The UK is a nation of -porkers- discuss

I'd appreciate a link to the source you used, tegan. I'd like to look at the survey.

Sturdy has a spiritual or mental strength element to it though, anya, as well as a physical one. At least my use of it where I used it did. That's why I chose it.

Tegan my old gran used to take snuff

I can see her now putting it on her top of her hand between her first finger and thumb, then holding first one nostril, then the other as she snorted it up like a line of cocaine.

Oh tne shame

'Strong' is also appealing.

Lots of good words beginning with 's' as well as 'sturdy' how about 'stocky' or 'solid' or perhaps 'substantial' ?

I like the word sturdy. Becoming a sturdy old woman appeals.

A day....my mum used to send me to the corner shop to buy 3 Woodbines in the 1950's.

13 cigarettes a year? That's not many...

Gosh, the Hackney Emporium ( women's sex shop!!)
Not confusing it with the Hackney Empire? Or are you admitting to a shady past? Still, if you looked like Julie Christie . . . . . .

Think I've got my surveys mixed up; may have been 2001 not 2015...1951 figure is correct though as they both referred back to the same survey.Then women smoked an average of 3 cigarettes and now they smoke 13; that's worrying.

1970 ... in London- no scrubbing in Carnaby Street or Picadilly, or Hackney Emporium- for me it was The Who, Jimi Hendrix and more at the Isle of Wight- and yes, I looked like Julie Christie - oh yeah.

When we got married in 1970 and bought our first house in north Manchester (the quasi-semi)the women over the road used to scrub their front step at least once a week.
Needless to say the thought never crossed my mind

bags is still thin now. It's all the hack..... No! Won't say it!

Me mam n dad told me

What do you know bags you weren't even born in 1951

I'm gonna start again soon - manic housework. Gonna get thin again.

She was a sturdy young woman (and sturdy old woman).

I have never done manic anything, least of all housework. Don't believe my mother did either, nor her mother. My paternal gran might have done but she was never terribly slim (nor terribly overweight).

Sugar was still rationed in 1951

God bags! That's very true!

Mine was even smaller!

(But I was only about 7...)

I used to do manic housework. I can just remember it.

And there was less food available (rationing had not ended by 1951) and people were poorer, jane.

27" sounds quite big for 1951 actually. I think 24" waist was quite normal in the late 50s. (That's what mine was! [sigh]

They all expended a lot more energy in those days, doing all that manic housework and washing and walking to the shops every day too.