The size of the female starlet today VS Golden Era.

[Lady Day]

I found this....

Its at least a starting point.
Amazing what info you can find on the Google.

LD

 

[patrick1987]

Amazing what info you can find on the Google.

LD

Yes indeed: a lot of weird, freaky stuff. My motto is 'never say diet'.

 

[K.D. Lightner]

We have gone, in less than 100 years, from a class-conscious society that considered hefty women beautiful to one today that prefers the very slender.

In the Victoria era, if you were a white woman with a substantial figure, it was considered that you were wealthy and had enough to eat, if you were pale, it was considered that you were in the leisure class and did not have to work in the fields as many people did at that time. Women would carry umbrellas to keep the sun away from them.

At that time, if you were slender, you worked too hard and had too little to eat. If you were sun tanned, it was because you had to work outside.

Today, if you are a white woman with a substantial figure, it is considered that you are probably poor and have to eat carbohydrates. If you are pale, you probably have to work all day in a factory.

If you are slim, you can afford good quality food, spas, gyms, weight counselors, etc. If you are tan, you can afford to winter in warm climates, and/or go to tanning salons.

And we always long for what we can't have and are not: thus, fat America longs to be slim. Back in the 30's, during the depression, no one had money. So who did they emulate? -- Jean Harlow, with her platinum permed hair and slinky gowns, Fred & Ginger, with their tuxedos and gowns, portraying wealthy Manhattanites.

We are a curious species.

karol

 

[Foofoogal]

fftopic: (sort of ) I would suggest for anyone gaining alot of weight or losing alot of weight get their thyroid tested.
I am in remission from Graves disease and it runs in families with diabetes.
I think it should be a required yearly test as much as pap or any male test. Seems to be on the rise also.
Hypo or hyper thyroid the thyroid is a very important little organ.
http://www.elaine-moore.com/gravesdisease/

 

[The Wolf]

The magazines used to always talk about "so and so is fat". Now we live in different times. The same magazines say "so and so if fat" then when they lose too much weight "so and so is too thin". They are able to give celebrities a complex going each way. :eusa_doh:
I could go on but then I'll start frothing.:rage:

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[goldwyn girl]

What ever the decade and what ever the ideal is the majority will not fit in. I'm a hourglass shape 38x26x38 and these days considered unfashionable and fat When I lose weight my body shape does'nt change, there is nothing I can do about it and you should try buying clothes for these measurements, they don't exist. Women are bigger and taller now than in the 30's and 40's so therfore in my opinion, are bound to look different, even if they have the same measurements. I have never thought the "starlet" hate that word, of yesteryear looked thin, slender yes!! but not starved like now.

 

[ohairas]

I agree Goldwyn...
I think a big thing of today's stars is that they work out so much. They are "over-toned". Girls were still "soft" back in the golden era. They weren't fat, but they didn't have a six pack and overly toned muscled arms such as Madonna. I think she would look 20 years younger if she'd gain 20 pounds and let her muscles soften back up a tad, lol!
Nikki

 

[Sunny]

I was going to mention how tiny Veronica Lake was. She was not the common female height though she mentions in her autobiography that she quite small and people on the street assumed she was taller. Of course standing next to Alan Ladd makes anyone look taller.

I first saw her in This Gun For Hire. She's singing when she first appears, and there's no one standing to provide scale. Honestly, I thought she looked tall because she was so slender and exquisitely proportioned. It was a shock after the song to see her surrounded by three or four men, and remember that yes, I actually knew she was short.

What I'm trying to say is that proportion is usually ignored when assessing the size of a person (or what styles looks good on people, but that's another topic). Jane Powell was another short actress, making Fred Astaire look tall and Howard Keel rather larger than life! But unlike Veronica Lake, she had a more typical "petite" proportions, and it's easier to tell that she's unusually short.

I'm a woman who's been afflicted/blessed with height, standing 5'9" barefoot. So I'm naturally interested in period descriptions of women's proportions. Chandler's attractive women conform to what I used to think was "average," namely 5'4" to 5'6" and 100-120 lbs. BUT, several of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories (1920s/1930s) describe young, attractive women who are 5'7"-5'9", and there is no mention whatsoever that their height is considered unusual. And in the 'Doc' Smith Lensman series, there's one very special woman whose weight is given at 145 lb. And she is unquestionably beautiful and desirable throughout the series. I wonder if it's possible to determine how much these descriptions reflect the aesthetics of the time, and how much the personal preferences of the authors.

My great-grandfather graduated from West Point in the late 1920s. He was 6'7" or 6'7". Maybe they weren't in the movies, but Very Tall people were around back then.

 

[lindylady]

I first saw her in This Gun For Hire. She's singing when she first appears, and there's no one standing to provide scale. Honestly, I thought she looked tall because she was so slender and exquisitely proportioned. It was a shock after the song to see her surrounded by three or four men, and remember that yes, I actually knew she was short.

What I'm trying to say is that proportion is usually ignored when assessing the size of a person (or what styles looks good on people, but that's another topic). Jane Powell was another short actress, making Fred Astaire look tall and Howard Keel rather larger than life! But unlike Veronica Lake, she had a more typical "petite" proportions, and it's easier to tell that she's unusually short.

I'm a woman who's been afflicted/blessed with height, standing 5'9" barefoot. So I'm naturally interested in period descriptions of women's proportions. Chandler's attractive women conform to what I used to think was "average," namely 5'4" to 5'6" and 100-120 lbs. BUT, several of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories (1920s/1930s) describe young, attractive women who are 5'7"-5'9", and there is no mention whatsoever that their height is considered unusual. And in the 'Doc' Smith Lensman series, there's one very special woman whose weight is given at 145 lb. And she is unquestionably beautiful and desirable throughout the series. I wonder if it's possible to determine how much these descriptions reflect the aesthetics of the time, and how much the personal preferences of the authors.

My great-grandfather graduated from West Point in the late 1920s. He was 6'7" or 6'7". Maybe they weren't in the movies, but Very Tall people were around back then.

That's good to know, Sunny, that tall people existed in the Golden Era as they do now. At nearly six feet, sometimes I feel like the tallest female anywhere I go (I have athletic, Amazonian proportions to go along with my height lol ). So at least now I can imagine that if I lived back then, I may not have been too out of the ordinary.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

I remember reading a nice interview with Princess Grace in my grandmother's Good Housekeeping that said something like being healthy and comfortable and having her family was more important than starving herself for film roles. So, it looks like there was great pressure on the actresses and starlets to torture themselves into being thin if they weren't naturally so. Not that they looked scrawny like they do now, though.
All of my family members were taller than I am.

 

[Diamondback]

My great-grandfather graduated from West Point in the late 1920s. He was 6'7" or 6'7". Maybe they weren't in the movies, but Very Tall people were around back then.

Just that they weren't as common, and the "norm" was considerably less, ah... elevated, shall we say? than now. Heck, if he were still around today, Thomas Jefferson would probably be recruited by the NFL as a linebacker! (Bearing in mind, we're talking someone who was large by present standards living at a time when the norm was someone who would've had to look up to even my level...)