Or is everyone better looking these days?

[Wishfulmakeupping]

I'm talking about regular people not film stars etc (I would say the opposite there)

Anyway scrolling through my facebook (I know I know!) I thought to myself a lot of people I know are unusually good looking and beautiful. Probably more so than in real life.
Is this just fakery? There is a lot of tan and lashes going on
Or good selfie techniques?
Not sure but suddenly everyone's become a 10 (I'm a solid 5 still) whats going on?!

BumpNGrind That's very true reference the acne. I think research and treatment in recent years has meant that even though people still get it, it can be dealt with quickly and painlessly.

I agree re the acne thing as well. A lot of teenagers used to be plagued with it, but nowadays it rarely seems to be a problem.

Better grooming, photo-shop, cheaper more easily available beauty stuff, celebrity 'you can be beautiful too' culture, plus young people are aware of their looks much earlier than in the past i think. Hence very well groomed 13/14/15 year olds.

I started high school in '84 (12 years old) and wore long white socks and a awful massive pleated skirt, way too big for me, no make up, greasy hair and thought nothing of it. All the girls in my year was the same. No real awareness of appearance. We were all still playing out on our bikes with the boys after school and getting mucky. I remember looking at the girls in their last year in - gasp - thin tights and short skirts!

By my 3rd year i had started to take control of what i was wearing, to an extent, the skirt fitted and was shorter. The white socks had gone, the shoes were less geeky, and i was using a bit of mascara and lippy and washing my hair every day. I got it bleached when i was 14 and was the first one with 'coloured hair' in my year.

But some girls these days are still in primary school looking like mini celebs. Hair coloured, fancy cut, make up, clothes like adults, heels, nails - the works!

I think as more hair and beauty products and techniques that were previously only available to professionals have become available in mainstream, and the professional techniques advancing all the time means people can look better. Plus all the tutorials on YouTube for hair and makeup. If I had had my eyebrows done, hair straightened, decent skin care and sophisticated makeup as a teen , as my DSD has now, I would have looked heaps better! Instead it was hairy eyebrows, frizzy hair, spots and terrible makeup! Looking back at pictures where people were quite plain i think they would not look like that now. Having said that you also get the terrible fake tans, extensions, false eyelashes, Groucho Marx eyebrows and talon nails so not everyone looks better

People definitely invest more time and effort in their appearance than they did a generation ago.

There's a lot of helpful things out there to combat things like spots these days. Doctors are happy to give out creams and pills to unhappy teens.

Glasses are seen as "hip" with all sorts of styles and colours that make you look cool.

Fashionable clothes are pocket money cheap in shops like Primark and H&M. Ditto accessories like handbags and shoes and jewellery.

There are make up tutorials on YouTube for all types of skin colours, eye colours, hair colours...how to put on eye liner and foundation properly. How to do your hair to suit your face shape.

We have all kinds of everything at our fingertips and it's cheap and affordable. No wonder girls AND boys look so good looking these days.

Two factors

1. As you get older you appreciate more how nice youth looks

2. Far more grooming, starting far earlier.

By the way, if acne has been cured, please can someone share the secret with me? (Age 34, still spotty after 20+ years...)

i think young women were gorgeous and glamorous in the 50's and 60's. I think the hair and dress fashions of the 80's and 90's weren't particularly complementary, and none of us looked good then. They look better today because the styles are better combined with the facts that there are better products and more pressure on young women to look good.

Teeth are better now too. Orthodontists have worked wonders.

Funnily enough I think the same and I am the same age as you OP. I think it's the bloom of youth when someone has beautiful skin, full lips and no lines. It can be totally mesmerising and I have to make sure I don't stare.

The girls all do look similar. I client from 'that there London' commented to me about how stunning the women in Newcastle were but there all looked the same. I imagine he was hanging out in Fenwicks rather than Bigg Market though.

And a woman commented on my make FB friends page, I thought she was stunning (and being nosy) checked her profile. It was the dumpy barmaid from the pub who wouldn't look out of place in Prisoner Cell Block H (original series). She looks fabulous in photos but not so much in rl.

God, I'm so sorry for the spelling mistakes - I'm hating ios8 on this phone

I agree they are better groomed and are far more self aware / confident about their appearance. I would say that I see a lot of girls who are much heavier on average than 20 years ago but don't seem bothered by it.

I don't think the heavily groomed look is attractive at all. Looks quite alien.

I also see quite a lot of heavier girls than when I was younger but conversely I see a lot more very very slim girls than when I was younger too. It's the ones in the middle who seem to have disappeared

I think parents make much more effort with children's appearance also.
As a child I wore whatever was cheap/ hand me downs that didn't fit
My children are still small yet so no teen looks, but myself and dh always make sure they look good before going anywhere.
Ds2 is 3. Before dh dropped him at nursery in the rain this am he wiped over ds's Wellington boots to get old mud off, styled his hair, and swapped his jumper as he had his brothers on so tad to big. Nothing fancy, but regardless of whether to wedding or jumping in puddles they are tidy and in nice things before we leave.

I think young girls have far more aids these days to looking good. Good layered haircuts with highlights and the use of straighteners can literally transform someone. There's just more of an awareness of image in these celebrity obsessed days, girls are placing much more importance on their appearance than they did years ago. However years ago I can't remember one single very overweight girl at my school, where nowadays I see an awful lot of overweight teenagers.

there are so many good looking young people around I see really stunningly beautiful young woman all the time plus the mixture of different cultural backgrounds we see now here in the UK

I think that they are generally healthier looking, have better skin, hair and teeth

And better groomed though the over groomed look is not attractive imo looks so 80's and often so aging

Facebook pictures often bear little resemblance to the actual person, I find.

I think people are much more well groomed than eg. 20 - 30 years ago.

Better technology in even the cheapest make up; highlights & hair colours are cheaper and more available; hairstyles more flattering with hair styling tools such as GHDs & ceramic curling tongs.
It's also become more normal to go to a beauty salon to get nails / eyebrows / a tan - for all age groups.
Also it's now acceptable for men to be well groomed too.

Many older women i know of (40s up to 60s) look better than their younger selves because of the beauty products & services available.

And where teens are concerned - they ALL look pretty now whereas when I was a teen there were only 1 or 2 pretty girls in any group.

I don't think it's getting older that's made me think that - I think it's the fashions for long hair and beauty products that is helping them.

However I agree with SlightlyJaded that many women are heavier too which isn't so good for health reasons. (I include myself in that).

I collect old photos of people from the Victorian times to the 1940s and the main thing to remember is that women had help from the sepia photography ironing out any flaws!
Also they had amazing hairstyles & strong make up (if they wore it) but it's important to remember that they rarely washed those hairstyles and didn't have access to deodorant - ugh!

Now women have help in photos from apps & skin smoothing features in modern cameras.

Back in the 90s when I was a teen / early 20s photos were very clear but there were no GHDs, no acne treatment, cheap make up & hair colours weren't so good & fashions not so flattering.

treacle you are right, the middle ones have disappeared!

And everyone has braces now to make sure of the perfect teeth. Mine are wonky as hell but not considered bad enough back in the day to warrant straightening (which makes me very sad these days).

I work at a university that attracts a wealthier crowd and the girls in particular are stunning. Few don't have long swishy glossy hair, ok skin, nice figure and so on. I feel sorry for the few that deviate from this mould tbh. They achieve it by putting a lot of effort in though, fake tan (for some), getting acne treated, full make-up most days, fake eyelashes if not, artfully expensive casual clothes.

The downside of all this is the pressure to look like that. I know of several girls who use amphetamines/other drugs or have eating disorders to keep control of their weight- being fat is a social no no for them.

For that reason, and because it is so incredibly conformist (hardly any different hair colours, styles of dress) I think it's not a good thing, much nicer to care less, have shorter hair and go around in a cardi like most of my contemporaries in the 80's. We still looked nice!

Younger people's teeth are fine but lots of older people still don't look after their teeth - I see LOTS of different age groups of people in hospital & it's so common to see men especially with front teeth missing. Not a good look - implants are expensive but surely they could get a plate with a false tooth attached like many women do.

Again those 1940s photos often show women smiling with what seem like perfect teeth but they were often false - my 80s & 90something patients often have full sets of false teeth that were removed in their youth 'to save money on dentists' - seriously!

Strange how beauty ideas change so radically...

Now of course we have good fluoride toothpastes & access to good cosmetic dentistry if we can afford it / want to bother.

Everyone looks the same now though. You don't see the variety and interest in faces now. It's just all very generic and samey. I like to see faces and clothing that reflect personality and lifestyle.

Stuff is cheaper and more accessible - for example the pound shops have very decent brand named shampoos, hair treatments, make up (often good brands!), skin products. All of this stuff would have been £1 or more 20 years ago when I was a teenager so you can imagine that pocket money or Saturday job wages go further from that point of view. If you get £5 a week you can easily afford to buy stuff every week.