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.

Perfect perfect example. Can you please tell me how this opinion equates to anything other than moral judgement about other people's bodies? Why the hell shouldn't people feel ok about the bodies that house them, carry them round, bring them pleasure and strength and basically life? Their health is not your business - and you are not saying you care about their when you say this type of thing anyway.

Walking around hating your body does not help your health.

OP - I trained as a historian originally so have read many diaries/memoirs. It's depressing but, well, to be expected!

Girls' fiction has long had a lot of detail about clothes and appearance, often diet too.

When looking at Martin Parr's photography, what strikes me is how thin everyone looked in his early decades.

I remember going into a corner shop in the mid-1990s and there were suddenly extra-large Mars Bars and massive chocolate muffins on the shelf, not like normal chocolate bars or fairy cakes. And big 'sharing' (ha!) bags of crisps followed soon after.

I didn't drink fizzy drinks, so for me that was the start of the slippery slope. I have a normal BMI (just), but would have been a hefty size 16 in 1975.

I'm glad to hear that - your pp just said the sister gave it to you.

Vanity sizes are absolutely a thing. I have some Laura Ashley stuff from 80s and 90s. The labels say 10 in today's sizes they are 4s or 6s

I was 16 in 1975. I remember a few years earlier that friends and I used to buy cans of chilled coke from the local ice cream shop/ café- these were special treats, not everyday. They weren't special because we were poor- very far from it- just that cans of fizzy, sugary drinks weren't for every day.

I wasn't aware I had to explain the finer detail on Mumsnet!

OP you significantly edited your post after I replied to it! Get real, almost no one will read your thesis. Numbers on Mumsnet are far higher. Plus, anything on here can end up in the papers.
You're happy with your actions, that's fine. I wouldn't be.

I am smiling at your post - in a good way, because it reminds me of my mum. She always tried to stay away from sweet stuff and was very vocal about it, but when she developed dementia, it was open season! Someone left her a box of biscuits one Christmas and when I called in the next day, they were all gone. Every single one. And she couldn't even remember what biscuits I was talking about when I asked her (only because I fancied a biscuit or three with my cup of tea!) When she was waiting in A&E after a fall, she was embarrassingly diverted by other women's appearance. 'Did you see the SIZE of that woman?' and 'I would never let myself get to THAT SIZE'. She died a couple of years ago and I have since filed it under 'things I can laugh about now'!

I worked with a naturally very skinny woman once who had to eat a lot to keep her weight up. She'd eat a mars bar and say 'I need the calories.'

I didn't talk about wanting to be thinner with my friends in the 90s, but I did want to be. And we were all desperate for the following: a bf; good gcse results; to escape shitsville.

I vividly remember being 15 and feeling enormous. Photos from that time tell a different story. I was just tall, and later, slim hourglass.

But then, if you watch the totp reruns from the 90s, you can see why. Teeny, tiny women with not even a small belly. Prominent hip bones and no boobs. Although fhm and loaded preferred tiny women with massive boobs.... and they'd be right in your face when you were buying sweets.

Have you watched any of the old Top of The Pops on BBC4? The audience members are all really thin compared to the kids you see walking around today.

That sounds very depressing. I found my diary from 12 to 14 (I'm mid 50's now) and it was quite boring and superficial (Virginia wolf I was not), all the pages were about fun activities I had engaged on that day, random fights I had with my brother/mum/grandma, play games with classmates and references to what I was going to do on the weekend. It sounded like a healthy kid but strangely I did develop an eating disorder at 16 that lasted 5 years. There was family disfunction, divorce etc... I was in a lot of emotional pain and discovered that by starving myself to death I could have people pay attention to me. I was a chubby girl then became skinny, started to dress like a rock chick and wear make up. As I was starving for recognition and attention with zero self esteem and loving the attention I stuck to my eating disorder.

Fascinated by the different norms in different disciplines. Historians covering recent decades aren't generally concerned to anonymise oral histories, for example. Social scientists have had different training/ethical clearance and are much more concerned about anonymity.

If her sister gave permission I guess that suggests she died, which is sad - she wouldn't have been very old.

It sounds wonderful and I'd love to join an update email list if you have one.

Get real? I'm not expecting anyone to fall over themselves to read it, merely pointing out it's going to eventually end up in the public domain. My partner's PhD thesis was easily found by googling his name+PhD+Strathclyde.

I still challenge anyone to identify anyone by what I've written. This is also derailing

Literally nothing has changed for most girls.

In some ways it's worse, because now girls have to pretend - or gaslight themselves into believing - that it's about self-care / self-empowerment rather than male approval and attention.

Different classes express this in different ways but it's almost universal.

I too am a bit taken aback at your lack of historical objectivity at PhD level @NorthernGirl1975 - for eg it's a pretty common analysis that the Swinging Sixties were not very liberating for women at all, and were in any case only really experienced by a very small segment of society.

Most of it comes down to the introduction of the Pill which, depending on your view, allowed women to fully experience their own sexuality for the first time or removed the one bargaining chip (fear of illegitimate pregnancy) held by women against predatory male sexuality which had till then enabled them to hold out for the legal/financial protections of marriage.

In the 80s when I was a teenager it very much felt that we were on a trajectory of liberation. But now it feels to me that women have swapped one prison for another. The 'Swinging Sixties' didn't liberate women - or rather, it liberated them to be more like what men wanted them to be, while removing some structures which, as oppressive as they were, had at least afforded them some rights and protections.

If anyone remembers Tenko, which is about a group of women in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, obviously the women got very little food, so they all lost weight.

Anyway - the casting director told Stephanie Cole that he couldn't employ any actresses who weighed more than eight stone. Goodness knows how much weight they were then supposed to lose.

At the time, Stephanie Cole weighed nearer 11st, but they didn't weigh her, and she was very proud to have been accepted.

Hardly a moral judgement. I think they look horrible and not healthy. If they can afford private healthcare for their obesity related ailments that's fine. Otherwise it seems a bit unfair that the 30% or so of the population not intent on eating themselves into an early grave should subsidise their NHS treatment.

You're right, and I'd ignore that poster.

A lot of young people watch Top of the Pops as it seems to be played non stop on TV.

I have, in fact I watched one last night featuring Buck's Fizz, Duran Duran, Soft Cell and The Teardrop Explodes, a few years after this diary.

Otherwise it seems a bit unfair that the 30% or so of the population not intent on eating themselves into an early grave should subsidise their NHS treatment.

That is unquestionably a moral judgement.

I saw that. It was great!

And Steve Harley was a bit of a looker, wasn’t he?

I'm here for Steve Harley. What a hunk o spunk.

Gorgeous. Always had a crush on him.

I was a skinny teen, but I remember my grandmother saying anything over a 10 was plus sized. This was 70s and 80s. At secondary school I was an 8 and I remember being called thunder thighs. My mum made me stop horse riding as I was getting a fat bottom. In my waist 26 Jodhpurs.

I've researched him. Yes he was fit as the diarist said!

On that point however, referring to an ice cream man as fit, in the original sense of the word, I would think ice cream van drivers were older so that's curious. Ours when I was a child certainly was.