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.

I had my children in the early naughties and after each one joined slimming world to lose the baby weight - my starting weight was always around 9st and any time I went above 9st 2 I went back to slimming world.

Then 9st 2 meant a size 12 was getting snug on me. (I’m 5ft 2)

lol at "you're filling those trousers"

@TheSecondMrsCampbellBlack 🥲 aaaw your poor brother

My mum died when I was 17 and ive got one of her old diaries from around that time when she was a teenager herself. It's all about who fancied who, who kissed who, Paul fancies Sally but Sally fancies Peter blah blah blah. Ann isnt speaking to Sarah etc.

It's the most boring nonsense and kind of sad. Even at 16 I had much bigger concerns than my friends boyfriends

I was weighed throughout pregnancy 1979/80. I was under weight the whole time mainly due to terrible morning sickness.

Perhaps if more people were anlittle more weight conscious now, there wouldn't be such a plague of obesity and it's comorbid and life shortening health conditions and the NHS wouldn't be expected to fund weight loss drugs.

I don't see any issues in being diet conscious to maintain a healthy weight. You are what you eat.

My mother would give me a spoonful of cottage cheese with pineapple and two celery sticks for lunch. I quite liked it because it wasn't as watery or sour as the one without. I think she begrudged me having the pineapple as that was 'full of sugar and you already have a banana roll at work on Saturdays'.

Anyhow, when DP bought some plain cottage cheese the other day to have with a jacket potato, I didn't remember it ever tasting that good. Then I actually used my brain and worked out that the version I would have been given was the very lowest calorie, diet, version, just like she did with margarine, milk and anything else.

I think i was 13 when I first went clubbing. 18 was when you were having your first baby in my town!

I was just going to ask if anyone remembered Ayds
I remember my mum buying them. I was 10 in 1975.
I remember nicking them because they tasted good to me!

That's my target now, so thats not changed

What? Like world affairs?

Fuck me. I wouldn’t want to give one of my diaries to a ‘PHD student’ only to find they’d started a post on Mumsnet on its content. Do you not have any sort of ethical code or GDPR considerations!?

I remember Ayds. They were a bit like fudge. Remember Cambridge Formula loaf? It came in a box. Needless to say I ate the whole loaf almost immediately followed by the Ayds. I still thought I was on a diet.....

Unless you have permission to post this on here, it's incredibly unprofessional to post this on a public forum. Who would want details of their diary published without permission?

Glad it's not just me who thought this.

Under GDPR, if the piece of data cannot be linked to a person, then it is no longer 'personal data'.

Holy fuck. This is awful. So utterly unprofessional. How would the family feel about that? I'd also imagine your university would have a lot to say about you posting stuff like this.

That's beside the point. It's still the wrong thing to do to post about someone's diary online without their permission.

That was a tongue in cheek response to a poster's suggestion that I had perhaps made something up. Of course I wouldn't photograph and post it. You're not my supervisor, so stop swearing at me and if you have a problem report the thread.

From what the OP said, it sounds as if she has permission to use it in her doctoral work.

Her PhD will be available online anyway. Academic work increasingly involves working in the open - people post conference and seminar slides online, including snippets of primary sources; videos of seminar presentations once considered private are often now posted online; many papers and books are published open access.

Moreover, she has included no identifying details.

The fact that it 'feels wrong' doesn't mean there has necessarily been any harm caused; or any infringement of the university's ethics policies/the doctoral student's ethics clearance; or that the law must have been broken.

We just wanted to step in here. The OP has not shared any identifiable personal information from the diary, and what’s been posted doesn’t breach our Talk guidelines. Questions of academic ethics and research approval are a matter for the OP and her university, not something we adjudicate here.

We’d also ask everyone to keep discussion civil and avoid repeatedly challenging or badgering another poster. It’s fine to put your point once, but ongoing questioning can become hounding and that’s not in the spirit of the site.

Please keep the thread focused on the subject the OP raised rather than on her personal credibility.

I didn't swear AT you and if you're taking it to heart maybe look at why. Perhaps realising you've messed up here?

Women might tell the world these things, but look at how many ‘body positive’ women have slimmed right down now they can do it with Mounjaro. It was a defence mechanism, not a truly held belief.

I actually hung around with Jilly Cooper at a party a few years ago and she is tiny... Not just slim but short and very little all round. Which might have influenced her writing about 'big girls', because, compared to her, I felt like a heifer and I am only 5'6 and 9 stone.