Women post-WW2 used diet pills, which were often amphetamines, to fit the New Look with its emphasis on neo-Victorian sylphishness and wasp waists. This was also the time of what Mad Magazine termed "The Rise of the Fashion Model Zombies" with extreme linearity. Models used to be much curvier - Joan Blondell, say.

Some of those women lived in suburbs, and some were housewives. Some were high school French teachers and some were stenographers or sales ladies. Some were married and some were single. Some were poor and many were rich.

Diet pills also gave a girl a lot of get up and go, until she couldn't get to sleep and had to take a pill for that. Doctors actually prescribed this cycle, with diuretics, into at least the 80s (haven't checked more recently) for "weight loss" that was often only weight maintenance.