People looking older in the past...

[QueenArseClangers]

Inspired by another thread about wearing clothes deemed ‘too young’ past a certain age.
I really think so. My grandmother (born in 1901) was dressed in a gaberdine mac and twin set once she was in her fifties and adopted using a walking stick on her 60th birthday as she declared herself an old lady!

Anyway, this photos in this article are fascinating.
www.boredpanda.com/past-young-people-look-older/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

I think there was an element of the bubble perm, short hair, no dyeing going on decades ago, and people dressed in a way we associate with older.

Now men shave their heads when rhey loose hair, women dye theirs and keep it longer, into their fifties sixties and beyond, fitness has become a thing.

However many people still age the same. Watch the chase regularly and you will often find yourself going blimey he’s only thirty two,or something.

Here’s more:
www.boredpanda.com/young-people-looked-older/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

Mrs Doubtfire was only 60! You've just got to look at her.

No way my 65 year old mum would dress like that!

Yeah, that’s true Bluntness.
Also smoking. You couldn’t escape it at home, work or leisure!
Expectations of our age group has changed too.
My lovely DM had me when she was 44 and was an anomaly (1970s). Nowadays maternal age has shot up as well as the retirement age etc.

I heard the other day that the movie character Shirley Valentine was 42! I'm waiting at least another 2 decades beyond that to have a mid life crisis.

Also, presumably some people who are older now have stuck with styles from their youth that we now associate only with older people.

Steve Martin was 42 and John Candy 37!

The comment in one of the those articles about Nigel Farage and Keanu Reeves being the exact same age has blown my mind.

For women a lot of it had an unpleasant moral overtone I think.

Dressing in a self-consciously "attractive" way was associated with the idea that you were dressing to attract a mate. Once you had attracted a mate, married him and were off the market it was thought to be a bit "scarlet" to dress in the same way. Hence the phrase "mutton dressed as lamb" which I've always found particularly offensive.

Nowadays things are much more fluid: women are acknowledged to have other motives for wanting to look nice apart from catching and keeping a man (thank God). Marital status is harder to define: more marriages end and people are more likely to be in less-committed relationships. So its much harder to pigeonhole a woman according to her perceived marital status.

I think also women being more likely to have their own money probably helps a lot. If you make your own money you are less likely to feel guilty about asking your husband for some botox/a Gucci handbag/a playsuit etc.

Finally I think a lot of the youth movements of the 60s and beyond (hippy/punk/post punk/acid house) etc created a fragmentation of people's image and a real emphasis on identifying yourself through your tribe rather than your marital status (again, thank God). Women who are now in their 40s and 50s will have grown up with a very defined youth style and will be reluctant to give that up and wear Country Casuals just because they are married with kids.

All to the good.

I think part of it is psychological. It feels like life stages are getting longer and more delayed. For example, adolescence seems to last until mid-20s before "proper adulthood" begins, people are having children later and then becoming grandparents later, etc. My grandparents were married homeowners with two children at the age I was a university student. 50 year olds used to be grandparents or soon-to-be grandparents and now they can be parents of teenagers (or younger) as we are having children later and later. I think the stage of life you are in affects your sense of self and how you dress.

I also think a large part of it, as @Dinosforall said is that you tend to wear the same style you wore when you were younger. My grandparents, for example, wear quite a 50s/60s style still so they look older whereas if they wore modern outfits they would look much younger.

Yes I do think more conservative clothing/hairstyles/make up can be aging. Also I think photos back then don't tend to capture the details we can now.

And if you're from quite a stressful time in history (during a war, or growing up poor a century ago etc) I think that impacts how old you look, more lines etc.

If using actors and actresses as examples, a lot of it surely about how they are styled for particular roles. Look at Elisabeth Sladen in 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' on CBBC - a woman in her sixties at the time, but with a 'look' which might make you think more mid-40s, and yet not at all inappropriate for her. (And playing a character only 5 years or so younger than herself.) I sometimes think that, if TV people had cast a 60-year-old woman in the lead role of an adventure series in the 1970s, she'd have had a headscarf and horn-rimmed spectacles, and some sort of flowery dress.

Looking at old photos on a local Facebook page I was thinking this the other day. The men all wore suits and the women had short hair, thick rimmed glasses, macs, cumbersome handbags and looked way older than they were. It looks like at 30 they'd fast forwarded fashionwise to their 70's and stayed there until they died.

I remember my DM in her 30's wearing a headscarf and mac when going out. She's 77 now and ditched the headscarf but she always wears floral skirts and tights with flat lace up shoes no matter what the weather. The colours are always cream, green and brown because in her youth her hair was auburn and apparently those were the only colours that went with that hair colour . She only recently wore elasticated waist joggers because she broke her arm and they were easier to get down for a pee than rummaging about with tights, skirt and knickers and wetting herself.

She also keeps on about my long hair despite having the same short style from well before I was born (52 years ago).

This is true...

But I think the comparisons at the end of the article—this person and this person are the same age, even though one looks 30 years older than the other—is a bit more accurate.

Aging is weird. It doesn’t happen the same way for everyone, and some people get an entire 30-40 years more than another person, who died at say, 70.

My mother in law, mid 70s, has a cousin, same age, in a care home, who looks older than 100. Mother in law is still basically fit and heathy, and probably 20 years away from that. My own parents, now mid 60s, were about 30 when they had me. They looked like teenagers. I remember my mother answering the door, and being asked if her parents were home! My husband’s grandmother looked approximately 40 years old for about 30 years or more. She lived to be 100. Some of my peers, I am shocked to find they are my age because they look so much younger or older than I do. This is my long way of saying, aging doesn’t make sense, and isn’t always kind.

'Ageing up' of actors on TV is never that convincing either. People just look like older versions of their 35-year-old selves with a bit of stylish grey. It always seems to be forgotten or ignored that many people are unrecognisable from their younger selves, often because they have a) gone bald or b) put on loads of weight.

The pictures in the article are highly selective.

Women may look a bit younger now due to skincare, but men still age at the same rate. Shaving a balding head is fooling nobody.

Wilferd Brimley in Coccoon is the same age as Paul Rudd now.

Shaving a balding head might fool no one, but arguably it’s a more youthful look than a half bald head with fluffy greying hair round the sides.

It’s the same as dyeing your hair and keeping it longer as a female, or in a funky short cut. The curlered look of greying hair was ageing.

When I look back at my step grandmother, she had the grey hair, short, curled and a bit bouffant, always dressed very sensibly, in pleated or gathered midi skirts, with a blouse or jumper, tan tights. And I now realise she was like this in her mid forties. I’m fifty one and I’d not dress like that. My mother in law was the same. She never wore trousers, it was all floral midi skirts, short hair, little blouses like the sort you buy in m&s older section. And now when I think about it, she was only in her early forties when I first met her.

I was born in 1960, when my mum was 28. Looking back at photos, it's as though she went straight from being 'young' to 'middle aged' as soon as she had children. And, from pictures of her with her friends, that's what happened; as soon as you had a child you began dressing like YOUR mother.

She endlessly bemoaned the fact that I took up running and dyeing my hair. She'd say 'what do you want to keep doing that for, you'll never look twenty again!'

No, mother, but on the other hand, I want to be able to still lace up my own shoes when I'm 60 (and can. My mother couldn't bend down past 45).

My mum even though she has a beautiful face looked old very young. She had permed hair, never grew it long, wore sensible shoes, no make-up, frumpy clothes and couldn't care less if she put on weight. She thought that to behave otherwise was vain and tarty.
I wonder how old Olive from on the buses was supposed to be, 30's? And their mother looked ancient but probably only about 50.Not the most pc programme the other women in it were basically portrayed as 'up for it' tarts. Thank god things have changed.
Most of the women I know a good 10 years older than me look great. I'm early 50s and intend to follow suit.

I think that assessing people as younger or older depending on the clothes they wear is bizarre. Good posture, figure and teeth are the key indicators for me.

The right haircut for your face shape may take years off you, but jeans can be cruel on the post-menopausal backside.

I'm very realised how young Ritchie Valens was when he died
I always thought he was in his 30s although I've only seen photos which I guess proves your point.

Hairstyle and dress can make a huge difference in how old you look - or feel!

‘Shaving a balding head might fool no one, but arguably it’s a more youthful look than a half bald head with fluffy greying hair round the sides.

It’s the same as dyeing your hair and keeping it longer as a female, or in a funky short cut. The curlered look of greying hair was ageing.’

It isn’t the same. Having long hair in good condition is a sign of long term health. Faking it by colouring it from grey is also an imitation of youth and health.

There is nothing youthful about shaving all your hair off.

My mum looks younger in her late 60s than she did in her 40s. Gave up smoking, changed hairstyle, stopped dying it (she looks younger grey for some reason). And no longer exhausted because of young kids.

I think smoking and passive smoking as well as fashion is really key in how old people look.