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1975 diary shocker

479 replies

NorthernGirl1975 · 06/09/2025 01:27

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.

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Squidlette · 09/09/2025 21:02

Vroomfondleswaistcoat · 09/09/2025 10:46

Ditto! I found some of my old diaries when I moved house and picked them up eagerly. I'm now a novelist and I wondered if those old notebooks would hold valuable insights into the way my mind worked, how I 'saw' things differently. I hoped that they'd be full of literary musings and book comparisons...

Well they were, in fact, full of witterings about which boy I fancied, how he'd looked at me, how I'd never find a boyfriend (I didn't, actually, I'd stopped keeping a diary by the time I met someone), what I'd seen on TV and who was in it and how I had a crush on them. And a hefty dose of who said what to whom and how they looked as they were saying it. Good grief they were dull.

So I burned them all. If I ever reach truly heroic levels of fame for my writing, I would NOT want that complete drivel immortalised in any biographies.

Show quote history

I'm just amazed at how much I've forgotten. Stuff, and people, that filled my every waking thought.... and now i have no idea. Who was Bags? Why was it such a good night when he turned up? Why do i have NO memory of him?
I thought my memory was damn near perfect. Turns out alcohol and drugs in your youth DOES have an effect.

Tessisme · 10/09/2025 07:48

Jacopo · 09/09/2025 10:31

I would just like to mention something for the people who’ve pulled a vintage dress out of the attic and can no longer fit into it. On average women lose half an inch in height every decade, so two inches between the age of 30 and 70. So you may be the same weight as you used to be but your shape will be different. The fat will be sort of concertinaed down in pleats around your torso. Just wanted to say it’s not just a question of calories and exercise.

Oh God this image of weight distribution is definitely me🤣🤣

Hummingbirdtree · 10/09/2025 14:10

zingally · 07/09/2025 14:58

We inherited my grandmas diaries when she died (born 1920). They were also full of what food she ate, and what she would do to lose weight. Endless talk about other people's bodies as well.
"Saw Elsie today, goodness me she's put on some weight. Her dress was terribly unflattering."
"Saw Joan today. She was wearing a disgusting hat."

They had nothing else to think about . It’s sad really.

zingally · 11/09/2025 17:52

Hummingbirdtree · 10/09/2025 14:10

They had nothing else to think about . It’s sad really.

Show quote history

That's true really.

My grandma was technically orphaned at a young age. Her mum died of cancer when she was single figures old, and her dad did a runner to the states when she was baby. She was bought up in a succession of all-girls boarding schools, and during the holidays stayed with her slightly younger girl cousins.
She grew up in a completely female-dominated world, and even when she met my grandpa, I think it was a bit of "oh, you'll do" from both sides. Just because that was the "done thing" then. To be an unmarried woman in 1940 was pretty unthinkable.
She then went on to have two sons, and boys in general were a complete unknown to her. She looked on them with a sort of general benign puzzlement and very little practical involvement. She was a housewife by this point, and far more interested in her WI meetings and poetry groups. Again, completely female-centric worlds.

She wasn't an especially bitchy or unkind woman. I just think it was the way it was when you don't really have anything else in your life to think about or talk about.

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