I was cleaning out my mother’s attic last Sunday when I found an old Polaroid tucked inside a dusty recipe box. It was from 1974.
My mother was standing in front of a wood-paneled station wagon, wearing high-waisted bell bottoms and a simple cotton tee. She wasn’t a fitness influencer or a gym rat. She was just a regular woman in her thirties.
But looking at her, and then looking at the people in the background of the shot at the local park, I noticed something that felt almost jarring by today’s standards.
Everyone was thin. Not just ‘fit,’ but naturally, effortlessly lean. There wasn’t a yoga mat or a calorie-counting app in sight.
It made me stop and wonder: what happened to us? Why does it feel like we are fighting a war against our own bodies today that they weren’t even aware was happening back then?
I sat down on a stack of old blankets and started thinking about the lifestyle my mother lived. It wasn’t about ‘dieting.’ It was about a world that was fundamentally built differently.
In 1974, my mom didn’t have a gym membership. She didn’t even own a pair of sneakers that weren’t for a specific purpose. She lived her life on her feet.
The kitchen was the heart of the home, but it wasn’t a 24-hour buffet. There were no bags of snack sized chips sitting within arm’s reach while she watched TV.
Eating was an event. It had a start time and an end time. If you missed dinner, you weren’t hitting a drive-thru at 11:00 PM; you were waiting until breakfast.
I remember her telling me about how they used to move. They didn’t ‘work out.’ They just existed in a state of constant motion.
She walked to the post office. She hung the laundry on a line in the backyard, reaching and stretching under the hot sun. She scrubbed floors on her hands and knees.
There was no door-to-door delivery for every whim. If she wanted something, she had to go get it. The physical cost of living was simply higher then.