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In a way, they really were older. I think the Life Expectency age was only about 70. They didn't grow up on children's vitamins, and grocery stores didn't have as much fresh fruit and vegetables all year long. I just don't think that people were in the habit of eating as much.
This was before anti-biotics. Even minor illness could take a toll.
The lower life expectancy in the 50's doesn't mean teenagers were literally older than now, as if they aged more rapidly. People died in their 70's because there was very little to be done about cancer, and cardiac care wasn't very developed.
Antibiotics came into use in the 40's.
I'm almost positive I took children's vitamins in the 50's. If not it was by 1963 (I remember what house I was in), but I "feel" much younger than that in the memories I have of taking them.
There wasn't a wide variety of produce when it wasn't summertime, but there was plenty of produce available.
I think the dowdy hairdo's and outfits, unstraightened teeth and dark lipstick have a lot to do with it. A lot of people didn't smile as much in class photos, either. They just didn't look at getting a picture taken the same way people do today. Today teenage girls will sit with their digital cameras and take 100's of glamor shots, with different types of expressions and smiles as if they were models.
One thing you have not really looked at. People 50+ years ago did more manual labor than today. Everything today is mechanized and computerized. Manual work means exercise. As for women, they worked in factories or did housework, etc. They also didn't jump into a car to go down the block. They were lucky if they had more than one car. This is an example How many calories burned doing house work We think that doing manual chores does nothing for a person physically, but it does. You can burn more calories in an hour doing gardening an you can going for a walk.
It's easier to gain muscle mass now than it was in the 50's because we have a better understanding how to do it now, but look at pictures of men without shirts on. I agree most of them were not ripped with bulging muscles, but you had to look hard to find a guy with a bulging belly. Overweight and obese people are the norm today. 68% of Americans now fall in that category.
Only farmers may have done more manual labor back then. Middle class men had white collar jobs. Women stayed home, or had secretarial jobs. Light housecleaning isn't much manual labor, certainly not enough to develop muscle tone, lol! People were flabby back then for a reason. Some middle class people didn't even do housework, they had maids. Gardening is exercise, but it's usually once a week, and it doesn't come close to a 3 times/wk gym exercise with weights. People who eat well and take care of themselves, work out, are in much better shape than people in the 50's.
After seeing this thread I had to go look at some 1950's yearbook pictures to see if the kids really did look older and I don't think they did. They had clothes and hairdos that we now connect with older people, not teenagers, but their faces look like the teenagers they were. I do think it's the hair and clothes that to some people make them look older and it may be hard to see beyond that but all in all I don't think they were that different than kids today.
I just want to make a comment about life expectancy. Lower life expectancies doesn't mean that people didn't live as long in their old age. It just meant that more people died young which brings the average down. Before good vaccines and treatments for fatal illnesses many children died and when you have a number of kids dying before age five it's going to bring down the average age significantly. That's why the life expectancy is so low in sub-Saharan Africa, because the infant fatality rate is so high, not because most people die in their 40's.
For the boys a white t-shirt and Levi's were top fashion mode. Then came the wool long sleeve Pendelton shirts. Mine was royal blue plaid.
The '56 T-Bird with port windows sells for top $$$$ today.
My cousins demanded pendelton shirts. Not just wool ones but the real thing. their dad had a few which were worn. She could stich a tag in a shirt without it looking like it. They had no idea their prized shirts came form Sears.
I guess I caught the plaid thing. I had commendeered all my dad's old long plaid shirts and wore them around the house from the sixties on. I need to restock. One got sticked to a fake fur top which looked silly but worked fine as lining this last winter. Add a zipper and perfect. Practically lived in it when it was cold.
What I want is to find the ancestoral plaid or plaids in my family and go official.
I'm sure Bob would have by now picked the most cared for relative or friend, but one he was sure would care properly for the car, to make sure it was lovingly preserved.
She wasn't exactly a hip fashion icon that teenagers tried to emulate.
Once Jackie moved in things got lot more exciting. Eleanor, Bess, Grace Coolidge. Their clothes weren't exactly flying off the racks because they were trend-setters.
I didn't say they were the only factors regarding obesity. High fructose corn syrup is a major, major factor. (And a major reason why Americans' caloric intake has increased)
However widespread smoking and amphetamine use contributed to young people looking older, which was the original topic of this thread (as well as reducing obesity).
Speed is still quite available, though not from the drugstore so much now. My mom had a freind who worked at one and brough the women in their little social club all the pills they needed, and looking back they had NO idea what they were doing to themselves or that there was any harm in it.
Thing is, growing up in the fifties and sixties, I don't remember going out to dinner much. It was a special occasion. Mom did not open a box to make dinner at home either. We didn't eat fancy but it was fresh. And we didn't live off fast food.
Now it seems for many the default is to eat out. And since its expensive they do cheap and fat more than not.
A line of really healthy frozen food for a competative price without the junk would be a very good product for today. A lot of people have made sure life is set where they don't have the time to cook much of a meal.
I look at pictures of high schoolers from the 50's, and they look like old people to me. Maybe women's hairstyles were all short back then and this is the main reason why. It's sad how little in common their generation has with the young people of today. I think the teens of today will never really get old, and the baby boomers were the generation that thought they were the first "cool" generation, but now a lot of them seem old anyway.
Guess what? You, too, will get old. You'll still feel (on the inside) like the same young person you once were. You'll still think you're cool. But to people 30 years younger than you, you will look old and you will be old. The people who you consider old once thought they would never never really get old, either.
They didn't just aspire, but were expected to. Attlitudes to childhood, and especially boyhood, were different then.
Frex, in 1950 it was only five years since you'd had 15yo boy sailors serving (and sometimes dying) on Arctic convoys and the like. Several 16yos went down with HMS Hood, and iirc the youngest RN fatality in WW2 was only 14, though he probably lied about his age. Boys (and sometimes girls) of similar ages were also found in the French Resistance and other such bodies, running the same risks as their elders.
I had the point rammed home to me earlier this year, when I bought the dvds of an old bit of children's sf from 1960. Called Pathfinders In Space its unlikely plot involves a British Lunar expedition in which the Professor's three children (sons about 11 and 14, daughter abt 12) find themselves acting as a backup crew when a second ship is needed at the last minute. There is an accident on the Moon, and it seems as if only one adult and one child will be able to return.
This news is received with the stiffest of upper lips, not just by the adults but the children as well. When the Professor names those to be saved (he isn't one, of course. As "Captain" he has to go down with the ship) there is no word of protest from anyone. The Skipper has spoken, and that's that. The 11yo is allowed one hint of emotion when he begs (and gets) a place on the escape rocket - for his pet guinea pig. His elder brother doesn't even go that far, hearing his death sentence (and his father's and brother's also) in the same dignified silence as the grownups - of whom he evidently considers himself to be one. As for the Professor, he's so wrapped up in his work that he never even gets to speak to his sons on what could well have been the last day of all their lives.
Well, this being a children's programme, the worst doesn't actually happen. The Professor pulls an eleventh-hour rabbit from the hat, and the ultimate sacrifice is not required. Yet even afterwards, neither he nor anyone else makes any comment on the young boys' behaviour in the face of death. Apparently, it was just how a well brought up 14-year-old was expected to act on the last day of his life. In such circs, I fear I would have disappointed them. Yet the teenager, in particular, seems to have no real problem with being treated in this way. He plainly shares his elders' values, and in 20 years one suspects he'll be exactly like his Dad. Had Geoffrey Wedgwood been born 50 years earlier, I could imagine him as a young signalman on the Titanic, still dutifully tapping at his Morse key even as the water laps around his ankles.
In short, while PiS is only so so as sf, it has aged into a fascinating social document. Though a lifelong space enthusiast, at times I found myself wondering why the characters bothered going to the Moon, as they themselves are more of an alien species than anything they are likely to find in Outer Space. Yet the Programme was made well within my own lifetime. When things change, they can change very fast indeed, and I came away with a distinct feeling of "culture shock" - though as I was twelve in 1960, it was arguably my culture as much as theirs.
I found my dad on the cencus, 1930 I think, and at 18 he lived in a navy barracks. But he went in the navy at 16. He got his mothers willing permission and his fathers gruging okay as his father though he should stay to help out on the farm. He was already old enough and mature enough to determine what he did, and did not, want to do with his life.
Now with me, as people who grew up with less, my parents wanted me to have a perfect childhood. Nobody told me when I was fifteen that we moved and sold the house because otherwise we'd lose it and Dad got a job where we could still buy a new one. We lived in an apartment until it sold. I consider this something I wish they had done, since I was only a year less than when my dad went into the navy and a couple when my mom started working for Disney.
I found my dad on the cencus, 1930 I think, and at 18 he lived in a navy barracks. But he went in the navy at 16. He got his mothers willing permission and his fathers gruging okay as his father though he should stay to help out on the farm. He was already old enough and mature enough to determine what he did, and did not, want to do with his life.
Now with me, as people who grew up with less, my parents wanted me to have a perfect childhood. Nobody told me when I was fifteen that we moved and sold the house because otherwise we'd lose it and Dad got a job where we could still buy a new one. We lived in an apartment until it sold. I consider this something I wish they had done, since I was only a year less than when my dad went into the navy and a couple when my mom started working for Disney.
Though it can work the other way round. As a Latter-day Saint, I see Young Men (ie teenage boys) in my Ward calmly preparing and saving up for when their 18th birthdays roll around and they can go off on their Missions - which will involve them not even seeing family or friends (unless any of them get assigned to the same Mission Area) for two solid years. They won't even get home for Christmas.By contrast, when I was 18 I still came home from school for my midday meal. OK, I may have been a little extreme even for those days - my younger sister was content to use the school dining hall - but it points up the huge differences that one can find in that age group. It all seems to depend on what they've learned to regard as normal.
Though it can work the other way round. As a Latter-day Saint, I see Young Men (ie teenage boys) in my Ward calmly preparing and saving up for when their 18th birthdays roll around and they can go off on their Missions - which will involve them not even seeing family or friends (unless any of them get assigned to the same Mission Area) for two solid years. They won't even get home for Christmas.By contrast, when I was 18 I still came home from school for my midday meal. OK, I may have been a little extreme even for those days - my younger sister was content to use the school dining hall - but it points up the huge differences that one can find in that age group. It all seems to depend on what they've learned to regard as normal.
My son converted, and has three quarters of a year left on his mission. While I don't like the religion and we have a rule of no converting in the family, I think its done him a world of good. When we split, his dad abusive, his dad couldn't have custody and I couldn't afford to even with the money from disability. His guardians (aunt and uncle) saw no point in the therapy and let him quit. So he drifted through school and left a lot of unaddressed questions. The way he's had adult responsibility, and how he works a lot with those with drug problems and other issues has connected him back with himself. He's grown up and can see things more clearly now. When he goes back to school this time I'm sure he'll apply himself because he wants to.
I really don't think it would be a bad thing between high school and college for kids to leave home, and do service work of a non-religious, non military bent. Such programs have been proposed but likely will never happen, but a space where kids could apply themselves to something and know better what they wanted would be good for them. So many waste college because they really don't have a clue what it is they want yet and end up wishing later they could do it all over again.
I certainly wouldn't want us to go back to when fourteen year olds were defacto adults, but I think we've extended the baby blanket way too far now. I don't advocate kicking your 18 year old out in the streets, but in exchange for the bed and breakfast, they should have to be learning to move on and taking responsibility in some form for what they get. Multi-generational families in one house once was the norm, but the adult kids contributed to the family. Even if they don't have money, there are a lot of ways to do that.
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