By 1920, the flapper girl was well in fashion. 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.

到了20世纪20年代，美丽轻佻的年轻女郎掀起了一股时尚潮流。但那时这些年轻女郎的处境并不是太好。在平等主义的福利国家建立前的25年，英国许多成年人和孩子因为贫穷而食不果腹。

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.

在吸尘器和洗衣机还未诞生之前，家庭主妇不需要花钱去请私人教练帮她减去多余的脂肪，因为繁重的家务活能使她保持苗条的身材。

But while the majority of women had no problem keeping slim, it was the Twenties which saw the invention of dieting.

虽然大多数女性能保持苗条的身材，但在20世纪20年代的时候，节食减肥法还是出现了。

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 that worked so well with the iconic flapper dress.

饮食丰富且很少锻炼的上流社会女性开始购买以减肥食谱为主的新女性杂志。许多人都想拥有时下最流行的身材并能成功地把自己塞进标志性的片状短裙中，而这些杂志正是为这些人量身订造的。