Lifestyle

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The changing shape of womenby Nicola Tryer, Daily Mail

When it comes to an enviable cleavage, British women are way out in front. As the Mail revealed recently, more D-cup bras are sold here than in any neighbouring country. But it's not just women's busts that are increasing in size. In fact, the average modern woman would seem like a giant to her great-great-grandmother, because in the past 80 years all measurements of the female body have increased dramatically. Yet it's nothing to do with genetics - simply a result of the way we live. So how have diet and lifestyle conspired to have such a rapid effect on evolution?

1920s: A very petite 31-20-32

1920's

AVERAGE STATISTICS: 31-20-32 Times were hard for the Twenties flapper girl. A quarter of a century before the creation of the egalitarian Welfare State, poverty meant many British adults and children never had enough to eat. Only the rich received antenatal care and babies were often born small. The idea that all growing bones need calcium was a generation away, and many youngsters appeared petite by today's standards. In most homes, meat was eaten no more than twice a week, and children were given bread and dripping to fill up. Despite widespread poverty, the Twenties' diet was in some ways healthy. Convenience food did not exist and meals, which involved much peeling and chopping of vegetables, were higher in carbohydrates. A typical breakfast consisted of porridge or bread and butter. Lunch - the main meal of the day - might have been meat pie with cabbage and potatoes, followed by apple pie and custard. Tea would have been lighter - perhaps a pork pie or scrambled eggs - with a snack of bread and cheese at bedtime. In the Twenties, people burned up their calories with physical activity from dawn to dusk. In streets largely free of traffic, children skipped and played hopscotch and tag. Sports were a highly-valued part of the school curriculum, with compulsory PE for all. Country children often walked a round trip of six miles to get to class, and it was this emphasis on activity in childhood that turned out a generation of adults far fitter and slimmer than those of today. Almost everybody walked or cycled to work, and for the many women who worked in the industrial areas of the North, there was a daily grind of physical labour at the factory. The housewife did not need a personal trainer to keep the surplus pounds at bay. In a world before vacuum cleaners and washing machines, housework kept her trim. There was coal to be fetched, grates to be blacked, floors to be scrubbed, carpets to be beaten - as well as the Monday wash with washboard and mangle. The fashion in the Twenties was to look as slender and boyish as possible - a revolt against the tightly-laced silhouette of the late ns. Twenties woman disguised her curves with loose-fitting underwear and dropped waist dresses. But while the majority of women had no problem keeping slim, it was the Twenties which saw the invention of dieting. Upper-class women who ate a richer diet and exercised less bought the new women's magazines which featured weight-loss diets designed to give you that fashionable, streamlined figure.

1940s: A svelte 33-21-33

1940's

AVERAGE STATISTICS: 33-21-33 The great thing about the war years was that, through rationing, diet became democratised. Nutritionists worked out how many calories people needed to play their part in the war effort - and everybody got the same. The Forties woman was one inch larger all round than the Flapper simply because she was better nourished. Although the wartime diet was spartan - very little meat, hardly any butter and little sugar - it was extremely healthy and, as a result, heart disease hit an all-time low. Thanks to the Land Army, which kept agriculture going, wartime women ate plenty of vegetables. It was a diet rich in fibre and minerals and low in fat. The Forties laid the foundation for women becoming taller as the Government decreed that every child was entitled to one third of a pint of milk a day, so promoting the growth of strong bones. This continued in schools until Margaret Thatcher scrapped it in the 1970s. A typical daily diet during the war was powdered 'scrambled' eggs for breakfast, rissoles and blancmange for lunch, and rabbit stew for supper. (Rabbit was wild and therefore not rationed.) Before bed, there might be bread and dripping. Again, it was their highly energetic lifestyle that kept Forties women slim. There was no petrol for cars, and people cycled or walked for miles every day. Girls thought little of walking ten miles home after a Saturday night dance. Most women over 18 were involved in war work - much of it the sort of manual labour men would normally have done. Girls in munitions had to operate heavy machinery, women in the Forces drove lorries, while Land Girls - who were entitled to extra cheese to keep up their strength - chopped down trees, dug ditches and mended tractors. With their men off fighting, fashion changed. The curvy feminine look to cheer returning heroes became the order of the day, with fitted suits and belted flowery dresses to show off the waist, and the Flapper's flattening bodice giving way to the circle-stitched bra.

1960s

1960s: swinging hips at 34-24-35

AVERAGE STATISTICS: 34-24-35 The Sixties ushered in a Consumer Society - and with it the surplus money that is behind the modern phenomenon of pear-shaped woman. The changes in the way we lived were seismic. Everyone had a television set and a vaccum cleaner. More and more families owned cars - and used them for the briefest journeys. Children on bikes were crowded off the roads, and the time-hallowed tradition of playing out began to be replaced by the couch potato culture of watching TV. By now, the Welfare State had been established for nearly 20 years, which meant that almost everyone, even the poor, was getting enough calories. Convenience food - in the form of frozen dinners - seemed more seductive to the Sixties housewife than peeling endless vegetables. A typical daily diet was now high in fat: fried egg and bacon for breakfast, for lunch, stew, potatoes and dumplings, with spotted dick to follow, and, for supper, egg and chips. Our lifestyles became less energetic too. Housewives cleaned their homes at the push of a button as washing machines and vacuum cleaners become the norm, while children fell victim to the Left-wing educationists' decree that competitive sport was 'divisive' and state schools saw their playing fields sold off for housing. Before much longer, experts would be talking of the unimaginable - rising rates of obesity in childhood. The first steps were made on the road towards the classic modern English pear shape, as, for the first time, the bottom of the hourglass figure became bigger than the top. The Pill made its appearance. Millions of women were convinced taking it made their breasts bigger - but there are still no studies that prove this. Experts still maintain that it is diet and lifestyle that lead to weight gain on any part of the body.

1980s: fast food takes its toll at 35-24-37

1980sAVERAGE STATISTICS: 35-24-37 By the time the Eighties came along, British woman was well on the way to an irretrievable pearshape, with her hips measuring two inches more than her bust. Fewer women were content - or could afford - to stay at home, and their entry into the marketplace tolled the death knell for family meals. As desk-bound career women struggled into their power suits, sales of microwaveable dinners soared. Snacking, eating at one's desk, in front of the TV and even on public transport became increasingly common, and the habit of three meals a day was jettisoned. The new-style snacks were high in fats and sugars, and even apparently 'healthy' foods, such as breakfast cereals and yoghurts, are high in 'hidden' calories. Physical outdoor games for children started to look very uncool in comparison to a video or computer game, and exercise experts reported that Eighties children were dangerously unfit compared to their grandparents. The prosperity of British society under Thatcher and the reluctance of women to prepare healthy home-cooked meals saw a steep rise in eating out as a recreational activity - with all the implications for the hips of a three-course meal with wine taken late in the evening. A typical high-fat day might start with a breakfast of cereal and toast with polyunsaturated spread and peanut butter. Lunch might be a cup of soup with a cheese and ham sandwich, crisps and a chocolate bar, with spaghetti bolognese, garlic bread and cheesecake for the evening meal. It was, of course, in the Eighties that exercise classes became fashionable, with women apeing Jane Fonda in a bid to achieve lithe, muscular bodies. Alas, despite huge numbers of videos sold and classes attended, the inches continued to increase.

A moment on the lips... the average 2001 shape is 36-28-38

2001AVERAGE STATISTICS: 36-28-38 By the year 2000, the pearshape has become even more marked, with the average waistsize having ballooned four inches in 20 years. Anatomically speaking, fat accumulates very easily around the waist. The wasp-waisted Twenties woman would be shocked at the dimensions of today's Amazon. But then the Flapper girls didn't graze all day in stuffy offices on chocolate and fatty sandwiches, or dine out late at night on pizza, garlic bread, cheesecake and a bottle of Chardonnay. Today's shape reflects a lifestyle which, as more and more women work in front of a screen, is increasingly sedentary and self-indulgent in the manner immortalised by Bridget . Whereas Continental women still stick to the old three meals a day, insisting on a proper meal break at lunchtime, British women increasingly grab their calories when and where they can. Women today may eat fewer calories than 60 years ago - up to 2,000 a day compared to 2,500 - but there is a much higher proportion of fat in the diet, and women lead far less active lifestyles. The British buy far and away more ready meals than any other country in Europe, and our fridges are crammed with chilled 'gourmet' meals from supermarkets such as Marks & Spencer and Tesco. The paradox is our theoretical interest in cooking has never been keener, as endless TV cookery programmes will attest. An average day's intake in 2000 'Can't cook won't cook' Britain might be a cereal bar or croissant for breakfast, sushi or mozzarella and avocado-filled ciabatta for lunch, and an Indian takeaway for supper, washed down with wine. We enjoy prosperity and financial freedom such as great-grandma only dreamed about as she turned the mangle or walked miles home from a dance. But we'll never have a figure like hers.

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© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 14 November 2001Terms and ConditionsThis Is London