Sybil Fawlty…..feeling old

[ohtobethin]

Had a glass of wine last night and watched some Fawlty Towers for the first time in years.

I was probably in my teens / early 20s when I last saw it so I won’t have noticed, but I couldn’t help but notice how young, slim and elegant Sybil (Prunella Scales) looked.

I find it hard to judge ages, partly due to the styling looking so old fashioned, but Prunella was born in 1932, starting playing Sybil in 1975, making her around 43 at the beginning.

I’m 43 just now and to be honest I don’t think I’ve ever looked that slim and elegant in my life, but certainly not now.

I’ve recently lost weight from a size 14/16 and very flabby, to a size 12 and I feel great. But Sybil must have been tiny. But that just seems to have been standard back then. Which is upsetting because I do think it is harder to stay thin these days due to foods being filled with so much sugar, UPF and other crap. Obviously it’s down to willpower as well, but I do feel it’s harder now than it was in the past.

She wears tight little dress suits and high heels and looks so smart, which I just don’t think I could do. Partly I feel that wearing heels and being a bit overweight is very uncomfortable. I wore heels to work years ago when I was thin, but now it’s just too much weight balanced on such a slim point.

Anyway, not sure what my point is really…nothing, really. I just thought she looked great. I was feeling good about myself having reached a size 12, realising that actually at 43 I could look like that, but never will, is a bit of a gut punch, but I’ll get over it.

I’m currently dieting to get back to a 12 from a 14. But have been going through my clothes, found old 90s clothes and the sizing now is also much larger than it was back then.

Yes, sizing has increased massively, hasn’t it. Vanity sizing.
people are just so much bigger these days.

I wonder if the trend can / will reverse.

Teens these days spend so much time at the gym, eating healthily, taking supplements etc.

When I was a student I lived on pizza, pot noodles are beer I had a great time, but it has obviously done a lot of damage to my body.

I’m so happy to be back down at a size 12, but I wonder what size I would have been at tbis age (43) if I had been born in the 1930s, like Prunella scales, or born in the 2010s, like current teens?

it’s an interesting thought.

She’s an actress, actresses stay skinny (often).

Plus many of them smoked like a chimney instead.

She’s an actress. But it’s true, middle aged women in the 70s and 80s in my recollection were slight and slim compared to us. My mum at 5’6 was consistently 8 stone through her 40s and 50s, in a size 10. Older women in the 70s had also been adolescents in the war and after, with the effect of strict food rationing

I’ve always been slim and in my late 40’s am 5’6” and weigh 8st 8. I’ve always been worried about my weight though - I think the 90’s waif look had way too much of an influence on me. I love that strength & muscle now seems much more of a target rather than the heroin chic look (whilst also being supposed to be a “ladette”) that was around in my most formative years.

I think most of us could be that shape if we ate the way people did in the 70's and had a similar lifestyle. Meal portions even at home were smaller. Pubs didn't serve food, at least, nothing more exciting than picked eggs and crisps. Even though we ate pudding every lunchtime, and a slice of cake every teatime, we were built like racing snakes. We didn't have a family car. We walked or cycled everywhere. Mum did a 1 mile trip 4x a day for the school run, and we all walked with her, the small one in a pushchair.
I'm not going on about 'good old days', it was just the way it was, it was different and we ate a lot less calories, hardly any processed food and exercised daily, just to get from A to B. 3 meals a day, treats were more of a weekly than daily event. Most of us now use processed food regularly, most of us will eat something processed every day. Kids have 'snacks' every day in school and on leaving school. People drive ridiculously small distances to get shopping or do school runs. I'm not criticising anyone for taking advantage of the lifestyle available not, but it does explain why we tend to be a bit bigger.

As pp said many actors stay slim. Some too skinny but that's another thread.

I guess the fear of being on screen with extra pounds is the motivation to stay a size 10 or whatever.

Am also a 14/16 and would like to be a 12 again.

From my recollection women were under a lot of pressure to be thin. My mum and her sister were always dieting. My mum wrote down the calorific value of everything she ate, and was also quite active, not in a modern going to the gym way, but in a walk everywhere way, don’t drive.
I also dieted as a child! I remember doing a diet with mum whereby we ate a strict diet which consisted of things like a few crackers with cottage cheese for one meal. Another meal was half a grapefruit. Another was 2 hotdog sausages with beetroot and something else. Seriously, you would die if you stuck to what we did then. In the 1990s the ideal was heroin chic. I was thin. I had a flat stomach, chiselled face with clearly defined cheek bones and you could see my hip bones and ribs. Yet I always felt fat. I remember desperately wanting to be what I classed as ‘thin to the bone.’ That is a tiny frame without hips, breasts, basically looking like a boy was the ideal.
Being a size 14 ( which is probably a 10/12 now) was considered overweight. Hit a size 16 ( again maybe a 12/14 now) and omg you were classed as obese.

Does anyone else think that we need to get over fussing about being hungry? I get a bit mystified when I read on here that snacks are needed after school because the children are hungry. It's normal to feel a bit peckish from time to time, it's not a signal to immediately stuff something down our throats. That is quite a big difference from when I was a child in the 70's. We basically existed on three meals a day. If we'd moaned about wanting food on the way home from school (the 1 mile walk remember 😅) Mum would have said tough luck, you're not getting food now because you'll spoil your tea.

Please don't say we had better school meals in the old days. I found a lot of the offerings disgusting so every lunchtime a battle to get the smallest portion possible and then bin most of it without getting told off by dinner ladies.

That style of skirt suit in the first screenshot is very flattering, a slightly cropped jacket and pencil skirt. It creates an hourglass figure. I used to wear that kind of thing to work (when I made more of an effort in my 20s!)

Treat yourself to a new suit like that and you'll look fab. No need to wear heels, you could wear a pointed court shoe

I think Prunella Scales was quite tiny in real life, as well as knowing that 'her body was her instrument' so staying fit was necessary (especially if doing a lot of stage work). So you can't necessarily compare. But people ate less, moved more and were generally more physically active in the 70s. I was a teenager and I was always called skinny but everyone in my class at school was the same size. We walked a lot, fewer had cars and we were expected to walk 2 miles to school and 2 miles back again every day.

I’m naturally her sort of size and always have been. I just seem to have a fast metabolism. Being slim has its downsides - my face is aging a lot faster than my peers! So that’s the mystery to me - how was she slim AND had a good face at that age.

Yes, all valid points and I know things were very different then.

my mum is mid 70s and the diners she makes are tiny. My gran was the same. Their dinner plates are barely bigger than side plates, with a tiny amount of food on them.

And yes @Spareahorsei know what you mean, it was just different times.

So many mums now can’t do the 4x daily walk to and from the school. As more mums have to work now than back then. I’d love to walk to and from the school, but I work and my kids go to childminder before/after school. She luckily lives very near my bus stop, which is convenient, but it does limit my chances for walking and getting my steps up.

Born 1932, so going through puberty during the peak of rationing in the mid to late 40s. I know they say that it was a super healthy diet, lots of veg etc but massively limited access to protein. Look up rations for 1945 and think about whether you'd feed your teenage daughter that amount of protein today.

My mum was born a few years after that and had a completely different attitude to portions, based on rationing (which went on well after the end of the war for some things) - she didn’t see a serving of cheese as ‘half the block’, it was a matchbox size piece. Ditto not slathering butter on everything or taking multiple sugars in tea, because you just couldn’t. She ate normally, and didn’t pass on any weird food complexes to us, but I think in the back of her mind she had a voice reminding her about making things ‘last’.

Plus there was a mentality (in her community, at least) of encouraging the men doing heavy physical work to get the bulk of the food, while women maintained small appetites, out of necessity, I guess. Resulting in most of the women of that generation in my family being somewhat bird-like, in both appetite and also fragile bones… (osteoporosis all round, sadly).

Yes, I don't think we can really compare. I'm certainly not saying that our current obesegenic environment is better, but childhood poverty and nutrition in inner cities especially makes it hard to compare any populations over the past 100 years, where we've gone from no indoor refrigeration and poor supplies of fresh veg to Uber Eats.

My mum had scurvy in the 60s! Yes, she's tiny and petite, but there's no knowing what she'd have grown to with a decent diet (my sister was 5ft2 as a vegetarian, and belatedly shot up to 5ft6 when she started eating fish in her early 20s).

My mum was tiny and ended up with osteoporosis I always wondered if it was her dieting. I try and remind myself of that when I'm having a fat day and feeling bad about my weight.

Do you realise that some people are just naturally slim? Maybe they eat sensibly, get plenty of exercise, etc. Back in the days when Sybil was on TV obesity was very rare.
There were always people on the chubbier side but nothing like what we see today.
People shopped and cooked, no Uber eats delivered etc. Most didnt have a car so walked everywhere. Very little UPFs.
The fact is ( and I will probably get flamed for this) the majority of people with obesity are obese because they eat for too much and do little or no exercise

You are both right, but also painfully naive and under informed about the causes of obesity. Well done!

It doesn't make you remotely clever or controversial to know and state that too much food and too little exercise lead to weight gain.

It is however, rather embarrassing that you don't acknowledge that economic and environmental factors are massive drivers of a) the ability to source and prepare fresh and healthy food and b) the time and resources to exercise.

Yes, and didn't develop a habit of fast food, junk food because it wasn't around much. Something to be said for meat and 3 veg.

She'd have been a similar age to my gran, who was always tiny. She'd have probably smoked like a chimney and eaten little. Her underwear would have probably been quite restrictive too.

Having said that, I'm mid 40s, slim and dress well, so it's not impossible.

Have been veggie since I was 10 years old, am 5'8". Am glad I didn't eat fish, I'd hate to have shot up to 6ft!

Same. My Mum had me on a 600 kcal a day diet at 7/8.

I don't want our youngsters growing up like that.

Actors in that era were even advised to smoke IN DRAMA SCHOOL - women to stay thin, men to get a husky deep voice.

No one noticed the stink of cigarette smoke as it was EVERYWHERE.

I can actually remember watching that episode at the time of its original airing and my aunt declaring in admiration, what a ‘neat little figure’ she had. The suit was very flattering and she did look great.

Sybil Fawlty is a character dressed by a tv wardrobe professional. Prunella Scales slobbed around in PJs just like the rest of us.

My mum was slim in the 60s and 70s. She took amphetamines.

Focus should be on health, fitness, strength, nutrition. Looks are not that important.