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?

@JesusInTheCabbageVan Spent 20 mins shouting at servants and fitbit thought I'd walked 2 miles.

This made me Proper Laugh.

Can you buy replicas of modern corsets today? As in the real thing? Asking for a friend…

Replicas of Victorian corsets my friend means

They were fat but also short. This meant that when their corsets were done up tight they became tall and thin. Basic science.

This is my favourite comment

They were! Perhaps not clinically obese in modern day measurements but they were overweight.

@Garraty47

I used to wear corsets in my daft young goth days; you literally can't eat while wearing them, you have to choose between eating or breathing.

They could probably only eat tiny meals or they'd puke.

I’m going to buy a corset!

Probably easier not to over eat when you had to cook everything yourself on a crappy coal powered range though

Yep

They took quite a few drugs. Probably had an effect on their appetite.

It is odd how things change in the relatively short term. Anecdata but I saw some tv footage of Bad Manners and I'm not sure Mr Bloodvessel would look unusual in some high streets now. I suspect an obesogenic environment and processed food and other intervening factors has significantly changed the UK population.

Loads of wealthy women were laudanum addicts...and I daresay it wasn't considered leddylike to stuff your face. They'd probably only have been taking in an average no. of calories per day, under it perhaps, and few of them drank alcohol to excess, if much at all.

I daresay many married and older women tended to put on weight, but the brutal marriage market would have been an incentive to stay slim.

I doubt it was considered the done thing to eat a lot

Just little portions

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I think you have my dream job! Is it as amazing as it sounds?

@MrsApplepants

Can you buy replicas of modern corsets today? As in the real thing? Asking for a friend…

Yes, there are historical costumers who will make them to measure as well as less well fitted or less accurate off the peg ones. I know several people who do (a lot of my friends reenact Victorian).

I aldehyde thought it was down to tapeworms as well.

I’m sure that’s what I read

Later it became fashionable to go for walks and pleasure parks were very popular but earlier in Victorian times. I think many of the women were probably depressed they had hours of time to occupy themselves with very little to do (those with servants)

@MrsApplepants

Can you buy replicas of modern corsets today? As in the real thing? Asking for a friend…

they are a real thing, start at Prior Attire. but be prepared to spend wonga. She does fabulous historically accurate clothing of all kinds and has got a facebook page

Yeah, everyone loves it. It’s a history of society and anthropology really.

@ladycarlotta

...but they WERE fat. OK so some people were tiny waifs thanks to childhood malnutrition; there was definitely a trend towards self-denial and particularly not letting young girls eat delicious foods not only because of scarcity but because it wasn't spiritually healthy to indulge in such a way.

But it's nonsense that nobody was fat. The clothing that survives, being far more often tailored to its wearer rather than off the peg, comes in all shapes and sizes. The illusion of a tiny waist was achieved as much by big skirts as actual corsetry, and saying that some women achieved an 18 inch waist or whatever doesn't mean everyone did, or aspired to it, or expected it: it would be like people of the future assuming that every woman in 2021 had an arse like Kim Kardashian's. It was a fashionable silhouette but how drastic you went with it really varied.

And of course they ate carbs. Especially where food was scarce, carbs were the only reliable source of nourishment. Recipe books and instructional housekeeping books for all classes - royalty to those living in poverty - are focussed on carbs and meat, maybe cheese. I'm sure country people particularly ate a lot of veg but it wasn't privileged, it was more often portrayed/regarded as something to bulk out a meal, rather than healthy or aspirational as a food group. Even back then you could succeed in being poor and overweight.

oh finally some sense!

@IHaveBrilloHair

I'd think there was huge, huge pressure on them to stay slim. It just wasn't acceptable at all to be fat.

actually it was ok

My great granny was a Victorian and she was properly stout.

Anyone considering wearing a corset in the style of a Victorian women, please read this link first:
www.forbes.com/sites/kristinakillgrove/2015/11/16/how-corsets-deformed-the-skeletons-of-victorian-women/amp/

Horse riding, cycling and sea swimming would have kept them fit.

Yes, corsets. However they weren't all slim with tiny waists, there were plenty of fat ones. Some were not sitting around drinking tea etc but were energetic and worked tirelessly for various causes.

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 eat no processed food, sugar or wheat, and I am skinny. I don't have to try, I just get full up way before I gain weight. I think if that's what the victorian diet was, then it makes a lot of sense that they might have been thing.