Why weren't Victorian upper class women fat?

[waltzingparrot]

They sat around drinking tea, playing the piano, embroidering, reading. Just the odd amble round a park, occasional dance.

How did they stay slim with their tiny waists?

@duffeldaisy

I don't know if this has already been mentioned, but I read that most women were larger than we think - they would have worn their corsets daily (and they weren't as tight as we think) - so they wore out. The corsets we have from that time are the 18" waist ones because they just weren't worn as much - they were samples for tailors and so on (used less cloth), so they survived more. Some people were that tiny, but it wasn't the norm. I don't know how true that is - need a historian on that really.

yes that is true..it think its said on some of the links posted..

they had enemas and ate lots of food that gave them diarrhoea. They also walked a lot and hid from the camera. They also wasn’t so messed in the head and had the need to comfort eat unlike now .

Well they weren't all skinny, really. If you look at photographs from the time of models, courtesans/prostitutes, and women from all classes many of them plumped up as they get older. In fact, beauty standards were different and thinness wasn't appealing (see photos of models etc). The tiny waist came from the use of corsets but also undergarments that emphasised hips and busts (crinoline, bustles etc) in order to achieve a womanly hour glass shape.

As the Roaring Twenties approached, fashions changed which favoured more androgynous looks so curves started to fall out of fashion.

Don't forget, painted portraits would show idealised versions of the sitter. As for Queen Vic...even as a young women she was on the plump side!

Have you ever worn a corset, tightly laced, for any length of time? I have. Not only can you not draw a deep breath (fainting couches were called that for a reason), but you cannot eat more than a few bites without becoming uncomfortable. I lived for the moment that my part was done, and I got out of the wretched thing. And, as someone else mentioned, processed foods were unheard of, with the exception of sugar, which was so expensive that it was used in extreme moderation. Even desserts were not nearly so sweet as ours are today.

P.s. Queen V was especially short for the age, although heights haven't changed so drastically that you should imagine women were fortunate to reach 5ft! She also have a very "managed" childhood - her every move was regimented, her diet and food intake was policed, she was never allowed to be on her own and wasn't allowed to even use the stairs without holding her governess hand. I say childhood, this continued into adulthood until she became Queen. In response, as soon as she had freedom when she ascended to throne, she never denied herself any food and ate as much as she wanted. She was also constantly pregnant so her waist never stood a chance.

Thinness was associated with poverty at that time. A complete reversal of the current association of fat=poor, thin=rich, which is a very modern way of thanking.

@tenbob
the person i was replying to was talking about the 1970s

The Regency dresses I saw were tiny! I’m size 8 , on a good day, and couldn’t possibly fit into any of them. Victorian fashion was more forgiven as they are so voluminous and then Bustle dresses were in fashion, but I guess by the Edwardian era , being slender was a requirement to fit into all those tea dresses,

Sizes have changed. A modern 8 was a 12 in the 60s, sizes 6 and 8 didn’t exist then.

No heating, no transport and lots of walking, much less sugar, probably no snacking and "ladylike" appetites

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

I love it.

I think we should have Victorian Mumsnet Day

@Mamanyt

Have you ever worn a corset, tightly laced, for any length of time? I have. Not only can you not draw a deep breath (fainting couches were called that for a reason), but you cannot eat more than a few bites without becoming uncomfortable. I lived for the moment that my part was done, and I got out of the wretched thing. And, as someone else mentioned, processed foods were unheard of, with the exception of sugar, which was so expensive that it was used in extreme moderation. Even desserts were not nearly so sweet as ours are today.

was it custom made for you? It sounds like a poor fit to me.

@ramarama

because poorer women wouldn't have had access to much extra food, and wealthier women wouldnt have had immediate snack access without having to ask staff to prepare something.

A lack of both corner shops & pre-made grabbable snacks would probably do wonders for my waistline too

I think this has a lot to do with it. Rich women would have eaten a lot - if you look at the menus for dinner in upper class families they were real feasts - but snacking just didn't happen. As recently as the 1970s, it was frowned on for anyone other than kids to eat between meals except on occasion.

As for less wealthy women, well, they simply didn't have access to much by way of tasty food. Sugar was expensive and processed foods didn't exist. Most food would have been bland and unappetising, and relatively expensive as a proportion of overall income. So raiding the pantry wasn't really a thing.

Also, as has been pointed out, many Victorian women were in fact fat.

@Mamanyt

Have you ever worn a corset, tightly laced, for any length of time? I have. Not only can you not draw a deep breath (fainting couches were called that for a reason), but you cannot eat more than a few bites without becoming uncomfortable. I lived for the moment that my part was done, and I got out of the wretched thing. And, as someone else mentioned, processed foods were unheard of, with the exception of sugar, which was so expensive that it was used in extreme moderation. Even desserts were not nearly so sweet as ours are today.

Sounds like what you have worn is a badly fitted corset, laced too tightly. In properly fitting stays you can eat, breathe, dance energetically… I have worn stays (16th to 18th century but plenty of boning) for several weeks at a time, both upper class (dancing and stuffing my face) and doing manual work as a kitchenmaid. Are you an actor? It is not uncommon for theatre and film costume people to have absolutely no clue about how historical costume should be worn. ‘Tight lacing’ (ie to the extreme where eating and breathing was affected) existed in the Victorian period but it is not what the majority of women experienced for most of the time. And fainting couches are a myth. The term is 20th century.

I've seen photos of some of my female Victorian forbears, and they were definitely what could charitably be called 'zaftig'. I have no reason to believe they were the exception among my ancestors. They were well off and clearly could afford a good deal of food.

@godmum56 It was fitted for me, and fit precisely as they were meant to fit when they were in fashion. There are lots of articles around on how horrible those corsets were for women's health, how it led to all sorts of health issues. Luckily, I only had to wear mine for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks as a part of a living history exhibit. To properly fit a corset at that time, it was put on, you grabbed a bedpost, and a maid put her knee in your back while leaning back against the strings to tighten them to the desired tension. A 26" waist could be reduced to 15". NOT healthy as a lifestyle. Mine only went down to 20" and I cannot imagine how it would have been to have that extra 5" squished out!

When you look at antique clothing some of them were definitely not skinny! Also corsets permanently deformed women’s bodies and prevented proper growth and position of the rib cage so the waist would be smaller than it should naturally be

do you know that they werent fat?
queen victoria can't have been the only one

Where was this Mamanyt? Who were you supposed to be portraying?

It sounds like you were portraying an extreme of fashion that was not typical of corset wearing at any time.

Dominoes didn’t exist

If you follow Whores of Yore on Twitter you can see what some (admittedly not necessarily representative) late 19th and early 20th century women looked like without their clothes on! It’s a really interesting gender history/history of sex account.

And there is not and never has been a corset that will reduce a 26” waist to 15”…

[quote Mamanyt]@godmum56 It was fitted for me, and fit precisely as they were meant to fit when they were in fashion. There are lots of articles around on how horrible those corsets were for women's health, how it led to all sorts of health issues. Luckily, I only had to wear mine for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 6 weeks as a part of a living history exhibit. To properly fit a corset at that time, it was put on, you grabbed a bedpost, and a maid put her knee in your back while leaning back against the strings to tighten them to the desired tension. A 26" waist could be reduced to 15". NOT healthy as a lifestyle. Mine only went down to 20" and I cannot imagine how it would have been to have that extra 5" squished out![/quote]
that's really interesting.....have you read the stuff by Prior Attire and Redthread?

[quote GnomeDePlume]@SarahAndQuack according to Ruth Goodman, very few women learned to cook beyond the same handful of meals. Food was not plentiful so a housewife, even one with a few maids would have to be careful of waste. Not a time for experimental cookery.

Conversely sewing skills were of a very high order across the classes with boys also learning for a few years.[/quote]
But we are talking about the upper classes, who had professional cooks, and would also be accustomed to going to each others' houses and eating what other people's professional cooks made.

You get recipe books that are really designed to instruct the lady of the house what to say to her cook. I think it's one of Penelope Lively's books where she remembers her grandmother being like this: she couldn't actually cook a thing, but she understood the theory of it in detail, because she'd always had a cook to instruct.

@Blossomtoes

You’re right *@Goatinthegarden*. It appears from MN that most people can barely move out of their houses without “snacks”.

I was brought up in the dark ages on three meals a day with nothing in between. On the very rare occasion there was a Mars bar in the house, my mum used to slice it up and it was shared.

My Grandma was a Mars bar slicer too. Your post took me right back to childhood. 😄👍