Or are ALL children/ teens better looking these days?

[UnreasonabIe]

I'm 44, in my day my friends, and certainly me, weren't as good looking as every young person I come across now. Does anyone else notice this? Is this evolution? Is it looking through some kind of older person lens? Looking back at old photos of us doesn't change my mind either.
I'm going to think my daughter is the most beautiful person inside and out and wouldn't give two hoots regardless, however all her friends, boys and girls, seem the same..... I noticed it on the last day of school as all the children were coming out and commented to a fellow Mum about it who agreed.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon?

I think good looking people naturally gravitate towards other people with similar good looks. So you’re probably seeing theses gangs together.

I think, although we had braces back in the 70s, your teeth had to be quite bad. Not just a tooth out of alignment for example. I was pleased my son’s teeth came through straight but the dentist was critical and wanted to close the slight gap and straighten a few with braces.

Even my 13 year old DS uses a Cerave face wash which makes a difference to any spots. His nutrition is far better than mine was at that age. He asks for healthy snacks and is in to his sports and working out. I don’t doubt some of this is driven by social media but he seems healthy with it so I’ll just keep and eye on it. His friends are all the same.

Maybe there’s sadly more of a divide these days?

You look back at photos though and think we all
looked awful in the 80s due to the hairstyles and fashions but at the time there were plenty of good looking people.

In relation to primary - hmm, I definitely think that parents pay more attention to children’s fashions and haircuts and so on than they used to. But I grew up in a middle-class though not massively affluent area in the north during the 80s, and looking back at primary school photos, the kids’ actual faces look pretty similar to the kids at my DD’s school — it’s just the haircuts that look a bit dodgy!

My DD’s school is in a very diverse but still pretty affluent area, and yes there as plenty of swishy-haired Boden-wearing kids but there are also plenty of normal looking kids too who still however look healthy, just not like child models. There is more of an emphasis on healthy diet and exercise, definitely, but also more interest in children’s clothes — though not to excess. My DD’s friends tend to be on the Boden-wearing side, but none of them are allowed makeup or earrings and so on; and they tend to be mostly found in shorts and a t-shirt, or a jersey dress. I think parents do pay more attention to haircuts and teeth as well as nice clothes though. As in my post above, my mum was very hot on health and diet, and us being clean and having healthy teeth, but was not interested in the cosmetic side of things and allowed me some truly terrible haircuts and clothes! They were expensive good quality clothes, but very dorky by the fashions of the time. She also didn’t “do” hair and so from an early age I had to put my own pudding-bowl hair up, which resulted in a fair number of eye-poppingly bad hairstyles 🤣

My primary-age DD has massively lucked out genetically with swishy blonde hair and my own mum’s lovely green eyes <jealous 😂> but I also am mindful of how my own mum didn’t care about whether I had fashionable clothes and hair, so I probably do spend too much time on her clothes and making sure they look in style and so on. To the point where I ask her what she wants and she will say “I like whatever you buy, mum”!

I will definitely be making sure she has help with skin, hair and managing teenage acne or weight and so on later on, because I was really left to my own devices with that and I had a lot of self-esteem issues as a result. It wasn’t until well into my 20s when I learned how to dress well and make the most of my looks, when I started having some proper disposable income for the first time. If I had realised how to do so earlier, or had someone to help give me advice, I would really have benefited hugely as a child and teenager!

I grew up in Ireland , a teenager in the 80's.We didn't even have a hairdryer in the house and I have thick wavy hair, that paired with damp weather , we all looked like we had plugged ourselves into an electric socket .We did eat well though , plain simple good food .Lots of veg and milk and butter , homemade brown bread.Nobody was fat , maybe one in every class but that was it.I do remember at the time when all the Spanish or French students came for the summers to learn english that they looked so much better than we did .They wore colour even yellow which was exclaimed about . Some of us were walking around in brown clothes .It was a revelation! One of them a french girl became a good friend and came repeatedly over a number of years to stay with us for the summer.She was just stunning, beautiful hair and skin.Simple , plain but well made clothes .She had an Evian Spray for her face! It was like hanging around with a celebrity as all the boys in the town fancied her.I told her always how fabulous she was and she always replied that 'but Schnubbins , you are so natural ' Not too sure if that was good or bad !

For me the biggest different I notice though is with boys. In the secondary school I teach, most boys will use various skincare products and have much better skin than I remember the boys I hung around with 20 years ago having. The clothes they wear are a lot more fashionable and often more slim-fitting than that my the boys in my circle wore 20 years ago (think baggy 90s hoodies), which also makes them look better. A lot put almost as much effort into their hair as girls will, and use straighteners etc. Lots of them now will start working out in the gym from the age of 13/14 onwards which has a huge impact on their appearance. I'm not 100% sure how healthy that is to be honest and I think social media and the types of guys on Love Island have a lot to answer for...

They are often either really tall, and slender with it, or quite astonishingly well-covered. The average child or young teen I see these days is as fat as the fattest "fat kid" in my entire school when I was young, and there was only one "fat kid" per school then...

Thank you for all your replies. Maybe it is a regional thing. Maybe it's nutritional. Maybe it's perception.

But it's been really interesting for me to see your replies.

I must admit I didn't mean the superficial stuff like hair and fashion, but maybe it's difficult to see past that and that's what I am seeing without realising

I agree. In my teens, you were either good looking (small minority of natural beautiful people) or you weren't. If you weren't, you pretty much accepted that you were ordinary ( were grateful not to be considered ugly) and got on with your life.
You might scrub up now and again, and wear nice clothes, but there didn't seem the aspiration to be a beautiful celebrity like person, looking amazing in photographs. Looking like that, in the days before filters, was out of our reach, so we wouldn't have even thought about trying .
Interestingly, our women role models, particularly in music were not particularly good looking either. We tried to emulate their style, but not their looks.
I'm sorry to hear about your DD.

Love this. Refreshingly honest and great descriptions.

yes teens definitely much less spotty but I wonder why this is. I'm mid 40s and suffered horrendous acne and greasy hair so much so I had to be referred to the dermatology clinic and I was on all kinds of meds and lotions and potions for it and I suffered way up until my late 30s . I was so worried my dd would inherit my terrible skin but luckily she hasn't she's now almost 15 and she just occasionally has very mild pimples absolutely nothing like my skin was at her age. looking back I'd say my diet was better too, no where near as much fast junk food and snacks so no idea why today's teens have better skin when they eat so much crap. it's so strange.

Could it be because they drink more? There’s a huge emphasis on water bottles now and staying hydrated. Was never the case when I was a kid, a few glass of squash a day maybe, I thought it was normal for wee to be dark yellow 🤢

I agree! I haven't noticed this, only on Snapchat, Instagram and filters lol. Not real life.