1975 diary shocker

[NorthernGirl1975]

As part of my PhD I'm looking at primary sources. I'm currently reading a diary from 50 years ago. The writer is obsessed with how she looks, what she eats and weighs and whether or not she's pretty.

There are lots of references to getting male attention. She goes to a summer gala with her friend and talks about the ice cream man being fit.

Then says she and the friend were chatted up on the bus and "Wolf whistled by two guys so that's not bad to say I'm a stone overweight". Earlier she's stated she weighs eight stone three. Says she's joining weight watchers as no guy would want to be seen around with a fat ugly girlfriend. Some guy who looks like Steve Harley keeps staring at her.

She went to buy a dress she liked but there was only one and it was a size 14 and too big. That's a 10 today isn't it? Christ knows what size she wanted to be. She's written measurements down as "35-25-35" and is obsessed with looking like one of Pam's People.

This is so depressing.

Because nothing has changed you mean?

Absolutely.

Average size and weight has changed a lot, I'm not sure much else has.

Sounds pretty familiar from chat at school when I was younger (girls’ school), tbh. Deeply depressing.

Those were my measurements 30years ago. I was told I was fat. The child born then would have been born in the decade after war and rationing went on for a time after the war. People were thin then as there wasn’t enough food. Then Twiggy came along. Television appeared and suddenly you had competitions about Miss World. Also in age group above many men were killed so competition for men was tough so I definitely remember these attitudes. I remember many spinsters. Different times but also similar times.

Fifty years ago I was fifteen. It sounds par for the course. I weighed about the same, 5'6". Smaller waist, size 8-10. I was pretty skinny in those days.

At the same age, dd weighed about the same, possibly a bit less, but a bit shorter than me. She was a size 8-10. She's 27 now.

Mother, now 89, 5'2", 7st 12lb, she was probably 5'4" in her prime. Always been an 8-10.

I am not convinced about vanity sizing.

Mother and I were flirts and enjoyed male attention. DD is more academic, earnest and serious. She's only had one boyfriend.

I used to look after a lot older ladies, even at 90+ they were still obsessed with weight and wouldn't hesitate to mention that you were a fat fucker

50 years ago was 1975. The war ended in 1945 and rationing ended in 1953. There was plenty of food in the 50s and 60s. Not the junk there is today and it was more seasonal but plentiful.

You are right about the older, unmarried ladies but they were older than my mother's generation (b1936) and there was a double whammy with the first and second world wars. Probably ladies born in the 1880s/90s and then 1910's/20s.

and is obsessed with looking like one of Pam's People.

Pan's People. They were a female dance troupe of the 1970s, often seen on telly in those days.

@NorthernGirl1975 and if you read Bridget Jones’ diary from the 90’s she was aghast to be 9st 3lbs at the start of the year. So would I have been back then… I’d be bloody thrilled to be that weight now (minus the obsession obvs). And probably because growing up in England everyone’s mum in the 70’s/80’s was weight conscious (and could tell you what they weighed on their wedding day etc) and we grew up in a time when there was literally only a handful of really overweight kids at a school at any one time. Yes junk food was on the rise, but no one around me had enough money to fund it in all honesty. Certainly at 15 we didn’t have the money to go to a Starbucks/mc d’s every day or even more than once a week. Most mums didn’t work outside the home and cooked ‘dinners’ every day - meat, veg, potatoes of some description. Only exotic mums cooked pasta in the early 80’s. I was not blessed with one of those 😂 I was around 8 and a half stone aged 15/16 and I was always a size 12 in Warehouse/Miss Selfridge/Top Shop so I do think that vanity sizing is a thing since those days. The really skinny girls at school were a size 8-10.

Did we want to be ‘pretty’? Well yes. Pretty in those days = popularity and a chance to ‘marry well’ but not ‘too pretty’ as that apparently didn’t equal brains either… at least those times have changed. TOTP was the most popular programme for all teens in the 70’s/80’s and early 90’s. I think it was pretty normal in times before music videos to prance about in front of the telly pretending to be one of PP or Hot Gossip…or to dream about marrying John Taylor… I think what you are reading is just reflective of those times…

A few years later, we had a female PM and I think that did make a difference to female empowerment, ambition and mobilisation in the workplace - especially as equal pay was only enforced in the mid 70’s. These days I’m not sure it’s any better for girls, my DD was travelling around Europe in the summer with friends and the sheer amount of groping/unwanted/unwarranted contact from men in bars/clubs was pretty eye opening and concerning to me in equal measure.

😂 my Nan was brutal about people’s weight. My poor cousin was a bit plumper than most kids and it was commented on every visit.

I was 16 in 1975 and really didn't care about anything like you are describing. None of my friends at the time did either, it wasn't something that we talked about.
Not saying it didn't happen, but it certainly wasn't all girls thinking like that.

I was born in 1974. My parents divorced when I was 5, which was still quite unusual then. Anyway, my dad would weigh me monthly when I went to stay at his house to make sure I didn't get too fat. My brother made fun of me all the time for being fat. Lots and lots of name calling. Looking back I was completely average, but I grew up being terrified of getting fat and that has been in my background my whole life. Different times.

Same today, but even younger. In my school (teacher) even the 11 year olds are getting their nails and eyebrows (ugh) done, obsessing about weight, skirt at indecent length etc - at least in 1975 out was probably a few years older than that.

Some guy who looks like Steve Harley keeps staring at her.

So not all bad then 😄

I was 34 24 34, I know because in 1980 I signed a modelling contract that stipulated no weight gain and I had to get permission to get a change of hair style. There was one overweight girl in my year at school who was known as Fat Dawn, that’s just what she was called. As an aside I knew one of the dancers in Pan’s Peoples daughters years later.

Have you read Bridget Jones’s Diary? The print edition (rather than film) starts with her listing her New Year’s Resolutions, which are all based around being skinny.
So nothing had changed by mid 1990s.

Depressingly, for some women I know in their 50s, still nothing has changed, and their whole sense of self is tied up in the looks and dress size.

DM (in her 80s) had cancer treatment, followed by Covid and long covid for a year. In the midst of being very, very ill, she was delighted by how much weight she’d lost.

I was looking at some dresses in a vintage store recently. One was the original St Michael brand (M & S for those of you too young to remember this) and was a size 16. My guess is that it was from the 70s. I’m a 10/12 in M & S now and I would have struggled to get into it so I think vanity sizing is a thing.

I was 14 in 1975. Everyone I knew, except for one girl, was what would be called thin now. We didn't really obsess over our weight because we were all slim, although everyone wanted bigger boobs. In my group there was no fast food, no meals out, no takeaways (although some would have fish and chips now and again, it was very infrequent) and we all walked to school, lots of us over two miles one way. We had sweets as a treat once a week, very rarely had crisps or anything else treatlike. Most of our parents had little money.

We did talk about boys a lot though.

I worked with one of Pans People after she finished dancing. She had waist-length, greasy hair because she only washed it once a fortnight, and she thought she was famous. My manager, a personal friend of hers, enthusiastically told everyone who she was, despite many of the younger people in the office having no idea who Pans People were. (She wasn't even an original but one of the "new pans people") She was also shite at her job and I was moved to another office so that she could pick up my roaringly successful book (think sales/reapt orders type job).

I still have a cocktail dress from 1992 which was a size 12 (bought from some catalogue) - the waist is 26 inches and the bust is 36 inches. Needless to say it hasn't fitted me for a long time although I can easily wear a modern 12 at about 2 stone heavier than I was in 1992.

sounds familiar, I love our older patients 😋

I completely agree how depressing it is that so little has changed.

Women, especially younger women, are defined far too much by their weight and appearance and pleasing the male gaze.

Impractical clothing, uncomfortable footwear, removing hair, colouring hair, colouring your face and body, surgery, injecting stuff, eating disorders. Your real, natural self never being good enough without “improvement”.

Women have been so successfully conditioned that they not only police themselves but other women too.

It is horrible.

For me the nice thing about middle age is being invisible to men and not giving a fuck what they, or indeed other women, think about my appearance.

It was ever thus. My mother went to an academic school, which shared busses with the even more academic boys’ school. She said all she and her friends did did was chase the boys. At 100 she’s still worried about putting on weight although does concur that perhaps she should now just enjoy a piece of cake and to hell with the consequences.

I was born in 1970 and used to stay at my grandmas from age 10 up until 16 and she used to weigh me every time and was obsessed with people’s weight and would openly call people fat! She weighed herself every morning and night.

My mother was anorexic and obsessed with her weight and would not eat for days at a time, got osteoporosis young and dementia I’m sure not eating contributed to her developing it.

i don’t have weighing scales in the house as i was bought up in an unhealthy way regarding weight and don’t want my teens obsessed about weight!

Jilly Cooper’s 70s books are like that - in her non fiction she’s constantly worrying about her weight despite clearly never having been at all
overweight in any photos I’ve seen, and in Riders it’s all about how fat the character Tory is - talks about her having to heave her massive bulk around - and she’s 9stone something!