She weighs 105lbs...

[likelysuspect]

The film Angel Face - Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons 1952

During the start he is describing his girlfriend and mentions she is 105lbs

I thought I'd misheard and maybe it was 125lbs but no, 105lbs

Thats 7 and a half stone.

Seems very tiny but AI tells me that is the usual sort of frame and weight to height ratio for actresses in those days. The actress playing the girlfriend was 5'4 apparently. So slight frame but not underweight

I was a bit surprised it was so low a weight.

@likelysuspect , it's just under 5'4" but close, and is increasing slowly. The increase might be more obvious as the people who grew up during the war and rationing are no longer included.

Supposing your 60s dress is a fitted style, you should've worn a girdle. Women's clothes are cut for a different shape in each era. Our proportions have changed since the 60s, but the prescribed shape wasn't normal even then.

There wont be a noticeable change. The average height of young adults now is 5'4 and 7/10ths of an inch.

I am considerably heavier than these actresses quoted. I'm 5'3" and defined as overweight but am thrilled to be able to meet my thumb and middle finger round my wrist easily.
Mind you, I do have huge hands..

The UK average is for all adult women, and the increase in the average has been very gradual.

United Kingdom Height Growth by Birth Year (1896–1996) - HistoryData

I know. I don't know why you're saying "the increase might be more obvious as the people who grew up during the war and rationing are no longer included" though.

Even you ignore over 75s from current data, it makes less than a quarter of an inch difference to the average height.

Omitting them entirely doesnt make sense, so the quarter of an inch difference greatly exaggerates any "rationing" effect.

Yes, that’s a very sensible way of looking at it. A few on the thread do seem rather keen to stress that it’s underweight when it is only just about under.

And bmi is a blunt instrument, some who have a bmi of 18 will have a slight build and won’t actually be underweight at all.

I’m 5’4” and have been 7.5 stone for periods of my life. I didn’t need to see the GP! I think I was only slightly more than that when I got pregnant and had 3 healthy pregnancies and babies. About 8’3” now I’m 52. I’ve got a really small frame. Hands smaller than many children’s and size 3 feet.

I only did this to kill time, but thought I may as well post it.
UK BMI by sex, 1993-2024.
Data: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/health-survey-for-england/2024/health-survey-for-england-2024-data-tables

Just under 48kg for those of us aged under 55!

Because eating habits have changed radically since then. There has also been a change in the ethnicity of the population.

It won't be a huge change but the creep upwards will be steeper.

The change in things like waist size would be more indicative.
The proportion of children going into school reception year obese is now something like 12.9%.

I'm 5'8 and 125 lbs (57 kg), and don't look skeletal, just very slim - although I do actually want to put on some weight in the form of muscle. I'm not tiny in terms of clothing sizes either, just because of my frame, I think - I'm a 10 to 12.

So 5'4 and 105 lbs, especially at that point in history, doesn't surprise me at all. I think that's about the height and weight that my nana was for most of her life.

(Not had much sleep.)
Where I live, the rotundness of children seems to be changing rapidly.

Yes. It is an analysis of data from the NHS Digital Health Survey and UK Biobank Study data. You can cross section the very detailed subsets of data and excluding the confounding factors that I stated (age, specific genetic heritage which typically results in far lower average heights than the white British population and growing up in deprived areas/ poverty) then it results in precisely the heights I provided.

This is how data analysis works. It’s not “racist” to note the objective fact that people with different genetics have different heights on average. Look at the data from across the globe.

No, it doesn’t imply that people from different ethnic backgrounds are “not real women” or “not real people”. 🙄😆 Why would the objective fact that people with specific genetic heritage are statistically far more likely to be short be considered insulting? It’s an objective fact. Nobody is making a value judgement on being short, in fact this thread was about someone not liking being tall (evem though objectively they are not even by general UK averages including all of the confounding factors which don’t apply to the majority of the adult UK population under 45, let alone if they are white British and haven’t grown up with malnutrition in which case they are actually two inches under average height for a woman).

It is simply an obvious fact that it makes no sense to average heights between two groups who have different genetic/ age characteristics which directly affect their height, the same as it would be silly to compare my height to that of the average ten year old and it’s not “ageist” to note the fact they are likely to be far shorter than me, or to compare my height to that of the average man my age and it’s not “sexist” to note that they are likely to be taller than me.

Stop being ridiculous.

Point Break. “She’s 5’6” and 119lb”….if I remember correctly!

We have though...someone on here the other day was describing another person as ,'slender' at 12 stone

Honestly 105 pounds doesn’t surprise me for a 1950s, 20 something hollywood star.
But it is not a normal weight for a 5,4 40 something, busy woman who lifts weights, doesn’t smoke and eats a healthy diet in 2026.
Being closer to ten is healthy and completely fine and definitely not fat!

And the 'Size 12 isn't fat'. It probably would be on me but that would depend on whether it was a retailer's size 12 or a 'sewing pattern' one.

I am fat at 9st unless muscly (or pregnant, which is not going to happen).

My mum was this weight when she got married (5’4” also) in 1957. Many women were built smaller in those days, think small ‘waspie’ waists. With the advent of fast foods it’s decidedly not the same and my mum died at considerably more weight than she started with, bless her !

Yes theres a lot of alarmist and po faced 'its UNDERWEIGHT' posts, when actually my own BMI is now 25 so Im the same equivalent overweight as 18.5 is undersweight. Are people alarmed for me?

However sometimes, (to avoid being ridiculous) you have to ask “do these numbers make sense?” and there seems to be a dearth of women of 5’9” and above, even in areas without significant ethnic minority populations.

I just read that Audrey Hepburn never weighed over 103 lbs.

Well Audrey Hepburn is not a relevant example to use in discussions like this, she was severely malnourished from the war, her family were reduced to eating tulip bulbs due to the occupation and she was very very ill and she never recovered. She didnt try to be the weight and size she was, her body never recovered from her childhoood.

I’ve just realised I wrote that I’m 8 feet 3 inches! In that case I really would have a low bmi.

I meant 8st 3lbs.

Same height as my mum and she would never have been much more than that her whole life and is now 76. She’s just built that way. Sadly, I am very much not.

Never mind your BMI, you'd be in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's tallest woman 😆