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?

Another one who’s loving this thread. Just on a couple of points discussed - the Victorian beauty ideal for young wasn’t actually to be thin - certainly not as we know thin, anyway - but rather a little on the plump side. A lavish décolletage and rounded face was celebrated.

Obviously artists would flatter their sitters (Winterhalter, one of Victoria’s favoured painters was well-known for this). Photographs were also retouched. Here’s a before and after comparison of Queen Alexandra from a photo shoot at her husband Edward VII’s coronation. She had been a famous beauty in her youth (I’ve attached another photo of her when young), and was 55 at the time of the coronation picture.

As for the famous beauties of the age, they were of course living, and being photographed in an era where it was seen as unacceptable for respectable women to wear anything more than utterly minimal makeup (watch Lisa Eldridge’s recent series on the history of makeup, it’s fab! She has an episode focussing on Victorian times). And they generally aren’t smiling in pictures. So we are pretty much judging them now on the basis of a make-up free passport shot. Anyway, part of their appeal at the time was their beautiful complexions and the symmetry of their features - I imagine if you could get loose with them with today’s makeup arsenal they’d probably look quite good!

Far more exercise, no labour saving devices eg cars, corsets, no processed food, constant pregnancy plus for all but the wealthiest breast feeding. I suspect portions were smaller and women didn't drink much alcohol.

Another point to note - it’s hard to get a good idea of what an average Victorian women looked like, simply because they wore so many (shape altering) clothes! If you go back a couple of generations, when the fashion was for loosing-fitting dresses, it’s a bit easier to see the kind of female figures that were celebrated.

In the late 1700s-early 1800s Emma Hamilton was well-known for her beauty (the artist Romney was obsessed with painting her) and her after-dinner entertainment of posing in various classical “attitudes” set a trend. She was definitely curvy rather than slim. And although in later life as Nelson’s mistress she was characterised for being obese, at the time these contemporary images were created, she was celebrated.

Another good example is the delightful contemporary drawings of Diana Sperling, who lived in the Regency period and recorded daily life from her perspective. Here are three young girls walking to an evening dining engagement. Even through the dresses and cloaks, she wasn’t drawing them as waifs.

@NewLifeInTheSouth

In the fifties we weren't fat. There was one fat kid in my whole primary school!

It was the same when I was in primary school in the 70s. And for that matter in secondary school in the 80s. I was definitely one of the fatter girls at 15 or 16. I felt like a complete lump compared to most of my friends. Looking back, I was probably a size 8 in today's sizes.

Seconded. I was sort of middling, not fat not thin but I remember I weighed around 8.5 stone for most of my teens/early twenties. We didn't have a snack culture in the house, you'd never just go to the fridge and help yourself to something, it would never have occurred to me to do this growing up. Dessert was served only on Sunday, generally speaking. Sweets, fizzy drinks and ice-cream and crisps were treats, not everyday things. We were slim! Everyone was, for the most part.

I should quote from the book:

'If infant mortality is excluded from the health statistics of the time then the life expectancy of a poor Victorian as long as they had made it to their fifth birthday was similar to that of today. Even without benefits of modern medicine the Victorian life expectancy mirrored ours.'

It depended where you lived and what you did, though. I recently read a history Merthyr Tydfil, and life expectancy there was not great until the late 19th century, when public health improvements like water provision, sewerage and a hospital and the decline of the iron industry were all having effects.

"the Victorian beauty ideal for young wasn’t actually to be thin - certainly not as we know thin, anyway - but rather a little on the plump side."

Yes, but could that have been because it was difficult for poor women in Victorian times to achieve being plump? And the thread is about average sizes not ideal sizes.

@EBearhug

It depended where you lived and what you did, though. I recently read a history Merthyr Tydfil, and life expectancy there was not great until the late 19th century, when public health improvements like water provision, sewerage and a hospital and the decline of the iron industry were all having effects.

Absolutely. For instance, Haworth in 1850 had an average life expectancy of 25.8 years, and 41.6 % of people died before the age of six. (Though once you took out those who died in early childhood, the average would go up considerably.) Comparable to the worst London slums because of poor sanitation and contaminated drinking water (partly from the graveyard in front of the Brontës’ house.)

www.bl.uk/collection-items/sanitary-report-on-haworth-home-to-the-bronts

@Gwenhwyfar

"the Victorian beauty ideal for young wasn’t actually to be thin - certainly not as we know thin, anyway - but rather a little on the plump side."

Yes, but could that have been because it was difficult for poor women in Victorian times to achieve being plump? And the thread is about average sizes not ideal sizes.

I think that thinness had far more negative associations with sickliness and unhealthiness than it does today, for one thing.

"I think that thinness had far more negative associations with sickliness and unhealthiness than it does today, for one thing."

I'm sure it did. Malnourished people then were starving whereas now it's the opposite.

@Gwenhwyfar

"the Victorian beauty ideal for young wasn’t actually to be thin - certainly not as we know thin, anyway - but rather a little on the plump side."

Yes, but could that have been because it was difficult for poor women in Victorian times to achieve being plump? And the thread is about average sizes not ideal sizes.

but you can't have it both ways. We are talking about the ideal size, not the average size, because as a lot of people have pointed out, many Victorian women did not have 18" waists and didn't necessarily aspire to one.

And while small waists were the ideal, so was plumpness as the PP says, there was no heroine chic. There was consumption chic for sure - pale skin, hectic cheeks, general languor etc etc - so yes there was an explicit fetishisation of the unwell. But the 'ideal' body we are talking about was not that of a malnourished mill girl, and they were not the ones wearing the latest fashions. Basically the ideal woman was 'well-moulded'/plump, small-waisted, and dying.

Plus when you look at Victorian nudes, either paintings or erotic photography, the appearance of a tiny waist achieved by clothing is not borne out. The women often have tummies and thick thighs. They may even be fat. Have a google for 'Victorian nude' and you'll see what I mean. The disparity between women's body shapes clothed vs nude shows a clear understanding that this body ideal was just that - an ideal, a fantasy. Not a realistic shape for anyone to have without corsetry. It was accepted that a woman's body had quite a different appearance without clothes, and that that too was attractive and erotic.

"We are talking about the ideal size, not the average size,"

No, we're not. Read the OP. It's not about ideal size at all.

"Why weren't Victorian upper class women fat? (387 Posts)

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?"

@Gwenhwyfar

"We are talking about the ideal size, not the average size,"

No, we're not. Read the OP. It's not about ideal size at all.

"Why weren't Victorian upper class women fat? (387 Posts)

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?"

I've read the thread from the beginning, and quite a lot of people established quite early on that the original question is based on a false premise. Victorian upper class women were a range of sizes. Clothing survives in many sizes; a tiny waist was an ideal that not everybody pursued that hard or would have been expected to; the illusion could be and was achieved by large skirts and other clothing. Literally it's all in here.

The tiny waist is an ideal, and one that continues to define the age in our modern imagination. It's not a true reflection of actual bodies.

This is the photo that made me start this thread.

'Auntie Flo, 1900'

To be fair, don't think we were an upper class family. They owned a farm and she was one of 16 children but I do remember my grandma telling me they ate bacon and double cream every day.

@waltzingparrot

This is the photo that made me start this thread.

'Auntie Flo, 1900'

To be fair, don't think we were an upper class family. They owned a farm and she was one of 16 children but I do remember my grandma telling me they ate bacon and double cream every day.

That's a great photo, OP. Auntie Flo looks like she wouldn't take any shit.

To be fair, though, she looks as if she naturally has a tiny frame -- her shoulders are narrow, her arms are thin. It's possible she's also short in height, though hard to judge from that photo, and the hats add stature.

This thread was actually making me think about body sizes and maternal mortality in childbirth in the past.

We tend to laugh now about 'childbearing hips' and the like, but in fact, with interventions in childbirth so minimal compared to now, and lack of contraception meaning women who survived childbirth often having so many babies (though not all would live to adulthood) people would have had to consider the robustness/suitability of a woman's physique for childbearing.

I mean, a man considering marriage (or a mother advising her daughter to marry or not marry) might legitimately have had to think about the fact that a spindly, delicate, narrow-hipped choice might quite possibly mean a more likely death in childbirth.

To go further back than the Victorians, Jane Austen is sharply aware of the risks of childbirth among her own extended family. She wrote 'Poor animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty' of one of her nieces, when she was pregnant for the third time within four years of her marriage, and while her six brothers lived to an average age of 75, her six SILs (only considering the marriages before JA's death in 1817) lived to an average age of 45, and childbirth was associated with three of the six deaths. (Obviously, JA herself died younger, but her unmarried sister lived into her seventies, and her mother, despite her many births, into her late 80s.)

My grandmother, born in 1909 into a family of agricultural labourers, used to remark approvingly on someone being 'a strapping girl' or 'a good strong-looking young one', I think partly for those reasons, as well as for her capacity to be capable of physical work -- her own mother had died giving birth to her, and her father's second wife also died in childbirth.

She is tiny, isn't she? But as pp says, tiny all over - her shoulders are very narrow.

She looks really fed up! "Just take the bloody picture already..."

"My grandmother, born in 1909 into a family of agricultural labourers, used to remark approvingly on someone being 'a strapping girl' or 'a good strong-looking young one', I think partly for those reasons, as well as for her capacity to be capable of physical work -- her own mother had died giving birth to her, and her father's second wife also died in childbirth."

Even in the 90s, and I suspect still now, there was a slight preference for 'robust' body shapes among farmers' sons.
Of course, the average person in the 90s was slimmer anyway so it's not necessarily a preference for the weights we have reached now.

@Pitmanshorthand

Victorian women would swallow a tapeworm egg which would hatch inside. The tapeworm would ingest some of what they ate which kept them slim. Gross!

Can you still get tapeworm eggs? Reckon I could do with a new pet

I've often wondered this. Coupled with all the rich foods they ate and wine they drank; how on earth did they stay so thin?

I've often wondered this. Coupled with all the rich foods they ate and wine they drank; how on earth did they stay so thin?
They used a lot of calories just keeping warm!

Shall we ask MNHQ to move this thread to History Club? I think it deserves it!

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel

Shall we ask MNHQ to move this thread to History Club? I think it deserves it!

There's a History Club!

Thanks, I'll ask to move it.

1. I tried a hot-cross buns recipe from Jane Austen's era (I know, not exactly Victorian but still, the age before snacking and open fridge were a thing) and they had less sugar than the recipes of today. I also have Mrs. Crocombe's cook book and the recipes, while using proper fats etc. are still leaner than the indulgent recipes of today, especially when it comes to baking. One has to realise that the "take two pounds of butter, 24 eggs and a pound of sugar" recipes were usually aimed at much larger families, plus leftovers were expected.
2. Corsets naturally restricted a woman and her appetite. Try overeating when you are squeezed into a contraption that only allows you to just barely breathe and move but doesn't really allow for "expanding".
3. When it comes to a marriage market, there was an ideal of beauty, which didn't allow for many Swiss rolls around the waist and hips. The girl was expected to be slim, not too thin but not chubby either, have a perfect posture, walk graciously and sit straight at all times.

Empress Elisabeth of Austria was one of the beauties of the era and she was known for her constant dieting and obsession with a thin waist (and very long and thick hair).

I think many of those ideals went down the drain after a woman had several children and was no longer required to look like a doll for Victorian Tindr but they were still expected to represent their husband and look good. They also adhered to pretty strict times for serving food so there was probably very little nipping over to the kitchen to get some biccies or ice-cream from the freezer. It would probably also create lots of gossip among the servants if the lady of the house was constantly caught indulging too much and neglecting her duties.
I think the lack of elevators and public transport created an environment where people naturally moved more, even though they didn't directly exercise and it was also expected that high-society show mingle and go on walks, hunts etc.

@MummyMayo1988 - I think it was men who would have indulge more than women who were still expected to be "decorative". Even mothers whose daughters were on the marriage market had to look presentable as the potential husbands would be looking at them to see what their future wife will look like in 18 or 20 years.
Men would also attend more social functions, dining and drinking (a lot) in clubs while women would focus on social life around the house and children.
I just looked at some recipes for baking and the comparison is interesting.
This, e.g. is Mrs. Crocombe's gingerbread cake

INGREDIENTS
500g flour
200g butter (salted, or add a generous pinch of salt to compensate if unsalted)
200g brown sugar
500g black treacle
10-15g ginger
3 small eggs (or two large)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
A little warm milk

and in comparison Mary Berry's:

ngredients
250g/ 8oz softened butter (or margarine for lactose-free)
250g/ 8oz dark muscovado sugar
Half of a 225g tin black treacle
375g/ 12oz plain flour
5 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
3 pieces stem ginger (crystallised/ from a jar) - optional
300ml/ half pt milk (unsweetened soya milk if lactose-free)
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

I think the first one would be richer because of more treacle so you eat less and it wouldn't be so sweet.

No processed food