Vintage weight GAIN adverts

 It is hard to imagine in this day and age that there was a time when women were encouraged to be heavier, but there was. We are constantly told through advertising, editorial, articles and healthy eating campaigns that bigger is not better and we should strive to become smaller. Now, I have nothing against health and if your size is not healthy then yes, weight loss. But it goes both ways - there are skinny women who are just as unhealthy as larger women. However back in the 1940s they had much stranger reasons for wanting to put on a bit of weight - so men would look at them.

 If we think of the 50s we think of full figured curvy women like Marilyn Monroe and the hourglass figure. Large full skirts nipped in by a tiny waist. It does seem incredible that women would pay for something that could be potentially dangerous in order to gain weight.

 It seems sad that we are never allowed to just have the figure we have without being mad to feel bad about it. We are constantly bombared with imagery and articles telling us to diet, loose weight, hide this and flaunt that, we never get a chance to just enjoy our bodies for whatever shape they are. I have made the point that there are unhealthy shapes where your size, be it small or large, is actually putting your life in danger which is a different matter entirely, but can't we just enjoy what we have? it seems women have spent generations being told that we are too fat or too thin. There appears to be no inbetween according to advertisers or magazines.

The image here is very small but the right column is kinda scary - it offers a series of tonics, emulsions and pills which are called 'Wate - on'  and promise to help you gain weight in four days. I would love to know what was in them that they could promise something like that - pure lard?!?!

I googled the product and while I can't find any ingredient lists, I did find a whole host of bloggers who were clearly as confused as I am! Weight gain tablets!??! I also found adverts from the 1960s, so clearly women were buying these tablets, etc.  They claim to help women gain 4 - 30 pounds!!!! Could you imagine it?? The reason women wanted to bulk up was because of superstars such as Marilyn Monroe (who was a size 16 in her day) and Raquel Welsh (who actually advertised the product at one point) who all had curvy and full figures. Although in saying that Hepburn had a small waif like body, so who knows!