Vintage 'anti-skinny ads' from the 1930s and 50s show just how much beauty standards have changed

Trigger warning: This story contains distressful themes like body shaming.

Beauty standards seem to change with every generation, and the 1930s through the 1950s were no exception. Back then, being too skinny wasn’t seen as desirable at all. Instead, women were told they needed to gain weight to look healthy, beautiful — and most importantly — attractive to men. Posted on Reddit by the username u/Electrical-Aspect-13, advertisements from that time captured this pressure vividly, using bold claims and playful stories to sell products aimed at helping women put on pounds. One of these ads proclaimed, “Good news for thousands of girls who have no sex appeal!” It followed the story of a slim woman at the beach, mocked by two men saying, “No sex appeal to that beanpole. Let’s vamoose!”

Her solution? Ironized yeast tablets, which, according to the ad, helped her gain weight fast. A few weeks later, the formerly “beanpole” woman reappears, her new curves earning her the title of “queen of the beach.” Another ad took an even more dramatic approach, urging women, “If men hate the sight of you—read this.” It showed a frustrated woman lamenting, “Men hate the sight of me. I’m so skinny.” Her savior, once again, was ironized yeast, which promised quick and noticeable weight gain. A few weeks later, the ad paints her transformation — confident and curvy, she’s complimented by a man who tells her, “You’re gorgeous since you’ve gained weight!”

These ads also portrayed that if you gained weight, you were happy and healthy. One ad asked women bluntly, “How do you look in your bathing suit?” painting thinness as something shameful, describing skinny women as tired, rundown and socially overlooked. It then contrasted that image with vibrant, curvy women who were supposedly living their best lives after gaining 10 to 25 pounds with supplements like "Wate-On." These products promised to “bring out your natural curves” and claimed that even men weren’t immune to the pressure, with one ad boldly declaring, “Skinny men are not attractive either.” One particularly memorable ad proclaimed, “Skinny girls don’t have oomph!”

Ads like these often included fictional dialogues, like one where a man says, “Let’s beat it. Here comes that skinny dame!” The post went viral on Reddit with 52k upvotes and many took to the comment section to share their thoughts. u/owleaf said, “Yep! My mum told me that when she was really young, she remembers her mum (my grandmother) freaking out when she started losing weight and could see her collarbones prominently through tops and dresses. So it was definitely a bad thing socially if you started to look emaciated.”

u/Soggy_Competition614 added, "Well the skinny person looks emaciated while the heavier person is nowhere near large. My mom was made fun of for being skinny in school in the early 70s. People would say 'Hey you have two strings hanging from your dress' and she would look and they would say 'Never mind those are your legs.' Now girls are killing themselves to look like she did in school." Some found the strange phrasing of the ads quite hilarious. u/BigDaddyBumbo77 commented, "'Let's beat it. Here comes that skinny dame!' Killed me!!" u/Septembers-Poor555 wrote, '"Skinny men are not attractive either' LMAO."