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?

5ft 5 isn’t tall these days either, isn’t that average in the UK?

The pressure on young men is for them to look like they work out and yes there is pressure which is why some end up on steroids. Just as unhealthy.

I'm sorry but rationing was gradually phased out. The rations up to 1954 were not like those during the war.

Twiggy would not have missed out on food from 1950-54.

The skinny gene is only 1% of the country and that includes men who have a higher metabolic rate anyway! People’s interpretation of ‘naturally thin’ isn’t what many would consider natural I.e someone posted about their child lifting weights 4x a week or healthy eating that is just a subconscious action then yes these are environmental factors that influence this ‘natural’ state. Eating whatever you want, not exercising one bit is what the documentary was looking into. Equally, the average weight of a woman in Twiggy’s era was 9 stone 10lbs which isn’t tiny especially when the average female was short at 5ft 2!

@ChickenTikkaKebabs Perhaps you would like to tell that to my mother, or my older brothers and sister, born in 1940, 46 and 49. They all remember rationing, and my mother had to reclaim our family meat ration from two single sisters who had mistakenly been given our family meat ration. Post war rationing was actually far worse than war rationing as even bread went on ration in 1946. I was born in 1958, and I can tell you now that food choices in the 1960s were still quite limited and much fewer dishes were pre-prepared.

Yes, funny thing the pressure on men is to look strong, big biceps etc... pressure on women has always been to look skinny, anorexic, starve, crazy diets etc.. and now it's big breast implants, butt implants etc... so while some of them end up taking steroids a much higher percentage of women will end up under the knife, others dying in dodgy beautician hands because of botched butt fillers, getting silicon implants (that go wrong at some point) inside their bodies or ruining their looks because of facial treatments gone wrong (hello Linda evangelista).

So no, I don't feel sorry for a few men who decided to take steroids.

Yes but all these are environmental factors that are contributing to your ‘natural’ state. You are exercising quite a bit and making a decision to cut out UPF as this obviously does impact your weight. The 1% skinny don’t need to cut out UPFs like one of my male house mates in his twenties he could eat two greasy takeaways at 11 pm and would eat the whole day, he was pretty muscular but thin and didn’t put an ounce of fat on, he didn’t really exercise other than a walk to where he worked once he got off the train.

Clothing sizes have changed considerably since the 1960’s.

One of her movie costumes was on display at an exhibition in the V&A a few years ago. They put it on a UK size 6 mannequin, and it was so small it wouldn’t do up at the back.

Her weight fluctuated, but it’s estimated that at her absolute largest (around the time of Some Like It Hot) she never went over a modern UK 10-12. She had an hourglass figure and so was “curvy” in that sense, but she was absolutely tiny by modern standards.

we eat far too much now,
snacks
pizza
alcohol
and work in sedentary positions more commonly

She'd have missed out on sugary stuff, sweets/chocolate etc. That did have a knock on effect as I don't think we did eat many sweets and sugary stuff through the 50s. Much less snacking as well and most food cooked from scratch at home. Things were very different.

i was born in 1965 and didnt eat sweets throughout my childhood

The average woman wasn't a teenager either. I don't think Twiggy would be far off the average for teenage girls in the 60s, I was the same build so were most of my friends. There was one girl in my class of 30 who was "fat" but I don't think she'd be unusual now.

No, we didn't miss out on sweets (my fillings are testament to that, unfortunately!).
I remember the sweet shop on the corner near my primary school, gobstoppers were a favourite with us all.

We didn't all have cars in those days so walking and cycling everywhere kept us slim.

Ps we didn't snack, food was home-cooked from scratch and junk food consisted of a bag of crisps (and those sweets).

Ok so they might not be the ones with the skinny gene who can eat whatever they want all the time and not gain anything.

But in your mind does someone have to be able to eat everything they want/have the skinny gene to be 'naturally thin'?

Also eating 'everything you want' is different once someone has got into a habit of eating unhealthy food for a chunk of time. And of course for those with weight problems their hormones are creating all the 'food noise' for them so it's extremely difficult for them, because it sounds like it's the worst and hardest addiction in the world, hence why ozempic has been successful because it removes that issue.

For those without the 'food noise' it's mostly really easy to let a craving just pass by, there's no real effort or restriction required.

I know plenty of slim people who have a decent diet most of the time but they will of course get the takeaway etc or binge if they want to. But most of the time the 'everything they want' to eat would be healthier food because that's what makes them feel the best, they wouldn't want to eat to excess or eat unhealthier foods a lot.

Maybe some of those people are just obsessed with yoga 😂 it might be nothing to do at weight. When I was at peak fitness I trained for maybe 2.5 hours a day but it was because it was fun and there was so many different things and styles to train (pole dance/fitness).
I know runners who do it for the love of running, it's often not about weight, but the 'runners high' that I will never experience because I refuse to run 😅

no watch the film The Boyfriend, you can see she is the one who is the skinniest hence the name Twiggy

This is anecdotal but in my Mum’s all girls Grammar school photo in the sixties, there aren’t many that look as thin as Twiggy, my mum was thinner than Twiggy but that was when she returned from Africa in the 70s in her early 20s and was only eating vegetables as all the meat had maggots in it. Equally, most of my friends as 6th formers were slim to skinny, not particularly hard at that age. When you say ‘these days’ it depends on the circles of friendships and the influences of where you live. DD and friends are teens and all skinny, too skinny IMO. They shop in Brandy Melville and similar places and they are definitely not bigger than Twiggy.

Can you recommend a decent Marilyn biography? I’ve always been interested in her but never been able to find a decent source.
eg I didn’t think it was common knowledge that she had been pregnant?

well it isn’t about ‘in my mind’ it is what the skinny gene is and we aren’t referring to slim in that 1% it is skinny!

She wouldn't have been given the nickname Twigs if she hadn't been thinner than normal.

She had the advantage of being flat-chested. Those of us who developed more generous boobs never could look fashionably skinny, however slim we were.

I don't remember such stringent rationing, although I might have been too young, perhaps my parents just made sure we had enough food (growing their own vegetables) and school dinners were cooked - meat (not the best) and two veg dinners with puddings.

You’re missing the point, I am well aware what a high you can get from exercise and that’s the motivation to do it and feeling better as a result of food that is good for you but the outcome of those decisions is a slim person. They ‘can’t’ eat whatever they want and stay slim. A poster above said that they knew someone who had to eat all of the time and it was expensive and time consuming, healthy food wasn’t described it was just food, this is most likely the 1% skinny gene. My male friend from a house share in my twenties was like this, tbh it was expensive and exhausting watching him think about food all of the time as never really satiated!

The measurements on paper patterns have always been different to the measurements in shops though.

@PyongyangKipperbang OMG that's a lovely post to wake up to 🥰. I feel like a haggard old bat most of the time so I appreciate that very much. We must have a catch up on life! ❤️

I think you’re quite rude OP. I was as thin as Twiggy (even being nicknamed it by some). People were very rude to me as well and it’s not nice, quite upsetting at times. I wasn’t anorexic (neither was Twiggy). I was just naturally thin.

Nowadays I have to watch my weight as I can pile it on, but not then, I couldn’t gain an ounce to save my life.

Your point seems to be that people can't claim to be able to eat whatever they want unless they are those with the skinny gene and who could eat to excess and never gain a thing.

But 'whatever they want' to eat isn't necessarily eating large amounts of food or eating unhealthy foods. So lots of people can in fact 'eat whatever they want' even if they don't have the skinny gene.