To think people looked and felt better back in the old days vs now?

[wildernesswild]

Currently watching videos of Olivia Newton-John (rest in peace ) and I always notice people born years and years ago, maybe in the 60s/70s/80s look amazing then and now, no fakeness, I'm always told by my grandparents nobody really back in the day was majorly obese or had any mental health issues. Even the men groomed themselves and dressed amazingly.

What do we think contributes to our issues these days? Is it social media, processed food, unrealistic standards? I'd love to hear everyone's opinion

I loved growing up in the 70s/80s. I would go back in a heart beat. Everyone seems self-absorbed these days.

The difference is probably you, not other people. If you were growing up in those decades you were a child and teen, the world practically revolved around you and people responded to your needs in a way that it doesn’t and they don’t when you’re a self sufficient adult. Your DC will almost certainly hark back to these decades of their childhood as the best of their lives where everything was brilliant, even as the adults on this thread claim that the world is collapsing. It’s why comparison is difficult, you experience the world differently at different life stages.

Those people looking old in their 60s lived to look even older in their 80s like DM DF and DMIL

I don't recall joining the common market changing my life one iota except there were endless newspapers articles about it but then I was in Scotland not SEEngland.

I don't know about people feeling better. I mean there's a lot to unpick in your posts.

Personally I don't wear glasses but I like them my mum is an 80s child and the glasses she wore were not the best partly because my nana wouldn't spend a lot of money and mainly because the range of glasses we have today are much better compared to the 80s. I suspect contact lenses were not as popular but not my time.

The amount of pound shops we have today are uncessary and I think hugely contributes to being over weight! I'm a 90s child and back then there was not pound shops all over like today which has become a hindrance.

I believe this was true. My white nana had 3 mixed race children and things were bad when my mum grew up in the North and that was 80s. My nanas father was a crude and extremely racist man! My nanas mother was lovely and was not racist at all. So either you don't really know about them times in the 70s or you must of been very oblivious.

I'm 90s and things obviously got better but I do remember my mum being slandered by a white elderly lady she told my mother (whilst my white nana stood with us unbeknown to her) "get back to your own Country". The elderly lady was soon set straight by my mother! And this was in the 90s.

There's a picture doing the rounds on twitter of a freakshow from just over a century ago featuring 'the world's fattest man'.

He honeslty wouldn't make you look twice if you saw him in a wetherspoon's today.

A poster mentioned people dressed properly and more respectable even the young people. This is true. Your perm was likely in fashion "at the time" along with your clothes though. I'm a make up wearer myself but the young girls (school girls) will have high end make up from Harvey nics and selfridges and other stores like JL their faces look like a night out during the day. It's too much. The skimpy alfits...are the same it should be worn at a party not day time casually going to town.

*disagree too. 80s Photos of me with a perm and awful clothes. Clothes were very expensive and there wasn't really many treatments about to have ( eyebrows etc) I was rubbish at doing my own. The young today look much more groomed and have better fashion I think.

More products available too*

l looked amazing in the 80’s. Most of my stuff had cut off sleeves and necks, or was black jersey. I hate the eyebrow/contour look of today it looks awful.

@Itsgettinghotinhre and yet another poster was complaining that teens now are wearing leggings/tracksuit bottoms ,loose tops/hoodies and look so unkempt.

Both can't possibly be true?

No fakeness, are you kidding?

I always notice people born years and years ago, maybe in the 60s/70s/80s

well, thanks a lot.

This is how to alienate whole swathes of MN.

Also - people have always had mental health issues. It wasn't discussed openly - perhaps euphemistically (trouble with her nerves etc) - and there was a huge stigma until recently. Still lots of people don't openly discuss it.

Mental health issues were just as prevalent but people with bad MH were often locked up so weren’t visible like today.

This!
The younger generation will say they have depression or anxiety.
My generation will say we are having a bad day or a hard time.
My parents generation will say they are not bad...considering.

Unless you understand that for most older people talking about being depressed or anxious is still extremely hard, you can not begin to understand mental health problems of older people.

Middle-aged men have the highest suicide rate followed by middle-aged women. I knew as a child older adults with obvious mental health problems. Such as the neighbour who would not leave the house, the father of my friend whose hair fell out because of stress, the older sister of a friend who disappeared into hospital after a serious suicide attempt. But this was all talked about in hushed whispers. No one ever spoke about it openly.

I was born in the 50s and grew up the 60s and 70s and had my kids in the 80s.

Many things were different:

-fewer people had cars so there was more walking - to the bus stop at least

-kids played outside more - my generation and my kids

• less time spent watching TV and on computers and phones

• in some ways diet was better - less junk food, no ready meals, constant snacking not encouraged, only takeaway was fish and chips. In other ways it was worse - less variety and being a veggie was barely a possibility.

• we didn't wear lycra and sports clothes all the time - but we did wear jeans.

• there were mental health issues. Some people just suffered in silence. Others were considered to have had a "nervous breakdown" and were treated in hospital. Nowadays they would be diagnosed with anxiety and depression - might or might not be admitted for a short time and then treated in the community.

-social media brings a lot of benefits but also has a lot to answer for in creating impossibly high standards for beauty and fashion.

My generation will say we are having a bad day or a hard time

l was born in 63. I’ve got anxiety and depression. I’m open about it. Never say I’m having a ‘bad day’. People with it generally have bad months rather than days.

And suicide is the biggest killer of young men.

I don’t think basing the judgment on watching Hollywood movies is very representative! There were plenty of snaggletoothed plump normal people around they just didn’t tend to get photographed.

No, no they didn't look better in the 60s, 70s and 80s. I lived through all those decades, and I think people are healthier and on average 'better' looking that they were forty, fifty or sixty years ago.

I certainly looked bad in all those decade. I had chipped teeth, basin-cut hair and round NHS glasses in the sixties; I rocked those platform soles , which looked ridiculous on my skinny legs, in the seventies, and I went Punk as the decade moved on. In the eighties, I was in my twenties and tried to power dress to impress. It was all hairspray and pads.

Yet, it was not just fashion that made us look worse that today's population. In the sixties, there might not have been more child poverty than today, but it was more severe. More adults wore dentures, indeed there were reports of people having all their teeth removed and NHS dentures fitted as a wedding gift. We ate an awful lot of sweets. Petrol was leaded and there was still pollution from industries. The environment was not a healthy one.

In the seventies, as others have said, we smoked. Schoolchildren could buy cigarettes with their dinner money. In fact, I can remember going to the shop that sold single cigarettes for (I think it was 5 p). Sugar free drinks were not a thing, so our teeth and skin was not all that good. As for the long hair and droopy moustaches!

In the eighties, there were some crazy diets and fitness had just become fashionable.

No, we may look at old photos and videos and think how lovely people looked. I look at an old photograph of my mother and father in the mid-fifties. My mother looked so elegant in her fitted coat and little beret, and yes, she got a lot of exercise dancing and playing sports (which were the ways people met others in those days). However, life expectancy was lower and people died of diseases that are easily cured or prevented now.

Olivia Newton John looked fantastic in 'Grease'. I remember watching the film as a teenager, smoking Players cigarettes at the back of the cinema with one of those droopy haired boys. We didn't look so good.

I disagree too. 80s Photos of me with a perm and awful clothes.

But perms and "awful clothes" were what was in fashion at the time. Maybe people will look back at what we are wearing now in a few decades and think they are "awful clothes". I remember buying lots of clothes in the 80s, it seemed to be my main pastime other than listening to music. I despair of clothes now and end up getting a lot from etsy as I can't find much that I like otherwise.

Maybe people will look back at what we are wearing now in a few decades and think they are "awful clothes"

Of course they will! This is why fashions change.

Also, and I hate to sound like a doom-monger but climate change is here now. We are all going to suffer a massive drop in living standards over the next few decades. I suspect that will make older ways of doing things (ie, making do) look much more sensible than now, and it will make current fashions and other societal trends look, well, like luxuries.

I was also born in '63. I think women generally look much younger now than say my parents' generation. We have realised that getting older doesn't have to mean that you have to become frumpy! I remember some of the clothes my mum used to wear and she was a young mum; she didn't have to descend into 'age' the way she did!

I love colour and while I'm not a follower of fashion as such, I like to think that my style is at least contemporary! My two 20-something daughters would soon tell me if they thought I was dressing 'old', or 'mutton dressed as lamb'!

I really don't think that men groomed themselves the way they do now! Getting a beauty treatment would not have been deemed to be 'manly' and men were not much into beauty products!

There were overweight people back then just the same as there are now. Consumption of sugar, for example, would have been much more. Everyone would have had it in their tea and coffee, and sugar sandwiches (ugh!!) were a 'thing'!

60s baby 70s teen: no it wasn't better. I had a difficult childhood. However that isn't the whole picture

Mental health wasn't recognised

Domestic abuse - Womens Aid didn't start until 1974 - still only scratched the surface of

Being gay - not illegal but much homophobia

Racism- rampant (just look at the TV then)

Child s//ual abuse - the 80s when Ester Ranson initiated Childline

School - still violence used in

Addiction - even less understood of it being an illness

Divorce - very difficult to get and frowned upon

Drink/driving was the norm

I don't think generically it was a good era. From a personal side it wasn't either

I actually YouTubed an episode of Bullseye after a poster upthread mentioned that people look way older than they say. In the first conversation Jim Bowden had for a 1990 episode there was a REALLY homophobic comment that everyone laughed hysterically at. I’m not sure anything was better back in the day (and yes the contestants all looked like shit)

I’ve just seen this photo on Facebook. A Glasgow pub in 1968.
I know even now Glasgow has one of the lowest life expectancies in the U.K., probably even lower then.
I bet these women are much younger than you might think.

I think for younger children back in the seventies, they were out playing far more than today's kids. I walked to school and back, no bus etc. I also walked to the shop before school as well come rain or shine. Never got offered a lift. After school, had my tea and out again or a friend called round and we went out. Looking back it was quite shocking that my parents did not particularly check up on me or where I was!

I used to stay with my aunt,work on a local farm and eat three meals a day and stay slim. As for looking better, don't know so much. I had a terrible feather cut hair style so I looked like the singer in the Sweet not to mention flares and spots. But I was a happy kid and thought I looked great. I really didn't.

Today I think there are better skin treatments, better hairdressers, no awful perms etc when you are older.

Most people on TV like ONJ were pretty looking, I remember her on Cliff Richard show, so showing my age. I wanted her hairstyle. No overly white denture type teeth either. Perhaps we view the past through rosey tinted specs.

Being gay - not illegal but much homophobia
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Well, until 1967, it was illegal to be homosexual. It's mad to think this was only a few years before I was born.
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