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.

Ha ha. You made it!
I also longed to be a size 10 in my teens in the 90s and could only fit into a 12.
I can now fit into a 10 in most places and am obviously bigger than I was as a teen.

Has prostitution decreased now that women have (so called) equal pay?
Or has the gender pay gap/shit jobs for women situation not really improved women's welfare?
Domestic violence in Australia is rife, and many of the homeless sleeping in cars are women...so how is that any different from Jack the Ripper times when women ended up on the streets destitute? And how can one legislate to improve it?

I'm interested in the questions you are looking to answer, and what markers you are choosing to support your theories.🤔

I moved to London in 1995, it was the Kate Moss era.
I remember buying Rosemary Conley’s Hip & Thigh Diet.
I did Atkins in the 2000s, when I lived in Paris. I was a size 8.
Looking back now, low-rise jeans (no elastane!) I was tiny…
But I still wanted be “skinny”. I smoked a lot & ate not much.
Not much different to my mum, back in the 70s, I suppose.

Haha, lots of us were given pills to make us slim. In order to stay under 9 stone, I had what was essentially amphetamine prescribed by my GP, or you could get slimming pills from private doctors in Harley Street and the like. We used to live on coffee, pills, cigarettes washed down with the occasional MaccyD milkshake, and a lot more alcohol than I would be happy to see my DC drink, especially once I'd left school.
I was at a girls grammar school, and almost all the talk was about boys - boys we saw on the bus, guys in bands, and maybe what we were going to wear at the weekend, and where we might go shopping. We were all quite academic, and well -read, but didn't really discuss what we'd read in any depth. Hot topics of conversation other than boys were whether you would continue to work once you got married, at what point in a relationship you would have sex ( after getting married/once engaged/before that) , in what circumstances abortion should be legal or acceptable.
Also 'Would you rather?' and 'Marry, Snog, Avoid'.
We were really into music, lots of genres, lots of chat about new records, and listening to music or singing all the time. We listened to the Top 20 which was released at lunchtime on a weekday on a portable radio, and this was important so that we could work out who would be on TOTP on Thursday.
But mostly we were pretty vapid as teenagers, although many of us eventually went on to have serious professional jobs/careers.

Re: clothing sizes and their corresponding body measurements changing through time - a great source for objective info on this is vintage sewing patterns.

This one is from 1975 and aimed at the teenage/ young women’s market. It’s definitely British (price on the packet front is 70p!) and as you can see, the expected body measurements for a size 10 are:

bust: 32 1/2 inches
waist: 25 inches
hip: 34 1/2 inches

(This pattern is currently for sale on Etsy, I am not the seller nor do I have any relationship with the seller but figured I would include the link as a courtesy seeing as I made a screenshot of their merchandise!)
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1723931860/style-1117-vintage-1975-sewing-pattern

Other way about. A 10 now was a 14 in 1975.

I was born mid 1970s.

From being arond 15 until I was late twenties (so, the 90s), I weighed 8 stone 3lbs and my measurements were 35-24-35.

I was a size 10/12 and I was often told I was "too" fat or that I "couldn't afford" to gain any weight.

I'm now 51.

I weigh a little over 10 stone.

So, 2 stone heavier but I'm still a size 10/12.

Oops, yes you're right.

I had a feeling I'd got it the wrong way round and was going to check it but forgot about until I got the notification email that I'd been quoted.

Hi, I am loving this thread so thank you for starting it.

What I recall is gay people being treated appallingly and I see that mirrored today with Trans people.

I was born in 70's my mother's post natal 6 week check shows her at 7.5 stone she thought she was fat. Apparently she was weighed throughout pregnancy (as they still do now in France). People were generally slim then I think loooking back at photos. More active less snacking I think.

We all carry weight differently

Does anyone remember AIDS? They were wrapped up in a box and designed to make you lose weight. God knows what was in them.

Second wave feminism was in its infancy in 1975. The first Women's Liberation Conference was held at Ruskin College in 1970, and many of its ideas, now mainstream, were revolutionary and resisted at the time.

In 1975 I was 21, and a standard size 12. I measured 34-24-36. My best friend was a size 10 and she measured 32-22-34. I had progressed from Jackie to Cosmopolitan but still obsessed on make-up and clothes. I still take a keen interest in both, but I am no longer influenced by magazines or indeed 'influencers'.

@Carriena what are the ethical issues, really? I honestly think this is fine.

The writer said she couldn't buy the dress she wanted as it was a size 14 and too big for her, she would therefore have been smaller than a current size 10 and considered herself a stone overweight at just over eight stones.

They're free to report this silly giddy person's post if they want.

Yep, "hauling her 9 stone bulk around the Mill House" Jilly is obsessed with weight, she's a product of her time. Her descriptions of older women aren't great either "whiskery old trouts"

I think it would be a really good idea for your thesis if you could find a way to like and respect the people that you are reading about.

At the moment you come across as really not liking this woman that you are reading about, even though she has given you access to her most private thoughts.

I was born in 1975 and I think you can safely assume that all women were not focussed on appearance like this. If you want a bit of a taste of what was moulding attitudes in those day it might be worth watching Carry On Doctor and Benny Hill.

But equally, I think the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures were running then and we were watching all of these things equally.

The upside of the 70s was that there was no internet, so we all played out all the time. Shops were shut on Sundays, and if you went to see the doctor, you saw him in person. Most of us went to church most Sundays. There was a blackboard in school, and no interactive whiteboard.

Teens didn't routinely threaten suicide or get computer game addiction, but they regularly got injured on building sites, and hit by cars.

It was a different time, but not very different. If you want to know what 1975 was like, just turn off the internet entirely and wear brown clothes all over.

Such an interesting thread. I wish I was the weight I was back then when I thought I was fat but was actually 9 stone. I remember reading slimming magazines and thinking "but why are they happy to be 9 stone? I am fat and I'm 9 stone!" (I wasn't fat, but had a mother obsessed with slimming and ryvita and cottage cheese with pineapple even though she was a size 10)

Not what you asked at all, but have you come across 'Jackie: An Ideology of Adolescent Femininity' by Angela McRobbie. I believe I'm right in saying she was working with Stuart Hall out of Birmingham University in the late 1970s and her paper (which I think was her PhD) is a study centred around the phenomenon of teen magazine (Jackie) and working class girls / young women in the Midlands. It's a bit dated now, but perhaps worth a read as a contemporaneous source.

Edit to add: And also one of the first studies to actually engage with the subject to disrupt the hegemonic processes under consideration. It's also a foundational text in terms of cultural history - in much the same way as Keyword (Williams)

OMG! I remember Pan's People.