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.

To be fair, most families don't do a lot of walking when they aren't at work either, but I do understand. That's why I'm saying I'm not criticising anyone, just highlighting the differences that might go a long way to explain why we tend to be a different shape now compared to the mid 70's.

I don't remember dieting being a big thing, that was maybe more 80's-90's? There were a lot less overweight people in the 70's.

I don’t think many of the main female characters on TV today are overweight tbh op. I did watch the first episode of Last of the Summer Wine the other day though which is also from the 70s and I don’t recall the women on that looking especially tiny.

I see the competitive undereaters are out in force on this thread, hankering for the days when families couldn’t afford to feed the female members adequately. And getting to moan about how everyone these days is stupid and lazy, apart from them of course as they are the same weight as they were at 12 and have maintained that through superior willpower, marvellous.

Only one other person has pointed out they were also all smoking like chimneys which helps curb appetite and keeps your weight down. I’d easily be a stone lighter in my 40s if I still smoked/vaped 😢

Women mostly wore a girdle (stretchy mini skirt shape with garters on the bottom to hold up your stockings) for everyday life which was presumably pretty uncomfortable. There was also the panty girdle which was similar.

Both gave you a better shape though. I remember my Mum taking hers off with relief.

Today's stretchy shapewear can't compare to it.

Well, you were quite possibly (probably!) eating a better diet than my sister. My mum was and is very faddy with her food, and will take up something and stick to it endlessly (sometimes whole weeks of the same dinner every night etc). Before abruptly dropping it because the price changed, or there was something in the news about it, or because she read a book praising a different vegetable etc.

But not, it has to be said, with a particular approach to complete nutrition.

(I have a particular diet pre-surgery at the moment, and although they live five miles from the nearest shop, her decision was to ignore my very basic requests, to have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in, as it was "safer" for me to subsist off rice cakes and bread for two days.)

You’re sounding awfully combative and I’m not sure why.

Yes, I realise that some people are just naturally slim. I’m not sure why you’re speaking to me like that.

My post was purely musing that a character who I had once perceived as nothing more than middle aged and average was actually very slim and elegant.

Yes I get your point but many of those you mention seem to have no problem sourcing Greggs/McDonalds/ Pronto pizza etc.
Looking at the prices these places charge now, a trip to Aldi or Lidl for some proper food is probably a similar price

There's a video on youtube that shows people on the beach 1930s (could be 50s) in comparison to a few years ago. The contrast is startling.

Yes, that’s exactly what I thought too.

in this episode, Basil is helping a young, attractive woman to her room. The woman is wearing a very revealing green top, and Basil accidentally gropes her breasts when looking for light switch, just as Sybil walks in and sees the whole thing.

It felt like the kind of trope where the middle aged, frumpy wife would witness the husband with a younger, more attractive female, but actually Sybil looked every bit as good as the other woman.

Yes, sizing has increased massively, hasn’t it. Vanity sizing.

People have got bigger in general - not just fatter. It's paradoxical, because better access to food and healthcare has worked in both positive and negative ways - on the one hand people are more health conscious, fit and living longer than ever, on the other, they are more sedentary and fatter than ever. It's very divisive.

As for vanity sizing, this is debatable. I do agree that shops sell more if the label denotes a smaller size, but realistically what's deemed small now, statistically, is larger than it was 40 years ago. People in the 70s would have appeared huge to people from Tudor times. Some of that is evolutionary, not just caused by eating shit.

Indeed. Back in my 40s when I was doing the school run i must have done lots of steps (not a thing then!) , as I often did 4x 15 mins walks a day to and fro school, plus whatever else I was doing.

Was about a 14 then and fitter.

Am now mid 50s and mostly wfh so exercise is more of a conscious effort.

Not strictly on topic, but in the mid 90s I was at a talk given by Richard Eyre in London. Prunella Scales and Timothy West sat in front of me. She had high heels and very tall up do hairstyle but I could still see over her head. Very petite and elegant and a sweet couple, they held hands.

Yes, I remember many people were slimmer. Not everyone though.

No, I was terrible too! I didn't like most vegetables at that age and my mum made me eat a block of cheddar every night for protein every night which I also hated. I often ate the same thing because if mum found I liked something, she would feed it to me endlessly because it was easier for her not to have to think/plan, until I couldn't handle it anymore. I ended up cooking for myself after a couple years of it, much to mums relief I think :-)

Yes, complete nutrition is the way to go, but meat can be subbed with care and still be healthy. Good luck with your surgery, wish you a super-speedy recovery.

Yes, at 5ft9, I find that a lot of Tall ranges now consider that the bare minimum if not 5ft10, when it was 5ft8 when I was younger.

As PP said, beach pictures from the 30s/50s do show a lot of slim women, but I also find it interesting that they don't look particularly waifish or toned either. (See Marilyn Monroe, who had small measurements, but would be called "skinny fat" these days). When I see very slim women on the beaches today, they look like they're carrying very little body fat, and have toned muscles.

Which brings it back to the frame/growth thing - they were still tiny (to us) but also carried a small but healthy amount of fat - which means their frame underneath must have been even tinier!

I am in my 50's and think yes we were slimmer as food wasn't very good, well not very enticing - home and school. I also remember at junior school not being allowed a drink with lunch , bonkers. So during the day at school I wouldn't have been consuming many calories in food or drink and then if it was a stewing steak and boiled potatoes home meal well that was like being on a diet!

Yes, women in general pre 2005 were much slimmer than they are now. And they didn't look very slim then. Just slim. They look VERY slim now. The girls out of Friends, (in the mid 1990s) especially Monica and Rachel were TINY. Phoebe was still slim, but not as tiny as the other two.

I think being more curvy and a bit 'bigger' is more acceptable now - and that's a good thing. I was between 9 stone and 9 stone 5 (at just under 5 ft 4) for much of the 1980s, and early 1990s, and I had a 24"-25" waist. I was slim, and yet several blokes I was dating called me 'chubs' and 'fatty' and 'tubz' (they said it was just banter!) They meant it though. They were trying to bully me into losing weight.

One bloke told me I could join his gym to tone up a bit, and that if I dropped just a stone, I would look great. I was 9 stone 1 pound at the time, with a 24" waist!

When I look back at photographs I was slim, but as some girls were 8 stone to 8 stone 5, with a 22" waist, I was classed as a bit of a bigger girl, by some men. Batshit.

One thing that does get my goat is people complaining that it takes ages to do "cooked from scratch" meals.

Well, my pre-surgery diet is basically meat or fish and two veg plus potatoes or brown rice, ad infinitum. Partly to lose weight and partly because so many things are a risk and partly because they disagree with me.

And you know what? It never takes me more than 20m to prepare.

Boil kettle, put potatoes on, chicken under the grill, skin and slice carrots and broccoli, steamer bowl in microwave. Or all of it in a steamer tower.

From scratch, UPF free. I can and do add other bits, and yes it's basic, but it does the job of feeding me without being instaworthy ultra-palatable.

Oh, and a quick one on fruit and veg. We have bred our fruit and veg to be fast-growing and to meet modern palatable standards. Which usually means a reduction in flavour, increase in sweetness, and a decrease in fibre.

I grew tomatoes one year and was astonished how thick the skins were - but that's the sort o nutrient that's lacking in shop veg even if you're making the "right" choices.

Evryone i know in their 40s is slim! Everyone except me

Yet food served at that time is now referred to as stodge. Makes yer think?

Good point.

I was a very skinny kid and teen, possibly because my mum was (and still is) a dreadful cook.

No thought or care went into her cooking. Everything was boiled to within an inch of its life and then served up on a (tiny) plate, take it or leave it.

Things like stewed sausages and boiled potatoes. I didn’t see a white chicken breast till my second year of uni.

Chicken in our house was always scraggly little bits of shredded chicken thigh or whatever, all brown and unappetising looking, served with the ubiquitous boiled potatoes.

So yeah, this would be served up, I would nibble on a few bits then leave the table and that was that. To be honest I think I didn’t even bother sitting down most times as I literally only had a few mouthfuls. Just stood there, few bites, back out to play or whatever.

Mum didn’t care, and she was always on some sort of diet anyway. Strangely, in the 90s she did slimming world and started making herself nice looking big salads etc. I always said “oh that looks nice, could I have that next time?”, but she never did. I always got the stewed sausages etc that she made for my dad and brothers.

All the old women in my family in the 1970’s were well covered - like les Dawson and Roy Baraclough, with crossover aprons and head scarves. My great granny was fat even during the war. People are getting bigger for sure but there were plenty of overweight people in the past.

That’s a good point. One of my grandmas always spoke of having “the correct foundation garments”!

I listened to 40 years of how thin women should be. Does my bum look big in this? I was always really slim but my diet was very restricted.

I broke a bone a while back and have been doing strength training to help.
What a revelation. I have put a stone on and am fitter, healthier and stronger than ever.

I'm so grateful nowadays, that the narrative for young women seems more to be strong than slim.

Apparently it takes several generations of optimal nutrition to reach genetic potential for height.

The youth that experienced rationing would have had a long term impact on their heath, plus general habit setting. That's ignoring the additional effects smoking supressing appetite and foundation garments.

I'm glad to be in an era of female strength being valued. DM is of similar age to Prunella Scales and always valued her 22" waist from her 20s and spent middle age going from one diet to another to remain at size 12 (she's more hourglass than me). Unfortunately for 20+ years from her mid-60s onwards she's been impacted by osteoarthritis, as have several other older female relatives. I'm hoping that high impact and resistance exercise will help reduce my risks of being affected so early. I'll keep the extra stone over a smoking addiction too.

I haven't ended up taller than the last few generations of my family, and wonder if it is a series of poor nutrition through the 20th century that has contributed. Against young people, my 5'2" is rather short. In the first half of the 20th century, it was average.