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?

@queenofarles

All the women in John Singer Sargent paintings were slim and pale, his two most famous paintings of society UC women were lady Agnew and the Whyndham sisters. Lady Agnew’s waist is tiny ! a bit larger than her neck. Being thin was probably desirable and only attainable by the Wealthy back then.

And also he was a society portrait painter accustomed to presenting his sitters in the best light. Not much repeat business if the Wyndham sisters appeared with love handles or visibly black in the face from extra-tight lacing!

My grandad was from a Wc family of farm labourers and his family was full of very short and stout ladies, going back into the Victorian times. My Granny remembers an elderly auntie in the 1950s who couldn't have the baby sit on her lap as her large tummy meant she didn't really have a lap.
Sadly my mum and I both seem to have inherited these genes.

As a kid I had the impression (from TV and film) that America was the land of the slim and beautiful. Then I went there.......
What a revelation. I was so disappointed!

So have we sort of concluded that fat Victorian women were usually of a certain age, equating to modern day middle age spread/post menopausal weight gain, despite the fact there was virtually no processed foods, a less sugary diet and nobody snacked in between meals?

@queenofarles

All the women in John Singer Sargent paintings were slim and pale, his two most famous paintings of society UC women were lady Agnew and the Whyndham sisters. Lady Agnew’s waist is tiny ! a bit larger than her neck. Being thin was probably desirable and only attainable by the Wealthy back then.

His scandalous Portrait of Madame X is one of my favourite paintings.

I must say I prefer the word stout to fat, it seems to imply a bit of strength and determination. Maybe I will say I am stout from now on.

...interesting thread.

....it ended up in me scoffing half a lemon drizzle cake and lying on my bed.

And this is why we are bigger these days.

@Yellowcrockpot

...interesting thread.

....it ended up in me scoffing half a lemon drizzle cake and lying on my bed.

And this is why we are bigger these days.

In Victorian times you would definitely have been a woman of a dissolute lifestyle, put up in a house in St John's Wood by your wealthy married lover. Looked down on by polite society but having a grand old time eating cake in bed

I don't imagine dressed in corset and bustle lent itself to a great cardiovascular workout either.

The upper classes also had a spartan attitude to raising their children, both boys and girls. If they were rich enough to have a nursery and nannies/governesses they had quite a restricted diet generally as indulgence was felt to be bad for chidren and raw fruit and vegetables were looked on as indigestible for young children Boys who were sent to boarding schools relied on parcels and tuck bought from local shops to vary their diets. Girl were at the mercy of their mothers or servants at home.

This must have had a long term affect on the physical development of girls especially as they stayed at home and were often trained to have a lady like appetite in public. Even after they 'came out' and attended adult dinners and parties a strict eye would have been kept on their consumption. Of course after they were married and had their own housholds they could control what was eaten but according to income and fashion of the day also. Servants in the in-between state cush as governesses often went hungry as they relied on servants who may not have liked them and mistresses who may have been just mean.

Poorer people actually had more access to prepared food such as pies, baked items,hot potatoes, chestnuts, fish and chips, London dishes such as eels, in industrial towns and cities. They often did not have cooking facilities in their homes so were eating what we now call fast food. But of course they worked it off.

Dancing.

The diet wasn't obesogenic, they lived in colder houses and only the rich or privileged had lives of idleness. Also..... remember that tuberculosis was known as 'consumption'. Only a few women in my family ever made it to old age- no one was sitting around watching television, drinking too much or messing their body up with drugs or hormones!

I don't think you can say no one drank too much. Hogarth's Gin Lane may be pre-Victorian, but there were plenty of issues with drink and worries about the public health effects, and the feckless poor spending their wages on beer and having to pawn their Sunday best to get through the rest of the week. (Fewer worries about the middle and upper classes, as their was less rusk of spending all their week's income.) And some took opium and laudanum, plus they dosed children with paregoric to keep them quiet, so drugs were about - the first drugs controls come in around the 1860s, but there's nothing very effective until DORA in 1916.

@EBearhug it could even be argued that the Victorians were greater consumers of drugs and alcohol as there were so few medical treatments aviable for disease and injury people used them for relief. Also a reason why poisoning whether accidental or purposeful was more widespread.

I read today that Victoria women painted their teeth black for fashion. Apparently it was meant to mimic rotting teeth which you would have if you ate lots of sugar. Eating lots of sugar meant you were rich.
And also read that poor Victorians had a life expectancy similar to today because their diet was similar to hunter gatherers. That all changed when they got access to sugar!

@jewel1968

I read today that Victoria women painted their teeth black for fashion. Apparently it was meant to mimic rotting teeth which you would have if you ate lots of sugar. Eating lots of sugar meant you were rich. And also read that poor Victorians had a life expectancy similar to today because their diet was similar to hunter gatherers. That all changed when they got access to sugar!

I find that hard to believe with the occupational accidents and illness, untreatable infectious diseases and childbirth mortality of infants and mothers! Even a couple of generations ago a lot of children didn’t survive into adulthood, that alone brings the average down hugely

I thought the life expectancy around a century ago was 35 or so. Mind you, that might have been the same for hunter gatherers.

I don't think life expectancy in 1921 was as low as 35 - I wonder if that figure is skewed by WWI, which would of course have cause a massive-but-misleading drop?

@jewel1968

I read today that Victoria women painted their teeth black for fashion. Apparently it was meant to mimic rotting teeth which you would have if you ate lots of sugar. Eating lots of sugar meant you were rich. And also read that poor Victorians had a life expectancy similar to today because their diet was similar to hunter gatherers. That all changed when they got access to sugar!

Do you mean Elizabethans?

Sugar wasn't very expensive during most of Victoria's reign.

They didn't have any Chinese takeaways or pizza parlours. If it weren't for the Lucky Dragon I might be thin too

Loved this thread. History as a topic is not really interested in women's lives as such. A lot of my social historical knowledge of those periods was from Barbara Cartland etc as a teenager 😊 This explains so much about the women of that time. Of course, Jane Austen & the Bronte Sisters also gave more insight into how women's lived.

To think, I also wanted a corset to hold my belly in. Starting to realise it comes with being post-menopausal, and that I don't need to fight it, as long as I am relatively fit , with the joys & pains of living longer.

I meant History as a subject.

@jewel1968

I read today that Victoria women painted their teeth black for fashion. Apparently it was meant to mimic rotting teeth which you would have if you ate lots of sugar. Eating lots of sugar meant you were rich. And also read that poor Victorians had a life expectancy similar to today because their diet was similar to hunter gatherers. That all changed when they got access to sugar!

That's Tudor/Elizabethan people

Anyone interested in more history - Absolute History YouTube channel - there is all kinds of stuff on there.

@squirrelslikenuts

Loved this thread. History as a topic is not really interested in women's lives as such. A lot of my social historical knowledge of those periods was from Barbara Cartland etc as a teenager 😊 This explains so much about the women of that time. Of course, Jane Austen & the Bronte Sisters also gave more insight into how women's lived. To think, I also wanted a corset to hold my belly in. Starting to realise it comes with being post-menopausal, and that I don't need to fight it, as long as I am relatively fit , with the joys & pains of living longer.

Um ... it really is these days, you know!