves? Have we done this since time began?

I was just reading how in the Victorian times there was another skinny phase where women liked to look skinny and weak like they’d had TB. Awful!

Does anyone know if it’s ever been fashionable to be healthy?

She looks very stocky in that first picture @Fahran

People can debate Marilyn's size all they like but look anywhere online and you'll find she was very slim. Still, she was a beautiful woman with a lovely hourglass figure.

I'm like that, can binge like crazy and don't gain weight.

I have a ridiculously stubborn weight set point at the lower end of healthy and that's what my body wants to stay at. The only time I gained was when my cortisol went out of control and at that time I was eating fuck all because I felt like I was being poisoned no matter what I ate so lost the love of food completely, so although I was always sympathetic to people who struggled with their weight before and never judged them, that period of time really showed me how your body can completely work against you if it's in fat gaining and fat storing mode.

I disagree that eating healthily is 'doing something to yourself' because it can be natural for some to eat that way and doesn't require effort for them to do so.

Funny as I think it is damaging to suggest you are naturally that way when in reality 1 % of the UK have the thinness gene so it is highly unlikely equally this includes men who have high metabolic rate my son is like this but hes 18 and seemingly can eat what he likes but I think the fact that he walks to loads of places, is in bed quite a bit and is an 18 year old male is probably environmental factors to do with it.

Rationing only ended in the UK in 1954. I'm sure the mindsets and availability of food affected people's size and weight of a long time after the war. Obesity has been growing in the last four decades; before then it was not so prevalent. If you watch earlier documentaries it's clear. People were generally much thinner then.

One thing I do find creepy is the coinciding of the huge-eyed bouffy-haired knock-kneed childishly dressed very young undeveloped girl fashion ideal with the availability of the Pill and the growth of the 'permissive society' in the 60s.

It's of course damaging to suggest you are naturally that way if you're not.
1% of the UK is still a lot of people so plenty of people are naturally that way, and there may still be other things that make people naturally thin that just haven't been discovered by scientists yet!

Yes, it is a bit creepy isn’t it?

(incidentally The Rest is History podcast did a couple of interesting episodes on sixties fashion last year, and they talked about the child/doll-like in fashion and the push back it got from critics at the time)

Yeah I think a lot of older people still have that mindset. Like when the box of chocolates come out at Christmas time they'll take one and that satisfies them.
Or it might not necessarily be a 'mindset', it's just their eating habits didn't really change and they didn't get into the habit of snacking etc.

Of course she’s bragging, why is her size of interest? We all know there are thin women, fat women and all stations in between. I’ve been all of them!

Twiggy is literally called that because she looked like a twig, it wasn’t the norm.

Twiggy's figure looks less weird than some models of more recent times.
I think twiggy looks quite natural and not painfully skinny. It's a similar body type to a young Kate moss. Moss to me looked a lot more unhealthy.
It's still not great for self esteem as most of us aren't that slim, and may end up going to extremes to try and emulate it.
I prefer the waif look to the very overblown plastic look of the 2010s, with butt implants and tons of lip filler being much more on trend.

https://themarilynmonroecollection.com/marilyn-monroe-true-size/
american sizes

We've lost sight of normal weight.

I looked like that at 18. Could eat whatever I wanted. Miss those days.

As someone who is an anorexia survivor I wonder....

How would you feel if the lyrics were "Those right fat chicks, the 26...."? Thats fat shaming right? I loathe that song with a passion, because it proves that most people think that thin women are starving themselves by choice. Some are, some are naturally slim and some are ill or surviving their illness.

Also....Someone needs to remind Paul Heaton that behaving like a 21 yr old hard done by student when he is 60 is givng the rest of us contact embarrassment.

A 24" waist would make her a modern American Size 0 (UK 4), but the bust and hips would be bigger than a size 0.

I suppose I find it hard to believe that a large minority are ‘naturally thin’ as anecdotally I literally don’t know anyone who would have fitted that description and I know loads of women and had lots of girlfriends as a teenager and in my twenties We were all very thin at Twiggy’s age in the late 90s nobody could eat what they wanted, we certainly ate junk but our lifestyles were such that we were always going out, didn’t have our parents noticing what we ate as family meals were not as regular, especially by the time we went to uni. In our twenties, plenty of food was made in house shares especially by the men but really you are not having much over the entire day and we live in a city and walk everywhere. In my 40s I still don’t know anybody that is naturally thin and many women are thin where I live! Most of the daughters are thin because they don’t eat enough, mine included, Thinness is a virtue with many women and I think this is the damaging bit, like a false pride!

You would have been underweight if you looked like that (according to Wikipedia I know, reliable Twiggy was 6.5 stone and 5’6 when she was 17), but I do appreciate that that some teenagers are just like that.

I believe Twiggys nickname started when she was a kid, I think she was called 'sticks' and 'twigs' due to her skinny legs so it wasn't that as a model she was skinny compared to other women the same age so that's why she earned the nickname. Other people have said they were the same back then and that it was very common.

Exactly, ‘lost sight’ when referencing Twiggy is silly as she was literally a famous model named Twiggy due to her extreme low weight. S I said upthread a bit late than that and my Mum was early 20s but when she returned from living in Africa for 9 months she had gone down to just under 6 stone, my Gran took her to the GP as she was very worried about her and it was definitely not normal to be that thin!

In the late 1950s the average British woman weighed 9 stone 10lbs and was 5ft 2 so it definitely wasn’t common!

I can't speak to the '60s, but the super-thin trend in the '90s certainly wasn't entirely natural. Actresses and models have spoken out about it, said they had eating disorders or were under massive pressure to be so thin. There's a reason they called it "heroin chic," it didn't look healthy at all.

Or look at Taylor Swift. I'd say she's naturally slim (and it helps that she's so tall), but she's spoken out about being in recovery from an eating disorder and she's a little bit bigger than she was a few years back. She starved herself down to a size 0.

You can't do anything about your bone structure, but diet can take you from being naturally slim to being waif like.

Some people naturally are thin.

I agree.

@Goldenbear how do you know that you don't know any? I know lots of slim people, I don't know what most of them eat though.

My dad used to say I looked like Twiggy. I look more like Mamma Cass these days. 😂

Granted there were a lot of thinner people in general back then due to the aftermath of WW2 and access to little or no junk food, however I remember my parents talking anecdotally about how the popularity of Twiggy sparked a huge surge in eating disorders among their peers.
I remember my dad talking about a (female) friend of his who was desperate to be her size however in Dad’s words, ‘she was never in a million years going to ever resemble Twiggy’ due to her body type.
Twiggy was NOT seen a ‘normal’ shape or size back then, her allure was based on her childlike features and frame. It was widely acknowledged though that she was naturally thin and also a jolly good sort!