An illustrative picture: Leighton Meester at 17 (left) and 40 (right).
I know im old and I refuse to color my hair which has become common practice even in men so I look older now. Its kinda funny because I was always a long hair so until about my 50’s it often seemed like people thought I was younger than I was just do to the long hair and casual clothes.
Medicine has advanced
Smoking has decreased. Millennials aren’t at the point where medical advances matter that much to them as a demographic.
And medicine isn’t why famous boomers look good for their age, that’s called plastic surgery.
I look like shit but I did some very heavy drinking for a very long time. Finally on the back side of that. Hopefully in a few months I’ll be better off
No, but they look older than their age when they’re <20
Yep lol she looks 30 in both photos.
I’m a baby/tail end millennial and I’ve been assumed to be in my mid 20s for the past 15 years ¯\(ツ)/¯
Plastic surgery has gotten better if you’re really only looking at celebrities. I know plenty of non-celebrity millennials that have aged like fine raw milk in a hot sun.
That buccal fat removal trend is going to age like milk though.
Also millennials use sunscreen.
Sunscreen and hydrating does a lot i think.
Absolutely. I’ve been using moisturizer for about the past 30 years and - if i may say so myself - I look a lot less crinkly than many other people my age.
Not being around smokers and other pollution does a ton too.
Catalytic converters are way nicer than you’d expect.
Old cars are stinky.
Of course we do. There was that bizarre song in 97 that made sure we never forget to wear sunscreen!
Somehow Baz Luhrmann has done more for humanity than most boomers.
Nobody smokes anymore.
I guarantee its the ban on indoor smoking.
That one roasted even the non smokers. It was unavoidable for poor genx
I’m a bit of a Gen X counter example. I smoked for 20-years and was getting carded for beer in my 40s by young women. At 55, I was looking damned good until the last couple of years, and that’s more mental issues than physical. (I know, they go together.)
So, my dad smoked three packs a day for years and pretty much all of them in the same room. I’d spend hours in that room. People say you can’t get addicted from second hand smoke but fuck did I have cravings when he died (of cancer. I know. Shocking). Was that addiction? Who’s to say. It could be that and the grief and everything, it was a tangled fucking mess obviously, when your dad dies when you’re just 16. But hey, at least I never picked up the habit myself. Grossed out by it. I’ve seen what that shit does to a person. I’m not doing that to myself or the people around me.
That’s really what it is. Smoking ages you hard
It ages the people around you too. That’s a big part of what’s changed.
It seems nicotine is far worse than mj in that regard, at least in my experience.
Millennials smoked a lot and still do. And the more recent generations have simply moved to vapes.
So yeah, people still smoke.
Elder millennials are the last to remember what smoking actually was. We remember restaurants with smoking and non-smoking sections. We remember a time before the “smoke break”, when you didn’t leave your desk to smoke, you just lit up and continued to work.
Millennials smoke in designated outdoor smoking areas. Boomers smoked in grocery stores.
I’m GenX and I remember smoking in grocery stores, movie theatres, offices, buses, airplanes…everywhere. People used to smoke while eating.
I knew people who’d smoke 2 packs a day, and one guy who’d smoke 3 (basically a cigarette in his hand every minute of the day, sometimes with a second one burning in the ashtray). Having a puff while you’re out drinking doesn’t even count as smoking in comparison.
Gen X here. I learned to smoke in the local mega mall.
They do, but nobody smokes indoors anymore.
You got numbers or just feelings?
They likely smoke and assume they’re the norm.
I think you for the wrong generation. Or you live somewhere not where in from
Also less working outside and the wide spread use of water resistant sunscreen from the 1980s on. Not smoking and staying out of the sun will keep your skin looking better for longer.
on top of that, people either wear sun tan lotion or take measures to limit the sun exposure. Ill be turning 40 in this decade (loljk this year) and the half generation between me and my, about to be 60 in 2 years, parents look 1000x’s older than every single person younger than them when their ages eventually match.
That was hard to explain so ima just lay it out. Its about 20 years between my parents and I. Their youngest friends have always been 10 years younger than them cuz thats how old my dads closest but youngest brother is. My friend were always all over the place but pretty sure theyre all within 10 years my senior.
We live in a small town and have a huge family. Last i counted we were at 49 1st cousins and 1st cousins once removed. Which means 1st cousins and kids of those 1st cousins… on my mom’s side. Pops only had 3 siblings but both his parents were sitting a bakers dozen deep of sibling each. So his side gave us the rest of the fucking town as 2nd cousins.
Just to give context of the brickhouse volume of individuals ive been able to watch age very very closely. The pivot point where it all seems to change is whether or not you graduated before 2000 or if you graduated after 2005.
It wasnt 9/11 either that did it. Everywhere and everyone just did q complete societal flip from raising kids by the survival of the fittest bible, to the worst period of helicopter parents ive still ever seen.
World really is so different with avalable information versus the centuries long argument “cuz i said so”. Swear to god the green flag of it all was MADD’s successful push on drinking and driving. Which in hindsight is wild cuz all it was, was PTA moms chatting it up, like there was no fucking emails, there was no social media like thwre is today. Youd be more likely seeing a normal grown ass adult shit their pants than you were to see anyone older than 25 on facebook. No smartphones, so no text or sharing or forwarding. It was all completely done word of mouth.
Im way off even my original tangent but the bottom point I guess was, people stopped living their life like theyd rather take a bullet than get called a pussy for putting on sun screen or going outside to smoke instead of clambaking cartons at a time cuz thats what rulled the world for centuries before there was a thing like being informed or fact checking.
I smoke and people still think I’m 10 years younger than I am. 🤷
How long you been smoking for?
My MIL looks 20 years older than she actually is, but I saw photos of her from 30 years ago and she looked pretty normal
Seems to hit as you get older, and obviously self a on quantity smoked
Except for a 3 year period where I quit, 23 years.
Gen Z/A is going to look even more youthful with their lower alcohol consumption.
Not with the addiction of social media. Stress and anxiety are bad for your health.
Mate are you implying Millenials aren’t stressed?
We are, but z and alpha have literally grown up with an iPad in their face. They are probably more addicted to social media which is known to fuck with your dopamine levels.
Gen Z/A are heavily addicted to vaping, which is a little better than smoking, but only a little.
I don’t think either of those things are true
Gen Z is addicted to vaping: https://www.chestnet.org/guidelines-and-topic-collections/publications/chest-advocates/gen-z-is-hooked-on-vaping Gen A is a bit young, but the older Gen As are included in the stats and follow the exact pattern as Gen Z.
As for how bad vaping is, is a bit more difficult, as it’s a more recent thing than smoking is. But indications are it’s better than smoking but it’s far from safe. This site had a good overview with sources: https://www.healthline.com/health/is-vaping-worse-than-smoking-cigarettes
Depends on what you’re vaping, I’d imagine different chemicals would vary greatly.
However nothing beats the OG vaped chemical O2 , nothing is going to beat the things our lungs are designed for.
What really bakes my noodle is that our lungs are more meant to expel CO2 than inhale O2. I even had my great doctor talking about my heart slamming because I was low on blood, therefore O2. I never argue with docs, but we don’t have oxygen sensors, only “holy shit that’s too much carbon dioxide!” sensors.
Yeah I remember thinking this was why oxygen is the most humane way to perform assisted suicides.
Always a devisive topic but for a persons body to not know it is about fall asleep and die… Just seemed a logical starting point.
For I mean biologically speaking, having to breath and eat from the same whole is pretty annoying. We need to bioengineer humanity away from this entire active respiratory system nonsense.
I’m tired of being a damn gas exchange /s
I watched a documentary last night about an event that occurred in the 80s. They would give the age of the individual along with the name. In every single case the person looked about 10 years older than I am. Not just the hairstyle but the actual age showing on their face.
I am at least 4 years older than every single person mentioned at the time they were pictured.
About half the people pictured died as a result of this incident. So it’s not like it was a picture from years later.
Smoking and sun exposure are motherfuckers for aging
There’s probably some survivorship bias going on here. You’re not really going to see pictures of people who have been unattractive their whole lives, I wouldn’t think.
i mean, there’s a whole thing where movies insist on basically every single actor being conventionally attractive these days.
It’s something that stood out to me about Project Hail Mary, the government lady is violently german looking and that’s fucking rare to see in big movies these days
No.
obligatory, since nobody else has linked it yet
This 👆
Everybody from a more recent generation looks on average younger than the generations before. In the middle ages people didn’t have sunscreen and bathed once a year. But even if you look at older movies, Sean Connery is 31 in Dr No but he looks like in his 40s. All those cigarettes, the booze, the lack of regular exercise, and only eating full Scottish breakfasts all the time. Fast forward to today where more people worry about their appearance and next to not smoking, not drinking, eating healthy, exercising, etc. people have a range of cosmetics and/or cosmetic surgery at their disposal. Of course they look younger.
It stopped at millenials though. God damn 5g or wifi or something made gen z and alpha age like milk.
Aged people from those generations don’t exist. You know, because of how age works… it’s the difference between the birth year and the current year. No gen z is over 30. I am disturbed this needs to be pointed out.
You can literally google “gen z aged like milk” it’s been a meme for years, I didn’t make this shit up
Ok, I googled that, and I lost a few precious minutes of my life, and I found out that this is something that there are some trash articles written about, all just echoing that people online say this or search for this, but it doesn’t really mean anything or has any basis in reality. Thanks.
Some say they fear their generation is aging more quickly than others. But as Gen Z-ers enter their late 20s, it’s more likely that they are simply getting older.
Wow!
Brother, I was hoping people could see it was a joke comment if I started it off with 5g and wifi giving people health issues
Lemmy doesn’t do subtle jokes. 🙄
Nah, Gen Z’s thing is mostly fashion sense because they’re essentially cultural archeologists in a lot of respects. Gen Z does make new stuff, but a lot of what they do is also remixing old stuff and dusting it off and trying it out again too. And some of that shows in their fashion sense where they’re often mixing stuff that makes them look like my Dad with stuff that makes them look like my Grandpa.
It’s sort of like how names like Gertrude and Agatha and stuff are starting to make a come back. A lot of the younger crowds never met those old people and got the associated “that’s an old person name” cultural alignment. To them, it’s just a nice sounding string of syllables.
Fashion is cyclical. Every generation does this
Medieval people bathed all the dang time
Many misunderstand that period of time, they were highly hygienic (for their understanding of such things) they washed their hands before eating, they used shared food containers very hygienically (no double dip, no using something that was already in your mouth to serve the next food, no scratching your face at the table with your hand, etc). People also think most were dead by 30ish, many lived til their 70s and 80s but so many more didn’t make it out of childhood that keeps the average age down. There is a great yt chan where the host talks about all this and much more, can’t remember his chan atm but if there is interest I can track it down and link it.
In the middle ages people didn’t have sunscreen
in the middle ages people didn’t need sunscreen. sunscreen is only needed today (mostly for people in america) because some english people from north england (55°N) thought it was a good idea to move to america, as far south as california (30°N), where it’s sunny all the time and the sun burns at twice the intensity. Of course suddenly these pale-ass people suddenly develop sunburns all around.
sun exposure is like half the reason behind the stereotypical “old person” appearance, with excessive wrinkles and saggy skin. Go look at someone who spends time sunbathing, they start looking like a leather couch.
Millennials are killing the wrinkling industry
No, there’s just more Botox …
I have no idea who she is. She looks like she’s in her 20s on the left and 35-40 on the right to me. I’m in my mid 40s.
If there’s any trend that way, in the general population, it’s because of increased sunscreen use and decreased cigarette use. But, like, I don’t know if you’d look at a 40 year old farm worker and think they look young?
Even golfers (male) look older than they should to me.
I just watched Ghostbusters for the first time since I was a kid. Those dudes were like 30 ish. They looked like they were 45-50. I’m like 8 years older than most of them were at the time, and not to blow my own horn, but I think I and my friends look far better than they did at that age.
Those dudes were like 30 ish.
When the movie came out in 1984 they were 30ish to 40.
Harold Ramis was about 40 (1944)
Ernie Hudson was about 39 (1945)
Bill Murray was about 34 (1950)
Dan Akroyd was about 32 (1952)
They looked like they were 45-50
Yeah, they definitely all looked about a decade older than they were.
