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 😂

One of the biggest changes is cheap good shampoo! You can get Pantene in Poundland. In our era (70's/80's) people didn't wash as much, no-one had showers every day, and often hair was washed with cups/one of those shower attachments. Shampoo was harsh. Hair just wasn't as glossy and it didn't grow as long.

Perming it and spraying it with hairspray gave it a bit of longevity. I remember girls with incredibly greasy hair at school- once a week baths for a few strict parents.

It's the long glossy swishy hair that I look twice at- it's gorgeous!

@BringOnTheOtherWorlders

I'm in a support group for people who contracted botulism from Botox and it is shocking to see all the young 20's in the group doing Botox (or who used to do it because they can't do it anymore due to illness).

They also do fillers in their lips and chins, lip flips, eyelash extensions, hair extensions, something called microblading on eyebrows, lip liner tattoo, breast implants and other stuff, most of which I don't quite understand.

Ah botulism, that's dreadful, I'm so sorry! When I was a student nurse , botulism was one of the diseases that stuck in my mind and, along with Huntingdon's Chorea, disturbed me more than most, because it's origin, a bacteria usually found in pork, was so disgusting! When the botox trend started, it turned my stomach as I couldn't believe that anyone would want to get that disgusting stuff injected into them, even though it's a dead strain of Clostridium botulinum! Even if I was like a prune, I wouldn't have it anywhere near me! As for the young ones of today, here in Ireland they are much more made up but spoil the best effects with fake tan which turns them orange. It's as if they have been taught to hate their pale skin, which I do remember feeling inferior about myself as a teenager in 1970s England because being tanned was so important to people and everyone was browner than me in the Summer- everyone!!! The thing is, nearly everyone in Ireland is pale so they wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb like I did and so I don't understand why they feel so bad about their natural skin tone they'd rather be bright orange! "Orange young wans" is a standing joke here these days! They're like feckin' oompa loompas, lol!

It’s the Love Island look - and something that’s very British (I have similar nieces - my DCs who live in France call it the English look) The aim seems to be to look as fake as possible and the pressure to do so is something that is not necessarily great for mental health. Not helped by the fact that today’s teens are constantly documenting themselves on snapchat and Instagram and the pressure to look perfect is immense - with filters to ensure that what you see is not even a true representation thus setting the bar even higher.

You only have to look at the studio audiences of Top of the Pops in the 1970s to see that young women back then didn't have the money or the techniques available to them to be the polished Instagram models they are today. No such thing as hair extensions, hair straighteners or even hair styles back then - the hair styles were non-existent.

Of course there were hairstyles in the 70s, the Farrah Fawcett, the Wedge, the page boy bob to name a few.

@DarkDarkNight

I know what you mean. No Cover Girl compact foundation in orange and white eye liner on your waterline, no dodgy Topshop or Tammy Girl fashions.

They all seem to be masters with make up - full contour and highlighting. I blame the Kardashians.

I feel sorry for them though. It must be hard to live up to. We have an apprentice at work and she said they all get dressed up for Insta photos then changed into comfier clothes. She openly says it’s all just done for social media.

We've remarked on this and said how hard it must be for girls and young women these days. My niece is 21 and in her 3rd year at university - as a teenager at school, she was never interested in such things (she's very studious and a talented track runner, so most of her time was taken with both of those things), but since going to university the photos she posts of her with her friends are all these identikit ones.

My partner and I were musing about how easy we had it as students in the second half of the 70s - everyone wore the standard 'uniform' of jeans, t-shirt and sweatshirt, or big 'lumberjack' type shirts. I don't think we even thought about make-up for three years!

Filters and photoshop

Fashions change and our perceptions change as we get older. They seem better looking because you are older! Most young women and girls are nice looking without any make up just because they are young.

@DartmoorChef

As you say yourself they all look alike, and it's all make up, filters and fake. As for the current trend in slug like eyebrows I don't even begin to understand how anyone thinks it looks good.

There's also way too much pressure from social media for girls to look perfect as well which is not healthy in any way.

This. ^ All fake. Teeth whitening, fake tans, hair extensions, false eyelashes, boob and bum implants, fake eyebrows, lip fillers, botox, etc etc etc, (and a SHIT LOAD of filters/paint shop manipulation of photos!)

I have seen friends and colleagues of my 20-something adult DC (who are in their 20s and early 30s,) in real life, after seeing all their pics on their instagram and facebook, and have been knocked sideways by how different they look. Not awful, but plain and bland and shorter and nearly always 'less slim...' One young woman looked some 3-4 stone heavier in real life. In fact very few of them look as slim as their instagram photos suggest..

Most people use the best pics of themselves online - flattering, no double chin (camera held a few inches above the nose,) and often with a filter on the pics. I probably look a stone heavier and 5 years older in real life to what I look on my pics. Like everyone else I use the best pics of me. The old saying goes 'the camera never lies.' That's bullshit. It can make you look better than you do, and can make you look worse.

Going back to these girls/young women, many of them would look soooo much better if they didn't do anything to themselves. The lip fillers and botox and slug eyebrows YUK! Just a bit of make up is fine.

Also, when I was a teen/young 20-something, girls were just as pretty then, and MUCH more natural. Girls/women have always been pretty, and you're a bit deluded @PodcastFunFair and possibly brainwashed by the media, if you think girls/women are 'much more 'good looking' these days.

I was fucking gorgeous in the 1980s and 1990s in my late teens/ 20s/30s As were many other women!!! AND I did nothing to myself. I was 100% natural. (Well, expect for a bit of make up, and the highlighted hair, taking my hair from a dark blonde to a lighter blonde.)

It's the Groupon era - loads of 'beauty' treatments on the cheap. For those who consider themselves a cut above discounts, there are also parents with unbelievable disposable income who will make it happen at full price. I do think that the two extremes of figure are more prevalent now than in the 90s. There are more super tiny girls whom I see in real life and many more plus size ones and they are all proudly flaunting it because they have bought into the hundred memes telling them that this is what the feminist revolution was trying to achieve all along

I’m 42. I was never going to be a supermodel in the 90s but I had a fab time without camera phones, filters, Botox etc. I was into gigs/festivals and music before it became fashionable to go to glasto in shorts and hunter wellies. How you looked didn’t matter. I’ve had great consistent friends and family. I still have the same friends too. Because I wasn’t beautiful/good looking I’ve never concentrated on that and tried to improve on it. I am what I am. I wear make up but look after my hair and skin.

My nieces and nephews haven’t conformed to these new norms either. They are very much their own people and don’t care about looks/filters/love island /social media. It’s very easy to be swept in with it all and I’m glad that they’ve not been.

I work with teens. While we do now see
Many who have perfected make up and the glam look at very early ages. Plenty of them are still their own selves and do their own thing. If anything lots are more what was alternative: into anime/emo/alt looks and styles.

As they grow teens will grow into adults and find their own paths in life, it’s just a shame that by that point many will have already gone down the Botox/filler route.

Personally, I cannot abide by the drag queen, contoured uniformity and I cannot imagine eighteen-year-old-me would have bought into it either. Of course, I can never be sure...

I was really pretty when I was younger (and I don't scrub up too badly now, and I'm much more confident to go without make-up).

I've always looked after myself though with food and exercise, I've never been one of those people who could be naturally slim and look good without doing anything, even when I was in my late teens and 20s I always went to the gym and/or played sport. Even so I'm still a bit overweight now but not unfit.

I have older teen dcs and niece and I worry about the fashion for high maintenance good looks, because it requires a fair bit of money and time to achieve. Eg it's pretty common among girls I know to spend an hour or more on make up and hair before school (even in schools where make up is apparently banned), never mind the effort put into 'going out' looks. It seems normal among their friends to spend most pocket money and birthday presents on beauty products and treatments, and spend hours watching video tutorials.

I don't care what the fashion is and whether or not it's to my taste, but in terms of pressure on young women, I much prefer my neighbour's daughter's grungy, low maintenance look, because it must leave her a lot more free time and money for other activities.

I can definitely understand why we see a trend in young women wanting to identify out of being a woman if this is what they think being a woman is (which it clearly isn't but it's probably all they see on SM)

I was thinking the same thing only recently, OP.

I recall looking at some paintings on the wall at a stately home & I said to one of the curators that the women all look the same in those paintings. I didn't know if it was the style of the paintings (as in, the painter applied their own style to the subject, such as the heavy lidded look that many subjects have in paintings from the 18th/19th centuries) or the fashions of the days (hair, dress, etc).

The curator said to me that it was mainly the fashions that were the same and that, if I looked at young women now, I would think they all looked the same because of their hairstyles and fashions. Which is absolutely true. However, I do agree with you that many of them also look very polished - far more so than I remember I and my peers did as teenagers in the 90s.

They learned how to do makeup and hair properly, rather than buying Orange number 5 like we did and plastering it on while our mums told us we needed more on or it 'looks like you're not wearing any'

@Feelingoktoday

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.

I was a 70s teen. Had a rail track type brace and had to wear rubber bands in my mouth. I wasn’t the only one at my school.

@nineteensixy - you mentioned your neighbour's daughter's grungy look. I was very glad we had grunge when I was growing up. Bring it back!

@BridStar

They learned how to do makeup and hair properly, rather than buying Orange number 5 like we did and plastering it on while our mums told us we needed more on or it 'looks like you're not wearing any'

Orange No 5 🤣

Interested for those with teen/young girls-do they wear this full contoured makeup + false eyelashes everyday! Or is it just for the gram?

I contour too but just around the cheekbones. I have seen tutorials for the kardashian type, it would take a long time to blend. I guess those with false lashes would be getting semi permanent ones, i cannot imagine wearing falsies on a daily basis (but I know in the past before lash extensions, a lot of japanese girls used to wear disposable lashes daily which they bought from Daiso; so not impossible but false lashes are much more expensive in the UK!).

Interested for those with teen/young girls-do they wear this full contoured makeup + false eyelashes everyday! Or is it just for the gram?

Mine doesn't wear it at all. Nor do any of her friends.

@OhGiveUp

Make up and filters can make a 90 year old walnut look 21 and gorgeous. Take a look at them again when they first wake up on a morning.

Like on those ads for magic foundation on Facebook. Anyone ever bought any?

@OhGiveUp I am not sure about that. Search Vera Wang on google. I think she looks gorgeous and good for her age and she has access to the best makeup as well as a PT, but she definitely doesn't look 21

Contouring and filters. It's not real and I can't actually imagine how much it must absolutely mess with your mental health long term to have to project an image of yourself to the world that isn't really you. Like at night when you wash the layers of contouring off your face and you look like a totally different person to the person you are pretending to look like? And then how it must limit you. How can you go for a swim? Can you dance with your whole body and soul if you worry your make-up will melt and you hair frizz up a bit? Can you play sports? Work up a sweat through play? Build the real muscle that will play a huge role in keep your bones and muscles healthy enough to keep you fully mobile through middle age and beyond?

God, I think it's a fucking awful, awful, awful way to live.

It's the crap they stick on.

Natural beauty is hidden too often these days.