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The actress, Jean Stapleton, was only 48 when All in the Family started, but she looked very matronly.
But in her regular life she didn't. She did look "mature" but she wore makeup and her real hair was not like her Edith hair. It was short and often curled but not the in as much a 60something way. She looked what she was, more or less. Middle aged but put together.
And yeah, O'Connar for sure looked like an old man. Like literally a senior citizen. He reminded me of my Grandpa except mean and an azzhat.
Jean was not, God bless her, an externally beautiful woman but if you watch interviews, the reasons she did not ACTUALLY seem like an old woman were a more relaxed hairstyle, better clothes, makeup, and totally different mannerisms. All of those things figured in then and still do today. Attitude is a HUGE part of this.
As a 50-something chick I get what the OP is saying... no offense taken. Many of the fashions of the past seemed much older for both men and women. Edith and Archie were a good example. I remember an episode where Edith was turning 50 and going through menopause and I was shocked that she wasn’t already near 60. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham of Happy Days also looked about 10-15 years older than they probably were.
Hair styles have so much to do with it too. Gillian Anderson looks so much prettier in current episodes of the X-Files than the ones from 20 years ago.
If you've got it, flaunt it. If you don't, cover it up. That's for women of 20 and 40 and 60+. A lot of it comes down to weight. No one wants to see a fatty in a miniskirt.
I think a lot of men and women in their 30s and 40s, unless they go for "middle-age casual", don't update their style so they are rocking 20-30 year out of date fashions in a way that looks, not retro, but like they are clinging to the past.
About 10 years ago, when I was in my early 30s, I was approached multiple times by a 40 year old woman who looked like a Motley Crüe groupie with the teased hair and everything. She was probably hot as hell with that style in '86 when she was 20, but it was a turn off for me in 2008.
Around the same time I had a friend who peaked in his late teens in the late 70s. I introduced him to a female co-worker of mine who was the same age. She wasn't impressed by his Magnum PI 'stache and Scott Baio haircut and referred to him as "70s guy".
The trick is to maintain good style without becoming a fuddy duddy on the one side, or grasping for youth on the other.
when it comes to clothes/makeup/hairstyle etc. etc. that women in that age range would typically have from the past, what was it in particular that made them look so much older/unattractive?
Bad makeup and clothes is one thing. But another is that women in that day lied about their age. It was very common for women in their late 20s to play high school kids, and actresses in their late 40s say they were in their early 30s. My mom claimed to be 29 until she was in her 40s.
The "men's wear" look was big back then, I remember that. And it was purely an American thing. I remember going to a conference in Europe in the early 90's, and the American women wore skirt-suits of drab, men's suiting (think--lawyerly stuff), with very long suit-jackets and skirts below the knee, while the European women wore short, tight brightly-colored skirts and jackets--almost neon colors. They were exact opposites of the American women, who looked like they'd come from some Bizarro-world.
Part of the idea behind women's business fashion at the time was, as I recall, deterring sexual harassment. Hence the drab colors, the exaggeratedly long lengths, and the shapelessness of the clothes. The business fashion in Europe at the time was quite the opposite. It invited being gawked at.
Ohhhh thanks Ruth, that explains why I was totally puzzled by these grayish colors and bows as part of the 80ies scene)))
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