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 am in my 40's so grew up in the 80's and our diet was far worse than my kids nutritionally.
We ate a lot of frozen convenience food - crispy pancakes, pizza, chips, canned fruit in syrup, cheap icecream, fray bentos pies, panda pops. I think we ate less but it's mainly because it was crap tasting and fairly expensive.
My kids have access to an abundance of fresh fruit and veg that just wasn't around as much.
I think it's hard also to compare as everything is photographed now, every second of life but back then it was an expensive thing and took time (sending photos to be developed) so lots of life just isn't recorded.

There was also much less access to media than there is now - you couldn't just download a music video in order to copy the singer's look, you had to wait until it came on TV, or try to find a photo of it in a magazine!

Thank you for talking honesty.

This is just another thread to mock people/beauty trends today.

I grew up in the 70/80s

I disagree about the quality of diet - outs was boring - meat potatoes and veg which was more likely tinned or frozen but nutritionally that is as good as fresh

Despite trying to maintain that i would say I have far more access to junk today - sweets and crisps were both once a week , takeaways never , eat out on holiday - which was once every few years

Food was a large part of our bills and the junk was more expensive than simple food

The old days 😂

Of course there were contact lenses in those days

What I do notice about photos from then is that there were nowhere near as many overweight people eg in town photos as when you look around now. It's a worrying trend.

I also think that there may have been fewer obese people in the 70s/80s but we were all poorly nourished where I came from anc lots of kids were underweight. I just didn’t see vegetables during the week and broccoli and carrots were only on our Sunday roast. We might have the occasional peas with fish fingers and mash but all in all we lived on convenience food like Crispy pancakes, microwave dinners and spaghetti on toast. I don’t think i tried a courgette or pepper until I was a teenager.
People bought fruit occasionally I remember but we never had a fruit bowl in my house and neither did my friends.

Of course mental illness has always existed. Over history, mentally unwell people have been treated as possessed by evil spirits, permanently locked in asylums, lobotomised (well into the 20th century), they self harmed (Van Gogh and his ear for example). Barbaric 'treatments' were used, such as boring a hole in someone's skull 'to let the evil spirits out'.

As for obesity, it's true that food, and especially fatty and sugary food, has not always been as easily available as it is now. But no obese people? What about Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, the Venus of Willendorf statue, Catherine the Great, Oliver Hardy, Winston Churchill?

I disagree wholeheartedly.

I think most young people look amazing now with gorgeous, professional looking make up, swishy, styled hair, good clothes etc. Some are fat but most are model slim.

I was a teenager in the 80s. We all looked shit. But I was northern, so we were all a bit "Rita, Sue and Bob too". I suspect Mumsnetters from London would've looked much better.

I would say the early 90s is "old days" because I wasn't born then.

😂I've heard some batshit things on here before but this is a new one

I grew up in the eighties and nineties, no one looked good then! Honestly we were all rocking perms and blue eyeliner with neon legwarmers.

But at the time, it did look good. It was new, bright and active. It's only once a look goes out of fashion that it starts to look stale and naff.

I 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

No one had any mental health issues

Of course they did but they suffered in silence because it was taboo and you couldn't talk about it or tell anyone

Thousands of men returned from wars with horrendous mental health issues. Some even wrote about it, you might want to use one of your new fangled devices to have a Google.

As an 80,s teenager I'm not sure I agree we all looked great ,with our bad perms and electric blue mascara

Plus everyone on here says young women look cloned nowadays - maybe on TV and Instagram.

In person I know women in teens and 20s who are thin, fat, tanned, pale, false nails and lashes, all natural, curly hair, Afro hair, straight hair, makeup, no make up, athletic, all races....

In real life I don't know any clones.

Currently watching videos of Olivia Newton-John (rest in peace Flowers) and I always notice people born years and years ago, maybe in the 60s/70s/80s look amazing then and now, no fakeness,

I hardly think you can base how people looked then on good-looking film stars especially chosen for their good looks! Try watching documentaries from those decades to see how everyday people actually looked.

I'm always told by my grandparents nobody really back in the day was majorly obese or had any mental health issues.

Of course they had mental health issues. There were huge mental hospitals (now closed) housing thousands of patients. Perhaps it was out of sight out of mind.

One thing I would agree on is you didn’t see large numbers of very obese young people like you do today.

Even the men groomed themselves and dressed amazingly.

How I laughed! Again watch documentaries from the time, perhaps miners strikes or Northern Ireland troubles.

I was a child in the 80s and I still live in the area I grew up in. It was so depressing back then. The beck was full of rubbish and shopping trolleys, there was loads of smog from tannery and I remember people looking quite old and grey. I think the world is actually cleaner and healthier now despite what the papers might say.

i saw an old photo of a Woodstock festival from back in the day on an Instagramers page (Travis Scott -rapper). It looked like it was roasting and all the young guys had shirts off etc. They probably all weren’t gym bunnies or athletes but they all looked trim. The women looked very thin in their flared jeans and shirts. This would’ve been average young people maybe late teens or 20 somethings in the states. The equivalent photo today I think would look very different.

You are kidding, right? My mum and her high school class looked younger in the photo from their 25 anniversary/reunion than they did in their graduation photo (in 1965?) because the fashion for women back then was so incredibly frumpy. Oh, the hideous hairdos. The Dame Edna glasses. HORRID! Then in the seventies, most grown people smoked, so they had yellow teeth and fingers and got wrinkles really early and while only a few were obese many were far too skinny. Besides very few women look good with a scarf on their heads.

I think you are making the mistake to assume that ordinary people looked like the actors and actresses in the movies. You should look at some of the old new clips where they interview people on the street instead. It is downright depressing how bad most people looked.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. There was one fat girl in my whole primary school, maybe 2 or 3 in secondary. People walked/moved around more. ONJ was naturally beautiful which helps. Thanks for reminding me that was the olden days.

I got my first contact lenses in 1974.

or had any mental health issues

untrue. My Nana and Grandad both came from huge families in very poor towns in Ireland. A staggering amount of their siblings and friends committed suicide before they were 20. It was a lot more stigmatised then so it wasn’t talked about.

I'm not sure about this. I'm not a fan of the orange tan, heavy brows, contoured type look personally but overall I think people look so much better. I was looking at pics of my mum on her wedding day in the 80s, she was 20 but looked so much older than me (early 30s). On old photos my family look like they are in their 70s in their 50s. My mum looks fantastic now (almost 60) but her grandma at the same age looked vastly older with a perm and frumpy clothes.

People much much slimmer for sure though