To think vanity sizing is not just about people being fatter

[goddessoftheharvest]

Not really a taat- I've been thinking about this every time it pops up on MN

Any thread about weight, there's always comments about how vintage size 12s were tiny, and the equivalent today would be a size 16. This serves to point out how people are getting gradually fatter without really noticing.

Aibu to think that might be a bit simplistic?

People nowadays have access to almost unlimited junk, yes, but they also have access to affordable vitamins, milk etc

My great granny was tiny, but she was raised on bread and tea in a slum with 8 siblings, two of them had rickets, and she was riddled with arthritis from a relatively young age

My gran (her daughter) had a marginally better upbringing, but not much- less children, better housing, more to go round, but still a restricted diet, no heating etc. She is a little taller than my great granny, about 5'3. Much healthier too, as she has had access to better food and living conditions from young adulthood

My mum is 5'4, and although she's still small, she's not as noticeably tiny as the other women in the family. Was still very poor through her childhood at times

I have had access to better food and housing etc than any of them, and I am much bigger. I am 5'6 and even at 7 stone I couldn't fit into some of my mum's clothes because my shoulders are so broad

My dad's family were poor, but they were country people. They got fresh air, sunlight, grew their own vegetables, liberated the occasional pheasant. Anecdotally they all seemed a bit taller/longer lived than the town lot

Also I see loads of old photos where the women are short, but quite round/stocky. So not necessarily fat, but not sylph like size 8 either

So aibu to think it's probably down to better nutrition and lifestyle as well? I see similar with friends my age too. We are all taller than our older female relatives. One of my friends is a power lifter and she would never fit into vintage clothes, but she is super healthy and just pure muscle- that would have been unusual back then too

That's interesting about bmi...The only time I have been in the healthy bmi range is when I was in my very early twenties and lived off one meal a day...how is that healthy?

I was just reading about how humans got smaller after the advent of agriculture, due to the fact that nutrition was not as optimal as when people were hunter-gatherers. More people could be fed and populations increased, but at a cost.

Good nutrition does affect the size we grow. At seven and a half stone and average height (in my twenties) I could not fit into some twenties vintage clothing.

You are right OP. It is not JUST increased weight, although we are a lot fatter nowadays.

I think you do have a point. People in bygone ages were much smaller than us (height etc), and that is not anecdotal. When men started being called up for the first world war, the authorities were horrified to discover how many men from the working classes actually did not meet the height and weight required to join the army ( about 5 ft 2 for an adult man I think). Although I believe the height increase is slowing now, each generation has been getting taller on average than the previous. And if your skeleton is taller then it is going to be bigger too eg shoulder width. I have pondered your point op many times. Sometimes you read things like photos of children from the 1940s that you see with concave tummies and all their ribs on show, that that is what a healthy child's body should look like. But why then did those children grow into shorter adults than the relatively stouter children of the 1970s? Clearly their nutrition was limited and they were not growing to their potential.

We've grown on average four inches since the first world war where the average height for soldiers was 5"6.

People aren't taller than they were in the nineties when I was a teen but where I live the teens nowadays (barring those whose parents are from Eastern Europe who feed them properly) have exploded in weight. The 'skinny' ones would have been considered pudgy 20 years ago, the 'slim' ones borderline fat, 'average' fat and the fat ones very fat. The teens are generally fatter than the adults which was never the way before. And they're chubby to fat, not athletic or extra healthy, their size obviously comes from years of overfeeding the wrong foods and not nearly enough (if any) exercise.

As for sizing, a size ten in the nineties used to mean a 24 inch waist, now it can be a 28-30 inch waist depending on where you buy it.

I think our idea of what is fat has been completely transformed. Parents will often talk about their 'skinny' child and how all their friends are skinny, sometimes that may be true, more often they're on the much bigger side of what used to be considered normal.

I agree OP.

Aged 11, I had size 8 feet and was made to feel like a freak.

Yet among the secondary girls I teach today, a size 8 is absolutely normal - and a growing number wear shoe sizes greater than an 8.

I have also noticed that girls seem to start their periods earlier these days. I guess that could be related to improved access to nutrition?

oP "Any thread about weight, there's always comments about how vintage size 12s were tiny, and the equivalent today would be a size 16. "

isn't that the other way round? If you look at Monroe's alleged size 16 dresses, they are very small.

I am currently losing weight - I am in the overweight category - and M&S 12 can be too big for me, it's bonkers.

In terms of vanity sizing though it's not just about comparing todays sizes with those of fifty/sixty years ago, the size of clothes have increased significantly since the eighties and continue to do so year upon year.

My mum dropped off some of my clothes from the late eighties the other week. I couldn't get a 'clock house' skirt past my hips, even though I wear a size smaller than that now. I can measure clothes that I bought ten years ago against the same size now and there's a significant difference. People weren't suffering from malnutrition in the eighties, people didn't have tiny frames ten years ago.

It's ridiculous that the size of clothes is increasing so much that they keep having to introduce ever smaller sizes. Size 4, really? What are we going to do when we get to zero numbers? Start on negatives?

The regulated sizes were, as I pointed out on the other thread, revalorised revert 5-10 years, so they did keep track of body proportions.

But that was done based on a properly selected population.

Not in the way manufacturers admit they do - to increase sales by a 'feel good' factor.

Yes, people were rather thinner then. And they're the generation with remarkable longevity in pretty good health. On a population level, keeping the size 12 waistband the same (even if changing bust/shoulder/other proportions) could have been a better indicator of the size than the current free-for-all.

Because clothes size ceased to mean in terms of whether you are large/small in the population (or indeed anything other than how that manufacturer wants to position its stock on the market) a decade or so after deregulation.

And that needs pointing out when threads seem to suggest it has a meaning.

A size 10 in the 70s was 22" waist

Although you have a point about growth restriction due to undernourishment in bygone ages, I'm unconvinced that it applies to the women who were buying clothes in Top Shop and M&S in the 1980s and 1990s. It really wasn't pre-modern times.

And even before that the UK rationing diet was very carefully controlled to contain a good mix of nutrients and sufficient calories. Only the poorest or most badly parented would have gone hungry (bored yes, undernourished, no) just as it is today.

Whilst I agree with the broad thrust of your argument, OP, I'm old enough and hoardery enough to still have many of the clothes of my youth in the 1980's. I was then a size 10, at age 20. My waist was tiny.

I'm now 50. I put on a lot of weight when I had DD and was a size 16, then I lost it and fitted a size 10 in the shops at the time, this would have been around 2008.

Oh good, I thought, I'll try on my 1986/87 size 10's again and have some original vintage clothes to wear. Hah! My 80's size 10s were more of a 4 in today's money. My mum always considered herself fat and was permanently on a diet, but looking at pictures of her in the early 1960's I'd say she was probably a current size 12, ie not that big at all in today's view. The way she talked about herself (and the way others perceived her) you'd have thought she was Hattie Jacques.

Also my body shape has changed, I no longer really have a waist and haven't had since having DD - I don't know if that's to do with pregnancy or if it's the kind of food I'm now eating. I did not have a healthy diet in the 1980's, I lived off tinned ravioli and supernoodles as I was skint, whereas nowadays I eat a far more balanced diet, yet am much larger.

The biggest change has been in waist size. Women have increased about 2 inches on bust and hips on average over the past few decades but the average waist has gone up by about six inches.

People are carrying a lot more fat around their middles than they used to. It is probably sugar and processed food that is to blame.

www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/26/tall-story-men-and-women-have-grown-taller-over-last-century-study-shows

Another significant factor, I think is that we an ageing population. What is considered still young is a lot older than it was, even in the 80s and 90s. This coupled with people reaching puberty sooner means that fashion is not just for the pubescent and very young adults. Increasing waist size still comes with menopause though, but age wise menopause is now still considered 'young' and interested in fashion. Years ago people wore clothes fitted for and geared towards an older agegroup more.

People are certainly getting taller. That's easily observed. However, people are getting fatter at a faster rate than they are getting taller. The increase in body mass isn't proportional.

100 years ago, it would've been uncommon (to say the least) to see someone now classified as morbidly obese. Now, one third of the adult population is classified as obese.

The rise of fast food (not just takeaway, but foods that are able to be popped straight into the oven) is a huge contributor. It simply didn't exist decades ago. Meat and three veg, bread etc. were primarily what you had access to. Nowadays, your options are endless, but even the "healthy" options are packed full of preservatives and flavour-enhancing agents etc. And there is no real incentive to exercise, as our lives have become consumed by technology and office jobs, and we have access to cars and public transport to a greater degree than they did in the past.

I wasn't in school that long ago, and we had two "fat" kids in the school (brothers), and a few others who were fit but were obviously naturally bigger. There's a noticeable difference in the two. Dropping my niece at school now, I can't tell you the number of "fat" kids I see arriving at the school gate. It's quite shocking.

^so 'older' people are no longer 'invisible' and the fashion industry has responded.

It's not even about going back to the 50s or earlier - though if you saw the exhibition of Marilyn Monroe's dresses you'll never believe the 'she was a size 16!' argument ever again.

I am in my early forties and I still own some clothing from when I was a teenager in the 90s. An early 90s size 12 looks to me at least two sizes smaller than an average shop 12 now. Though it's hard to quantify really as every store makes their own decision on what each size represents.

Instead of vanity sizing, I would love to see high street standardized sizing. Part of the reason women have a reputation for taking forever in the shops is that we can't just say "Yep, that's my neck size, that's my chest size, that's my waist band size." No, we have to take several sizes into the dressing room to find out which one we are in that particular shop. It's annoying.

Like a previous poster, I was a teen in the 80s and am still a similar size and weight. I recently tried on my beloved Katherine Hammett dress from 1987 that I rediscovered in my wardrobe. It still fits but whereas in today's sizes I'm anything from an 8 to a 10, I noticed my 80s dress is a size Large and it's definitely snug

IMO, a system similar to BMI but that takes a person's frame and body fat % into account would be far more useful to us than anything we currently have in place. As PP above pointed out, vanity sizing doesn't really extend to footwear and feet are definitely getting bigger, even looking from one generation to the next. I don't understand why it's so widely accepted that people can healthily be taller than others (a longer skeleton) but not healthily wider than others (a wider skeleton). I have a particularly petit friend. If you stripped the flesh off our bones there's absolutely no chance we'd be the same width from shoulder to shoulder. I'd look really ill if I weighed the same as she does.

Frames on the whole are getting bigger, no doubt due to an overall increased standard of living. The difficulty is separating that out from a genuine obesity problem. But our way of thinking about BMI as an indicator of health is really outdated, as are the ways the medical community attempts to help those of us who are overweight. Heck, it was only recently that the mumblings started about how carbs are problematic when it comes to regulating appetite and perhaps previous advice given hadn't been the best. The whole thing needs a fresh and nonjudgmental set of eyes looking at it.

Buying school uniform in M&S this year we found that the regular fit my kids have always worn has been designated as 'slim fit' and what was plus size is now 'regular'. That's not because of long term improvements in nutrition, that's because children being over a healthy weight is becoming the norm.

That's kind of what I'm trying to get at Gruffalo

I see what PP have said about the 80s not being olden times but my mum was a teen/young adult then and she's smaller all over than I am. I'm in my mid twenties and the vast majority of my same age friends are taller and broader than their mums who are mostly in their 50s. We're noticeably different shapes though we're all about 9-11 stone

I don't know, it's really strange but kind of interesting too

According to the school uniform supplier teen girls are averaging a size bigger than 10 years ago and are significantly taller!

But yes, I totally agree about the m&s school uniforms! When I was in primary there were no fat children, now I see loads in DD's school

Maybe the last few generations started off slim but gained weight as they got older
...and primary children today are the first lot to be fat from....well,babyhood in some cases

I don't know - I'm size 22 and I have a ball dress of my grandmother's from the 1950s, and it fits me with no adjustments.

Though I don't know what size it was thought to be when it was new.