Why are all young girl suddenly good looking?

[PodcastFunFair]

I'm 40 in the 90s I was reasonably attractive by 90s standards.
I was a size 12 blond curly hair, outfit deom topshop and put on nice make up with some Charlie perfume.
I look at my nieces all identikit long smooth hair, make up perfectly put on with false eyelashes, tiny sized, super stylish all could be models from their insta accounts as could their mates is everyone better looking these days or better tools?
Do I need a make up tutorial from one of them so I'm not such an old dog 😂

However know she is under pressure from insta etc and i wish it had never been invented sometimes!

Make up and filters

And wanting to look like kardashians

It's just a fashion.

I was a teenager in the early 80s and looked nowhere near as polished. For one thing make up was quite basic. Information on application and what to choose limited. Skincare was certainly more basic. I had oily skin and acne, not horrific but enough to get me teased at school and to slap on tons of the only foundation and concealer that I could afford. The GP didn't seem overly interested in prescribing anything and said I'd grow out of it, parents said I needed to wash my face more often and grandmother said I was probably constipated . So overall the products and information to improve on my looks just wasn't out there.

I don't mind seeing young people making the most of themselves. I do suspect that as well as pressure to conform, as teens in school they have more time to do all this beautifying. I know one family friend who is like this - she's in her late teens and is amazing at getting dressed up and the hair and make up is just perfect. However during the daytimes and when doing her outdoor hobby she leaves off the make up, and just plaits her hair - she then looks just like a fresh faced happy teenager.

It will all pass and the natural look will return.

Online make up tutorials are much better than Jackie magazine photoshoots; make up and hair products are cheaply available and more varied; instagram and TikTok give a wider range of skin tones, hair colours, face shapes etc. Also our perspectives are skewed - we only realise when we grow up how attractive we were in our youthfulness.

I'm a university lecturer and pre-covid I was always struck by how similar the girls looked when a new cohort first arrived. Actually the boys too - style seems to have become extremely uniform. Of course we all copied each other in the 2000s (my day) too, as teenagers will, but you had your different groups - my friends and I were the emo kids, then you had the cool kids, the sporty kids, the nerdy kids....I really see very little of that now. Its really striking to me how much they can change their faces with makeup. They can't all look so similar really. But hey, who am I to judge, if that's what they like, have at it. The ever more casual approach to surgery does bother me though. I just can't imagine changing my face permanently. Not because I think I'm so good looking but because....this is my face. This is the only face by which I've ever known myself. Wouldn't it be incredibly dysphoric to look in the mirror and see different features?

I think a hell of a lot of it is filters. I know a couple of girls who would be described as plain irl whose fb profile pictures look like insta models.

I always had a little smile when I read black women (women of colour) complaining about the lack of shades in foundation. While that is absolutely true, it wasn't all roses for light skinned women either. There were normally only 3 shades. The lightest shade was a peculiar pink/peach shade - like the 'flesh' toned plasters which was nobodies flesh colour really.

They're all going to look back at themselves in 30 years time and laugh!

They’re not like this round my way. The trend is all baggy jeans, natural/no make up, an-altered hair. The teenagers all look very casual and relaxed. I thought the super done Kardashian look has had its time and is on its way out.

@Libertynan

grandmother said I was probably constipated

Visions of Libertynan's grandmother advancing towards her with a spoon of syrup of figs or cod liver oil!

I found some pictures of me my friends in 6th form, we all look so gorgeous. I remember we were not the prettiest or coolest girls in school by a very long way. Cool boys would often call me ugly. I was very insecure. It was all bollocks. I was drop dead gorgeous and so were all my friends . I guess it’s youth.

I’m objectively worse looking now, older, larger and less time spent on my hair, but I am more appreciative of the looks I do have.

My dd isn’t polished 😬 and neither are her friends, she doesn’t wear make up and doesn’t have long hair.

Out of her year group probably around 50% are as you describe, there’s still a huge mixture of shapes/sizes, some that wear make up, others that don’t, those who are slightly goth and wear black and then those like my dd who lives in jeans and hoodies with no make up. I don’t think all young women are good looking, slim and polished.

@Scbchl

Yeah I look at my daughter at 17 and I certainly didn't look as good or as good as my 12 year old. They are all living up to such high standards now. I think its why there's so many mental health problems, the pressure on them to have their nails, eyelashes, hair done, make up perfect, be slim, where the nicest clothes. Its all thanks to social media.

I wonder if there will be a rebound effect of all those young people living this way now will prevent their own children from doing the same. Barred from makeup until 17, no false eyelashes til 24 sort of thing, or if it will simply get worse and girls will have to get up at 4am to start the beauty routine.

They look great with the Instagram filters etc but often don't look too good in real.life. Quite scary sometimes if they go overboard on the fake tan. It all seems so shallow to.me. I look back at old photos of me.and my friends in the 80s with out mullets, electric blue eyeshadow, shoulder pads and white stilettos. We looked great and best of all what happened in the 80s stays in the 80s 🤣🤣

I'm 80 this year. My granddaughters spend longer making every finger nail a work of art than my contemporaries spent on their whole "make-up for going out".
My mother (a bit short-sighted) thought the false eyelashes on my dressing table were spiders - and swotted them.
She (born in1921) like many teens, was not allowed make-up. They bought red crepe paper, spat on it, and rubbed it on their lips.

How things change...

I'm not seeing this trend continuing in the younger teenagers. I see the 19-20 somethings all like this, but my dd who is 16 and her friends all seem to rocking some sort of 90s grunge revival. DD and her friends are all wearing 2nd had 1990s fleeces, cargo pants, 2nd hand retro jumpers and hair is messy and long with minimal makeup with smudgy black eyeliner on the lower lash-line.

My dd isn’t polished 😬 and neither are her friends, she doesn’t wear make up and doesn’t have long hair.

Out of her year group probably around 50% are as you describe, there’s still a huge mixture of shapes/sizes, some that wear make up, others that don’t, those who are slightly goth and wear black and then those like my dd who lives in jeans and hoodies with no make up. I don’t think all young women are good looking, slim and polished.

SAME. I have two teenagers that don't look anything like you describe.

I don’t think buckets of make up snd fake eyelashesX orange skin looks good!

I'm thrilled that DS's girlfriend is not at all conforming to these societal norms. His GF is slim, but not tiny however I think she is about 5'9" or 5'10"- he is 6'2" and definitely doesn't tower above her. She has a wonderful style of her own (vaguely reminiscent of my own 90s style- but I don't tell DS that).

Actually, I don't see much of the hair, lashes, brows in his sixth form at all. Perhaps I just live in a massively unfashionable area.

The Internet has made it easier to look good. More shops for you to find things that fit and flatter, video tutorials for any hair or makeup techniques you want to learn.

Dental care has improved over the years too.

In the 70s and 80s very few British teenagers had braces. We were known for our wonky teeth. Now orthodontists can change the jaw line to get the wide mouth perfectly straight teeth look that all American actors had in the 80s.

Reminds me of a feature in a business magazine a couple of years ago that featured 12 young professional women who the article said had potential to go far. With just one or two exceptions they all had identical poker straight blond hair and full makeup.

I live very close to a massive 6th form college and see a lot of kids in the flesh as opposed to on screen. I wouldn't say they were more attractive than kids 30-40 years ago. They are noticeable more overweight than kids used to be and there is much more conformity around how they dress.

@DifferentHair

That's so true.

Maybe we were all more beautiful than we realised at the time?

I had a recent haul out of photos from back in the day. It was a good evening as we laughed at just about every photo. It's true we all looked like waifs with the most awful hair dos. I didn't use any make up until I was at least 25.

I think this generation won't have that experience. Because for a lot of us, we have improved with age. Well I know I have, not just because of make up etc, I have filled out a bit 😂 and just look healthier and less lanky.

I do have a teen dd, she is a dab hand with a make up brush but we don't see the uniform look here as much here (not in UK) as I see wirh my nieces who do live there. I think maybe it's because the treatments (botox, fillers, hair extensions etc) are not as easy to come by for younger girls here.

@Frazzled50yrold

It's a more uniform look. I always remember meeting a group of girls, one of whom I thought was my niece, in town but I couldn't have identified her from the rest of them. I told her this and she answered that it was the love island effect which puzzled me even more.

To be fair everyone in the 1980’s all looked identical with their massive poodle perms.

Top of the Pops is good to see examples 🤣