Damn. I taught the idiom “dumb as a sack of hammers” before I read this comment. Ah, well, the opportunity will arise again.

By the way, to anyone who thinks the American diet used to be healthy and balanced (whatever the fuck that means), I suggest reading Perfection Salad or Something from the Oven, both by Laura Shapiro. Both are great reads.

HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Two words: Wonder Bread.

I have a book from 1898 where the heroine is repeatedly described with adjectives like “dainty, delicate, fine boned” – i.e., with markers for “thin” in our culture. In the illustrations, however, she is built just like me – I’m 5’4″ and 220 lbs. By modern standards, in other words, she was obese. Yet her contemporaries didn’t consider her fat.

We ate closer to the earth. There was no “fast food” and the only packaged food was the very rare Swanson’s TV dinner that we had cuz Mom had a really rotten day. Sodas and chips were picnic food, not everyday fare. And at least for our family, desserts were a sometimes thing, and rolls with dinner? Only for Thanksgiving. We ate fresh, wholesome food, it was the way America ate in the 50s and 60s.

I dunno where you lived, but my parents were teens in southern Minnesota in the 40′s and 50′s; mom lived in a small town and dad on a farm. Mom’s mom wasn’t much of a cook (terrific fried chicken and snack bars and cakes, not so hot once she got out of that comfort zone), while dad’s mom was an excellent cook. Both families had white bread, rolls, and desserts on a daily basis (if you count snack bars as a dessert).

My mom’s mom did not believe in raw veggies, except for a coleslaw with a cooked dressing grandpa liked. My mom had her first green salad when she was 15, in home ec at high school. Dad’s mom was a little more adventurous but also not much for veggies unless they were buried in sugar, cream sauce, or an oil-based dressing. My dad had homemade cookies and Blue Bunny ice cream before going to bed every night until he moved away from home. He was stocky and his sister was outright overweight (by modern standards) when they hit twenty (haven’t seen many pics of them earlier).

Looking at my class pics from 1966-1973 (three different states, three different school systems), yep, there were fatties. One guy in 6th grade had a leg brace but none of the rest had any health issues that would limit their activity. I know some of them were more active than I was – heck, my little sister was fatter than I was, and she was also about twice as active AND ate less (she was always dieting from practically age six on).

We were rarely allowed soda or snacks or fast food (we got McDonald’s Christmas Eve that we took to mom’s work – she was a nurse – which was a HUGE deal, yet my sister struggled with her weight the whole time and I was not exactly scrawny. Yet my scrawny friends were generally allowed all the soda and snacks and actually had real live cookies jars WITH COOKIES on the counter ALL THE TIME that they could raid anytime they wanted, which blew my mind when I first realized it (and definitely contributed to my “dieting makes you fat” conclusions). The second half of the sixties, at any rate, were not exactly health conscious, in my experience, or at least not in suburban St. Paul, MN, St. Joe, MI or Charlotte, NC…

To Rachel: fat meant something a little differerent then than it does now. Simply being overweight by our contemporary standards was the norm then, i.e. a few extra pounds were considered enhancing. Granted, they still had their “fat” line of demarkation, but it was substantially different from our contemporary one. ( I have a few early century yearbooks which neatly illustrate the point). It’s a more damning indictment of our current standards of acceptance than you might guess.

Point taken FJ & SwM: just try advocating those notions out loud…

“pictures in photos” ha that’s redundant, ignore it. :) Well, I’m a mathematician, not an English major, and it’s been a long day. Nor’s there an edit button :)

I’m just agreeing with what Kelly said about thinking fat pepole didn’t exist in the early/mid 20th century. They did. There was fat bias back then too; it just didn’t start being publicly talked about until more recent decades.

Guess what, she was fat in 1960s too. I have pictures of my heavier ancestors in photos from the 1930s and 1940s.

There’s no excuse for commenting at length when you haven’t read the post – I agree. But I also want to point out you ladies write *very well* and say things that are more nuanced and smarter than people are used to! I love your level of detail! … And I love that you will go back and correct or point out when someone is clearly missing. A lot of internet discussion involves very fast back-and-forth and people who merely SCAN an article. Thank you for re-affirming my commitment to read carefully and if possible the comments as well!

Thanks also for calling out the nostalgia thing. A common perception is that Americans now are fatter than they have been so I guess some people just decide this “seems” true, and offer up personal anecdotes as truth and “evidence” as to why this may be. Growing up I remember fat kids, fat bias, etc. I hear stories about my friends’ mothers being on diet pills as children and worrying about their weight and having their mothers harangue them about it, etc. etc.

Seriously, why do you think you are adding to a discussion when you refuse to bother even to read the post? You think reading 5 paragraphs of a post means you have 5 paragraphs in return, and then, what, you read the next 5 paragraphs and come back for another 5 of yours?

Also, maybe if you read the fucking post you’d have an idea why even if you don’t give a shit about Jessica Simpson or other celebrities as people, you might want to give a shit about the cultural messages surrounding them.

I eagerly await any Chili’s-based anecdotes you can bestow on us.