was everyone slim in the 1950s/60s

[ambereeree]

I've been watching old films and it seems that everyone was slim in the 50s and 40s. Even women with quite a few children. Is this reality or just in films?

I grew up in the 50's having plain but nutritious, tasty food. A main course of meat/fish/egg and 2 veg, afters of rice pudding/apple crumble/sponge pudding and custard.

No snacks and no fizzy drinks as the budget wouldn't allow. A square of chocolate if I ate my dinner up, and cake only on Sunday at teatime. Pocket money on a Saturday would mean I could buy a packet of crisps or a few sweets.

In school there were no fat children, only one boy in my class who was a bit chubby. I can't remember more than one or two chubby people in my secondary school either. Obese people were extremely rare, overweight adults were not common but were noticed as being different.

I'm really interested in different people's outlook on relative activity - seen lots of comments saying people nowadays do no exercise. Is that universal? In my particular bubble (late 20s city living) I do not know a single person who doesn't regularly go to the gym, cycle to work, train for tough mudders etc. Is this very rare elsewhere?

shearwater I never wore a corset nor did any of my friends, coming out of the 'swinging sixties' we had abandoned all the 'foundation garments' of our mother's generation. Those were our genuine waist measurements.

Also - corsets

Yup - this too. People often look at the dress sizes of actresses from the era and marvel about how tiny their waists were - but these are dress sizes, not waist sizes. Actresses would have worn heavy duty corsets which would have shaved a couple of inches off their waists. Not that they weren't slim - they were - but the exaggerated hourglass shape was not natural.

And while your average woman in the 1950s would not have a worn a corset, she would have worn some seriously restrictive undergarments. Christina Hendricks spoke of how she couldn't wait to take off all the foundation wear at the end of a long day filming 'Mad Men'. Women were slimmer, sure, but there was also an expectation that clothes would need to be uncomfortable in the persuit of a desired shape, so I don't think we should idealise this ear too much.

My friends are really active too, and there aren't many very overweight people locally, but I suspect we live in a relatively wealthy, time-rich bubble.

The shops are full of all sorts to eat, too much of which is not nutritious but industrialised wierd stuff. That's the problem for society to handle.

For an individual who eats mostly nutritious food and keeps active being heavier or lighter is not worth worrying about.

On the whole, yes people were a lot slimmer back then. I grew up in the 70s, 80s & 90s and I remember there was one fat boy in my entire primary school! We never had snacks between meals as kids - if we were starving we were allowed an apple. Crisps and nuts were for special occasions only and we only had chocolates in the house at Christmas or if someone had given my mum a box as a thank you (usually Milk Tray). God help us too if we'd helped ourselves to food from the kitchen between meals - I'd never have dared!

Our house was cold too and the heating was pretty inefficient by modern standards - a few radiators (only on from Nov-Apr), and a log burner in the living room. We had one car, so walked a lot, and spent hours outside playing or riding our bikes. There were fewer mod-cons too

IcedPurple see my comment above yours, we didn't wear corsets in our 20s, that was our mother's generation. Our waist measurements were our genuine waist measurements.

I live in a naice village in the northwest. All our 40/50 something friends exercise and the gym is full of trim pensioners. It's definitely a bubble though, and related to affluence I think.

I never wore a corset nor did any of my friends, coming out of the 'swinging sixties' we had abandoned all the 'foundation garments' of our mother's generation.

This only came in towards the end of the decade though, as a reaction to what went before. Most women may not have worn corsets until then, but they still wore girdles, long-line bras etc.

I visit my American relatives in the mid-west annually. I always felt so skinny - like a little tiny sliver of a thing. I was a perfectly normal size 12 (although now size 14 is average I think), completely average among my friends (this was the eighties and nineties). And everyone seemed so enormous - huge arses lowering into massive chairs, wobbling people, rocking down the street in stretched slacks. Sometimes men so packed out they could barely fit into the restaurant chair, squeezed in while tucking into mountains of deep friend onion rings towering up the plate in a tottering unstable heap.

Now, I've noticed, when I go the the midwest, people seem much more like people here at home. Everyone seems solidly plump and also... normal. Even the portions - the great big take away paper cups from Starbucks, the cream with everything the portions of chips, seem more like home. And I think that's just because we back in England have all got porkier and our food portions have got bigger. The norm has fattened up. We're a chunkier nation.

IcedPurple see my comment above yours, we didn't wear corsets in our 20s, that was our mother's generation. Our waist measurements were our genuine waist measurements.

My comment was mostly about the 1950s though. Women definitely did wear restrictive undergarments then, and did so well into the next decade. Even then, only young women abandoned these 'foundation garments'. Older women continued to wear them until the 1970s and even beyond that.

However we walked or cycled everywhere, went out to play for hours at a time after school and in the holidays. We weren't stuck at home in front of play stations, tv's, other screens but on our skates, in the park, making dens, skipping, playing cricket and football etc.etc.

In the 70's when I brought my children up I still cooked from scratch as I do today. Just a trip to the fish and chip shop now and then. When we were on holiday the boys had one treat a day either sweets or chocolate or crisps or ice cream and a soft drink. No one complained at just having 3 meals a day and an occasional treat. Eating wasn't the pastime as it is now.

Childhood poverties appearance has change with time I think – in family photos and old photos the poor children are really thin, small often with a pinched look. Which I think explains why people of the generation now in their 90s are inclined to worry whether younger people are eating enough.

Hadn't corsets been replaced by the "liberty bodice" by the 30s/40s? - and that itself was an anachronism by the 50s.

I was reading somewhere that women's shapes have changed with larger busts and less defined waists. Part of the increase in size nowadays must be due to the constant snacking. You hardly ever saw people eating in the street when I was young, let alone carrying drinks around. We never got 'de-hydrated', just thirsty.

Yes, corsets! Many women wore a girdle or a panti girdle. Marks was full of them.

Eating in the street was bad manners. We only did it once a year, ice cream at the seaside. Chips were lower class.

Eating between meals didn't really happen. School milk kept us going and we really missed it when it was stopped.

If someone in 50 years time looked back in this time by watching movies they’d think everyone was thin too. Films don’t represent real life. And being thin doesn’t equate with good healthy. We are all bigger and heavier now than in the 50’s but life expectancy is higher.

I'm the same measurements as young Sophia Loren (38-28-38) curvy yes but a modern size 14 top & size 8 bottom. I used to take a size 12 top & bottom back in the early 1990s, before the clothes sizes all changed.

I think M-Monroe would be UK size 8-10 nowadays, but that'd be tight across the bust or verging on too big on bottom. 36-24-34 says Google.

Other than getting fat, I'm not sure what turned everyone from hourglass into pears.

My mum wore a roll on girdle in the early seventies. She'd have been in her early 30s then.

My Grandma was born in 1910. She never wore a bra her whole life. Just a liberty bodice. She was quite tiny though; size 3 feet.

Having said that, there are no overweight kids in my children’s schools that I can think of - not one. That’s primary school. And we don’t see chubby kids in our neighbourhood either so I do t know where all these obese kids are that I keep reading about.

My granny managed to be fat through two world wars and rationing. She was only 4ft 11in tall and appeared to be the same width-ways. Apparently she got abuse from people in the street about her size as they assumed she must be getting extra food from somewhere and cheating the rationing system.

Other than getting fat, I'm not sure what turned everyone from hourglass into pears.

Corsets - or lack thereof.

The measurements of actresses that you cite above are taken from their dresses, not their bodies. The dresses were custom made and designed to be worn with some serious undercrackers!

People did not expect to look young and fashionable past the age of 40. Many women and men were just found. Shelf boobs and massive middles. Only in their youth were they slim.

I had forgotten about the girdles. My grandmother always wore one from at least the 40s. That combined with smoking may have contributed to the reason why many women looked quite slim in the films.