An illustrative picture: Leighton Meester at 17 (left) and 40 (right).
One, generational terms like millenial are BS, grouping people by imaginary immutable characteristics in a manner similar to racism. Age +or- 10 years doesn’t tell you anything.
Two, this is innately an unworkable hypothesis/example. Someone like Meester cannot be a way of judging normal conditions. She started as pretty healthy and attractive, then went into an industry that motivated her to prioritize her health and appearance, and was lucky enough to be rewarded well enough to fund further investments into her health and appearance. That experience is absolutely not going to be representative.
If you don’t look at public figures in that kind of industry you also then have almost nothing on which to base the question. You don’t get to look at most people’s age and compare it to their appearance so you can’t develop a sense of whether it might be true or not.
People are usually surprised when I tell them I am 41 and say they thought I was in my 20s.
You know, it depends. I went into a bar and the female bartender carded me. I would have gauged her at 50+. She was amazed I was three years older than her.
She was 38.
And on dating sites, I see women who at least claim to be a couple of years younger than me, but definitely look mid-fifties, some I get like, “you look like you could pass as my mom” vibes.
Are you in that age group? Your age group tends to look younger than expected, younger groups look like perpetual babies, and older generations look like perpetual adults/old timers. Always been a thing. Do you remember being 10 and thinking your 18 year old cousin was a full grown adult? When you’re even just 25, you might think your other 18 year old cousin looks like a baby.
It’s not just bodily appearance, it’s their style. If I saw a 40 year old man with a combover and sideburns while wearing a short sleeve button down, I’d say they owned a house in 1976 on a used car salesman’s salary. I’d have to cognitively recognize that even a 20 year old in 1976 would be 70 now. If I saw a 60 year old in an Arctic Monkeys shirt and cargo pants, I’d probably gauge them to have been a teen with an ipod. In reality, they’d have been 35 when the ipod was first released. There’s so many cues we use to evaluate a person. Hair, makeup, clothing, accent, vernacular, interests, activities… Plus, it’s not just association of trends to their calendar years, but association of trends to your age. The fang bangs pictured are more recently trending, but if you’re ~35-45 now and she currently had whatever that post-goth emo fringe sideswipe blond/black fade style is called, you’d probably still take 10-15 years off your estimate. Meanwhile, take someone like Amy Winehouse. What do you gauge her age to be? Beehive hair, winged eyeliner, vintage sound. Not gonna /spoiler tag but she died when she was twenty seven.
I know im old and I refuse to color my hair which has become common practice even in men so I look older now. Its kinda funny because I was always a long hair so until about my 50’s it often seemed like people thought I was younger than I was just do to the long hair and casual clothes.
In addition to the smoking and decrease in alcohol consumption, I also think a ton of people are underestimating just how brutal the sun is on your skin and how much pushback there was against sun screen. It was viewed as a military product and the attitude from the 40s up until the 90s or so was basically that the more tan, the better.
A huge amount of people refused to use sunscreen, pretty much ever, until the late 80s/early 90s and then they’d go out and roast themselves.
I’m a young-ish looking millennial who refuses to use sunscreen because of how it feels, smells, and requires rinsing off later.The secret is never going outside during the day.
have you tried different kinds of sunscreen? The stuff i use is just an oil (well, it’s oily at least) that you spray on and rub in, it says nothing about needing to be rinsed off and i’ve never felt a need to do so, and it doesn’t really have a smell nor does it feel any weirder than being slightly sweaty.
I hate sunscreen, I just cover myself all the time. Even when the heat is unbearable. I look like an idiot with the neck flap on my hat but at least I’m not getting burnt.
Or cancer. It only takes getting a chunk cut out of your back because the biopsy didn’t have clean edges to make you take sun protection seriously.
That wear sunscreen song that came out in the late 90s probably helped the cause.
I’m a weirdo who likes the smell of sunscreen so I use it all summer long when I’m going outside. I’m 31 but when I shave my beard off people think I’m barely 20.
You LIKE the smell‽
I’m closer to be 40, and I despise putting it on, but I still do every day it’s sunny.
About your look: do you have kids? People think I’m 30, maybe because I don’t have any, so I’ve been able to sleep every night.
No kids!
My theory still stands!
My friend says sunscreen causes cancer and refuses to wear it. Yeah hes not intelligent. Also loves llms so … Take it for what you will.
Nobody smokes anymore.
on top of that, people either wear sun tan lotion or take measures to limit the sun exposure. Ill be turning 40 in this decade (loljk this year) and the half generation between me and my, about to be 60 in 2 years, parents look 1000x’s older than every single person younger than them when their ages eventually match.
That was hard to explain so ima just lay it out. Its about 20 years between my parents and I. Their youngest friends have always been 10 years younger than them cuz thats how old my dads closest but youngest brother is. My friend were always all over the place but pretty sure theyre all within 10 years my senior.
We live in a small town and have a huge family. Last i counted we were at 49 1st cousins and 1st cousins once removed. Which means 1st cousins and kids of those 1st cousins… on my mom’s side. Pops only had 3 siblings but both his parents were sitting a bakers dozen deep of sibling each. So his side gave us the rest of the fucking town as 2nd cousins.
Just to give context of the brickhouse volume of individuals ive been able to watch age very very closely. The pivot point where it all seems to change is whether or not you graduated before 2000 or if you graduated after 2005.
It wasnt 9/11 either that did it. Everywhere and everyone just did q complete societal flip from raising kids by the survival of the fittest bible, to the worst period of helicopter parents ive still ever seen.
World really is so different with avalable information versus the centuries long argument “cuz i said so”. Swear to god the green flag of it all was MADD’s successful push on drinking and driving. Which in hindsight is wild cuz all it was, was PTA moms chatting it up, like there was no fucking emails, there was no social media like thwre is today. Youd be more likely seeing a normal grown ass adult shit their pants than you were to see anyone older than 25 on facebook. No smartphones, so no text or sharing or forwarding. It was all completely done word of mouth.
Im way off even my original tangent but the bottom point I guess was, people stopped living their life like theyd rather take a bullet than get called a pussy for putting on sun screen or going outside to smoke instead of clambaking cartons at a time cuz thats what rulled the world for centuries before there was a thing like being informed or fact checking.
I guarantee its the ban on indoor smoking.
That one roasted even the non smokers. It was unavoidable for poor genx
Gen Z/A is going to look even more youthful with their lower alcohol consumption.
Not with the addiction of social media. Stress and anxiety are bad for your health.
Mate are you implying Millenials aren’t stressed?
We are, but z and alpha have literally grown up with an iPad in their face. They are probably more addicted to social media which is known to fuck with your dopamine levels.
Gen Z/A are heavily addicted to vaping, which is a little better than smoking, but only a little.
I don’t think either of those things are true
Gen Z is addicted to vaping: https://www.chestnet.org/guidelines-and-topic-collections/publications/chest-advocates/gen-z-is-hooked-on-vaping Gen A is a bit young, but the older Gen As are included in the stats and follow the exact pattern as Gen Z.
As for how bad vaping is, is a bit more difficult, as it’s a more recent thing than smoking is. But indications are it’s better than smoking but it’s far from safe. This site had a good overview with sources: https://www.healthline.com/health/is-vaping-worse-than-smoking-cigarettes
That’s really what it is. Smoking ages you hard
It ages the people around you too. That’s a big part of what’s changed.
I watched a documentary last night about an event that occurred in the 80s. They would give the age of the individual along with the name. In every single case the person looked about 10 years older than I am. Not just the hairstyle but the actual age showing on their face.
I am at least 4 years older than every single person mentioned at the time they were pictured.
About half the people pictured died as a result of this incident. So it’s not like it was a picture from years later.
Smoking and sun exposure are motherfuckers for aging
I smoke and people still think I’m 10 years younger than I am. 🤷
How long you been smoking for?
My MIL looks 20 years older than she actually is, but I saw photos of her from 30 years ago and she looked pretty normal
Seems to hit as you get older, and obviously self a on quantity smoked
Except for a 3 year period where I quit, 23 years.
Millennials smoked a lot and still do. And the more recent generations have simply moved to vapes.
So yeah, people still smoke.
Elder millennials are the last to remember what smoking actually was. We remember restaurants with smoking and non-smoking sections. We remember a time before the “smoke break”, when you didn’t leave your desk to smoke, you just lit up and continued to work.
Millennials smoke in designated outdoor smoking areas. Boomers smoked in grocery stores.
I’m GenX and I remember smoking in grocery stores, movie theatres, offices, buses, airplanes…everywhere. People used to smoke while eating.
I knew people who’d smoke 2 packs a day, and one guy who’d smoke 3 (basically a cigarette in his hand every minute of the day, sometimes with a second one burning in the ashtray). Having a puff while you’re out drinking doesn’t even count as smoking in comparison.
You got numbers or just feelings?
They likely smoke and assume they’re the norm.
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I think you for the wrong generation. Or you live somewhere not where in from
Plastic surgery has gotten better if you’re really only looking at celebrities. I know plenty of non-celebrity millennials that have aged like fine raw milk in a hot sun.
That buccal fat removal trend is going to age like milk though.
Also millennials use sunscreen.
Sunscreen and hydrating does a lot i think.
Not being around smokers and other pollution does a ton too.
Absolutely. I’ve been using moisturizer for about the past 30 years and - if i may say so myself - I look a lot less crinkly than many other people my age.
Of course we do. There was that bizarre song in 97 that made sure we never forget to wear sunscreen!
Somehow Baz Luhrmann has done more for humanity than most boomers.
I just watched Ghostbusters for the first time since I was a kid. Those dudes were like 30 ish. They looked like they were 45-50. I’m like 8 years older than most of them were at the time, and not to blow my own horn, but I think I and my friends look far better than they did at that age.
Those dudes were like 30 ish.
When the movie came out in 1984 they were 30ish to 40.
Harold Ramis was about 40 (1944)
Ernie Hudson was about 39 (1945)
Bill Murray was about 34 (1950)
Dan Akroyd was about 32 (1952)
They looked like they were 45-50
Yeah, they definitely all looked about a decade older than they were.
We do
Every generation looks younger than the generations before it.
There’s probably some survivorship bias going on here. You’re not really going to see pictures of people who have been unattractive their whole lives, I wouldn’t think.
i mean, there’s a whole thing where movies insist on basically every single actor being conventionally attractive these days.
It’s something that stood out to me about Project Hail Mary, the government lady is violently german looking and that’s fucking rare to see in big movies these days
Everybody from a more recent generation looks on average younger than the generations before. In the middle ages people didn’t have sunscreen and bathed once a year. But even if you look at older movies, Sean Connery is 31 in Dr No but he looks like in his 40s. All those cigarettes, the booze, the lack of regular exercise, and only eating full Scottish breakfasts all the time. Fast forward to today where more people worry about their appearance and next to not smoking, not drinking, eating healthy, exercising, etc. people have a range of cosmetics and/or cosmetic surgery at their disposal. Of course they look younger.
Medieval people bathed all the dang time
Many misunderstand that period of time, they were highly hygienic (for their understanding of such things) they washed their hands before eating, they used shared food containers very hygienically (no double dip, no using something that was already in your mouth to serve the next food, no scratching your face at the table with your hand, etc). People also think most were dead by 30ish, many lived til their 70s and 80s but so many more didn’t make it out of childhood that keeps the average age down. There is a great yt chan where the host talks about all this and much more, can’t remember his chan atm but if there is interest I can track it down and link it.
It stopped at millenials though. God damn 5g or wifi or something made gen z and alpha age like milk.
Aged people from those generations don’t exist. You know, because of how age works… it’s the difference between the birth year and the current year. No gen z is over 30. No gen alpha is an adult. I am disturbed this needs to be pointed out.
You can literally google “gen z aged like milk” it’s been a meme for years, I didn’t make this shit up
Nah, Gen Z’s thing is mostly fashion sense because they’re essentially cultural archeologists in a lot of respects. Gen Z does make new stuff, but a lot of what they do is also remixing old stuff and dusting it off and trying it out again too. And some of that shows in their fashion sense where they’re often mixing stuff that makes them look like my Dad with stuff that makes them look like my Grandpa.
It’s sort of like how names like Gertrude and Agatha and stuff are starting to make a come back. A lot of the younger crowds never met those old people and got the associated “that’s an old person name” cultural alignment. To them, it’s just a nice sounding string of syllables.
I appreciate you responding with some logic
Fashion is cyclical. Every generation does this
In the middle ages people didn’t have sunscreen
in the middle ages people didn’t need sunscreen. sunscreen is only needed today (mostly for people in america) because some english people from north england (55°N) thought it was a good idea to move to america, as far south as california (30°N), where it’s sunny all the time and the sun burns at twice the intensity. Of course suddenly these pale-ass people suddenly develop sunburns all around.
sun exposure is like half the reason behind the stereotypical “old person” appearance, with excessive wrinkles and saggy skin. Go look at someone who spends time sunbathing, they start looking like a leather couch.
If there’s any trend that way, in the general population, it’s because of increased sunscreen use and decreased cigarette use. But, like, I don’t know if you’d look at a 40 year old farm worker and think they look young?
Even golfers (male) look older than they should to me.
I have no idea who she is. She looks like she’s in her 20s on the left and 35-40 on the right to me. I’m in my mid 40s.
