Am I just old or do half of 20-something year old girls look the flipping same?

[purplelass]

My daughter was watching Love Island back in the summer and I joined her for a few minutes to see what the fuss was about. The thing I couldn't get over was how she could even tell them apart! It's a cloned fake 'look' that they nearly all had - huge dark eyebrows, trowelled on foundation, over-plumped glossy lips, etc...

I've noticed it on other shows and when out and about, it's almost like a mask that everyone has to put on so they look like a snapchat filter when they leave the house.

What happened to being individuals? Why do so many girls spend so much time and money to look exactly the same as everyone else?

Like I said, maybe I'm just old and grumpy...

Back in my day you had the goths, the ripped jeans brigade, the rahs, ..so on and so on. Lots of different trends.

I think there is just one trend now. This horrid look and basically nothing. Girls must be under enormous pressure to fit in. I absolutely HATE seeing 13 yr old girls with HD brows. Awful.

But I guess none of it is permanent - unless they're stupid enough to start doing permanent stuff once they hit 18.

A friends daughter (aged 22) is literally unrecognisable from her young self - boob job, lipo, lip fillers, cheek fillers...it's all about wanting to look like the girls on Love Island. Personally if my daughter aspired to that, I would think I had totally failed as parent.

its not your age! i am 30 most of my friends look like that too! i dont get it! why? always dolled up to the nines! im a jeans and cons woman, i dress for comfort not style! make-up a bit of nivea spf day cream , a lick of mascara (if i can be bothered, i usually cant) and some plain non coloured lip balm and im done !
i am clean tidy and presentable for a day of errands!

I agree with pp, there have always been fashions. I don't think young girls look any more 'the same' than at any other time tbh. Make-up is definitely more complicated now though! I haven't worn any in years and I'd have no idea where to start these days. But I don't see anyone running away from me in horror in the street so I guess it's OK for me to just ignore the whole contouring thing.

I agree! Let’s get back to the Victorian times where the women all looked unique.

When I was a little girl in the 60s my mum, aunties and teachers all looked the same, bouffant hair, eye liner and mini skirts. Then in the 70s, it was long straight hair and maxi skirts. 80s = perms, contoured cheek bone and shoulder pads. It’s called fashion.

Even older people do it, not just school kids. 30 year old mums wear skinnies, Breton tops and ballet flats or Converse. My generation (late 50s) like a highlighted mum-bob withwhite jeans/trousers and a floaty top.

Ahhhh lovely another good bit of millennial bashing.

Yes we are all the same and shallow and feckless. None of us can be taken seriously and all we care about is how we look and men.

HTH

Regards - a 20-something

huh! in the late 60's everybody looked the same too - boys & girls! long hair (slightly unkempt) beads & cheese clothe (I know this, of course, by looking at films etc :) ) (lies...) Oh and white or pale lipstick and heavy eye makeup and nail polish or mini skirts (not the guys!) & very very tight jeans!

starutopia I work with young people. There are still plenty of subgroups such as goths/emos/plastics/roadmen or roadgirls etc. It’s almost the point of them that once adults become aware of the divisions they morph into something different.

I'm 23 and I am the only woman I know around my age who doesn't wear makeup, and yes the makeup style that most adopt and the effect is very clone like when it's literally everyone doing it (although I don't know anyone who does the really OTT eyebrows or lip fillers etc) I just think it's sad that we've all been brainwashed into thinking we have to cover up our 'blemished' skin, when it's normal and inevitable you will occasionally have spots/redness/dryness, so does everyone else! But you have enormous pressure to be 'perfect' in your online life, so there is pressure to not be too different in real life from an Instagram persona where you are flawless. We have very warped ideas around female beauty and acceptable appearance, more so now than in my mothers generation it seems. Clothing seems to be so much more about logos now than it was when I was younger, you rarely see young people without some logo emblazoned on at least one garment.

A few of my sons female acquaintances (in their teens and early 20s) subscribe to the fake look - big ugly brows, eyelash extensions and thick foundation. Thankfully (to a 40 something old gimmer like me), their 'proper' friends don't seem to and are trendy and gorgeous with individual senses of style.

I think the Towie sort of looks seems prevalent because it's more alarming noticeable.

My Dad used to say we all looked like Daleks and that was in the late 70's. So I guess every generation has a look.

I agree and I’m only 28!

However I think that young girls and women look an awful lot better than young men these days. If I were born 10 years later I’d probably spend my life single as teen boys and young men are so utterly unattractive. Vain, stupid clothes, stupid stupid fucking sticky up gelled hair.

When I look back at school photos (60s), there was a greater diversity of hair lengths than I see nowadays. Don't know whether this was because it was an all girls school. But make-up and clothes were always whatever was the fashion at the time. No idea what the 20 year olds looked like at the time.

Older (than 20s) women always seemed to have a perm whereas nowadays they either have short hair or longer hair, either way unpermed. Find it very hard to work out women's ages now - they all look young.

OP I take this to mean the army of kylie jenner clones
Kim or khloe K for the older "girls"
Fashion unfortunatley but ive seen girls despair because they dont have the right lips, personally i think its sad that they all think they need to look exactly the same as xyz celebrity its not just women either!

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-beckham-20k-superfan-lucky-13576424

What is alway surprising for me is the fact they all have long straight hair. If possible blond.
You rarely see nowdays a child or a teenager with short hair or a very different hairstyle.

I was about to say YABU but then realised that last time I saw one of my 20yo Niece in a FB post, I struggled to work out which she was as they all had much the same look!

I know the trend you're taking about (and live in Essex so do see it) , however the local sixth forms seem to churn out plenty of young women with a very natural look, plus goths, skater types and various other fashion looks. That's no different to when I was that age tbh.

Yes we are all the same and shallow and feckless
No I just said half of you were

I get that it's a fashion but what alarms me is how unnatural it all looks, and how increasingly younger people are turning to plastic surgery to achieve these looks. It makes me feel sad for them.

I blame all the reality TV. I really fear for my 9 year old and hope to steer her away from getting addicted to the reality TV. I will probably fail at that! Even now she is so much more aware of herself than I was at her age and it will only get worse. I have a 12 year old niece who walks around with giant eyebrows. It just looks so wrong.

Yanbu. There is a beauty standard of massive eyebrows, massive lips - and all these ladies look the same. What's sad is, it's a Kardashian thing.

What happens to these girls who have micro bladed their massive eyebrows on, when the fashion moves on? Will it be like being stuck with a mullet?

I do think that trends mean it’s the same for every generation to an extent though, I came of age in the late 90s/early 00s and we all wore the same baggy jeans, had badly dyed hair/highlights with the same dodgy eyeliner!

My mum once showed me a pic of her and her friends in the 70s, they were punks and all had the same spiked hair and piercings.

It’s a bit different now as cosmetic work and air brushing are easier to come by - but the fact is this won’t last forever and something new will come along. I just hope the girls who have had bum lifts/thigh fillers still like their look when it’s no longer the fashion.

I'm sure before the growth of mass consumer culture, young women looked pretty much the same anyway, as the (commercially-pushed) imperative of vigilantly cultivating an 'image' for others' benefit wasn't yet structuring the way people thought about themselves. As it did become more culturally entrenched, clothes manufacturers responded by offering a greater diversity of options, to the point now where it seems as though you could/should precisely match your self to what's available on the market due to the sheer number of options available. It's impossible not to engage in this process of matching if it becomes the general culture i.e. even if you don't make any particular effort you are still judged to be making a choice which communicates what's inside you. I doubt anyone was critical of the fact that 1950s schoolgirls all looked similar.

It's just that now we start out from the pov that everyone must construct an image because we now have the means to do so and thus respond to a natural need to project an image (rather than imagining that the new availability of these means created the need itself), and somehow this act of construction is supposed to be carried out with ref to the individual, this idea of matching the inside to the outside (as if you could find a direct representation of your thoughts in something material like clothes anyway - just because you like your look doesn't mean you have to then appeal to the concepts of it 'feeling' or 'being right'), when really the images we take on are responses to our environments, they don't come from within. If we weren't so focused on the idea of equating how we looked to how we think, it wouldn't be a problem at all that everyone looked the same; if we assume the first, we now logically find it distressing if everyone does look the same because we assume they're lemmings on the inside as well. They're not, but if people are being forced to make a choice, who can blame them if it's not a particularly inspired one - if we didn't buy into the need to have an image and individuality then had to be observed via means other than looks (i.e. we didn't attach all sorts of symbolic value to whether we stand out lookswise or not), we wouldn't be accusing people of not being individuals.
Think this can be backed by the fact there is much less expectation of men to be diverse in how they dress, esp. because their consumer choices are limited & yet no one's accusing them of not being (as opposed to simply appearing) individual enough

26 here and still show my goth/rocker roots.
Pale skin, dyed red hair, tattoos, piercings. I'm a mom now so have toned it down a bit in my laziness more than actually wanting to. I love make up but I'm shite at it and don't have the time. I think I look different to the love island ladies (though wish I had their figures). But probably look similar to other 25 to 30 year old former emo-ey goths who are growing up and blending in.

As soon as the fashionable look changes they will too. There are individuals if you look for them though.

I think we all did it to an extent when we were young.