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Except that most of us did use suscreen... when we tried to tan at all....
Except that you wouldn't have caught a teenaged girl using Vaseline as a moisturizer, if she even used moisturizer at all. Adult women didn't use it as a facial moisturizer either. Vaseline was used in the 70s and 80s for the same things it is used for today: To prevent diaper rash in infants, and to moisturize extremely chapped lips and hands, and to soothe dry cracked heels.
The makeup and skin preparations I used in 1980 weren't much different from what's available today. In fact, many of the same products are still on the market and being used by today's teens.
Wait, what???
The Vietnam war was over by the mid-70s. And in most parts of the country, girls were NOT getting married at 18 as a general rule. Most young women waited for that, except in parts of the deep South or of Appalachia.
The 1970s, conservative??????
Hello! This was the age of disco, the ongoing sexual revolution, hard rock music and some pretty major drug use. It was hardly a conservative era.
I was there, and I remember it. I didn't enter my teens until 1977, but I was culturally aware for several years before that.
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Being from the deep south, we didn't encounter discos, I didn't realize there was a such thing as sex until high school and the only hard rock we knew of was dug out of the garden.
My mother was married at 17, my grandmother at 14 as was her mother. I don't know how loose it was in the rest of the country, but here, it was conservative as it comes.
I think you're onto something, OP, although saying the teens looked to be in their 40s-50s is a stretch.
I remember watching movies and shows from the 1950s with my dad (he was born in the 1950s, I was born in the early 90s), and he and I would have a good laugh when the ages of some characters were revealed. The guys who'd say they were 40 or 50 looked to be about 70 years old by today's standards, and all the young women styled themselves in a way that made them all look like they were in their mid-30s. It wasn't even the clothes specifically, so much as the style in and of itself.
Haven't noticed the same thing with teens from the 70s and 80s, but I'm sure you can blame their dress as well.
I see a lot of people saw this post and took the opportunity to bash my generation. Stay classy, guys.
I think they looked older because of what a lot of posters have already said - hair, clothes, makeup, quality of photos and the smoking/partying. I am sure that if you time-traveled back to the '70s and saw these people in real life, they would look younger.
Wow, could you be more bitter?
None whatsoever, since this is the History forum I chose to emphasize something I've noticed as being a key quality of generational difference that may play into appearance, albeit, subtly.
Note, I am interpreting this question outside the boundaries of simply a two dimensional photo based appearance and interpreting it also as, how young adults of comparable age would have comported themselves, and behaved in adult company as well as fashion/dress. (And yes, I 'm certain this has been said consistently by older generations of younger generations ).
Here's a few anecdotal things I can give as examples, to address the context of my comment.
In family type gatherings, the young were made to spend a limited amount of time all together with the elders and rest of family - before running off to play / entertain ourselves. This may have been primarily cultural values, but, even when over friends and sharing stories or mixed gatherings, it was pretty standard m.o. Now, I see youth totally distracted and disjointed socially from human interaction and frequently off in separate room or another world along with whatever digital toy / device. I surmise if many of us had the same level of objects with which to lose ourselves from events we found boring, we likely would have 'checked out' also. But I wanted to enunciate a difference I observe.
An interesting corollary study others may find interesting is the recent Kent State University campus study on students and mobile device usage - but I digress.
In my youth, 70s and early 80s I grew up in a working middle class area where the concept of someone getting an allowance was usually thought of as ridiculous if it didn't entail a list of responsibilities around the house (and even then, most of my friends in the neighborhood did not receive any allowance). If you wanted something as older child / young adult, we were encouraged to get jobs or pick up work helping in the neighborhood to earn money. Newspaper routes, shoveling snow, lawn care, pet care, grocery shopping errands for the old lady on the street, etc... you name it.
It doesn't mean we all automatically became entrepreneurs and business people, but rather that, very few kids expected or felt entitled to things since the parents generally held their ground and were parents and not trying to be our best friend - or live their lives through us. Those parents mostly came from a generation where being your child's friend was significantly less important than raising a responsible human being (and not another possession) and contributing member of society (whether we did or not ).
Now by no means, do I think this doesn't still happen today, I just think it happens far less and the youth are poorer (in social skills / graces) and seemingly younger for it (socially / emotionally). Not that we were any model of mature adults in our day, but there was a healthy does of respect and early understanding of what it meant to be respectful and civil. As in, if Uncle George, or the old lady down the street was a little batty, you still acknowledged them and paid attention (for a while at least ).
So, what I'm getting to is that in historical environmental context, the young adult, beyond the styles of fashion and photography technique, may look just as young facially, but that there could be more going on to reflect a countenance and demeanor of being (socially/ emotionally) 'older'.
I apologize if the initial comment came off as a unilateral slam of younger generation as you have a lot more distractions in total and more going on to deal with in the ever quickening 'pace' of society.
More preservatives in the food is causing many in later times to age more slowly on the outside, and also smoking rates declined since those days. Even still, I think we all know at least someone who put themselves through the ringer and still stays youthful. Genetics also play a role, and future environmental factors shaped human evolution since then.
More preservatives in the food is causing many in later times to age more slowly on the outside, and also smoking rates declined since those days. Even still, I think we all know at least someone who put themselves through the ringer and still stays youthful. Genetics also play a role, and future environmental factors shaped human evolution since then.
Actually, the residual pharmaceuticals in most US water supplies are causing girls to mature faster, significantly faster, than even a few years ago.
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Being from the deep south, we didn't encounter discos, I didn't realize there was a such thing as sex until high school and the only hard rock we knew of was dug out of the garden.
My mother was married at 17, my grandmother at 14 as was her mother. I don't know how loose it was in the rest of the country, but here, it was conservative as it comes.
The deep South is still conservative, but the rest of the country isn't and this difference existed in the 70s and 80s too. You're confusing geography with time, and they aren't the same thing.
It REALLY depends on the individuals! Back in the 70's, it was an extension of the 60's, so for men it was cool to have long hair and beards or other facial hair. Looking at some of the women in the 70's, though, like on youtube vids of the music groups back then, some of them looked like 15-year-olds even in their 20's. So I think it really depends on the person. It may also depend on geographic region, and local styles.
In the public schools I attended (LAUSD), sometime around the late/mid 1960s is when they relaxed the dress code for everyone and the haircut rules for boys. Before that, many graduating seniors did look like younger versions of their parents. Even well into the 1970s, though, you heard of guys still wearing their hair short because because they were on a team and the coach demanded it.
I think clothes are another big difference. In those days, your parents most likely didn't even own jeans of any kind, or if they did they were worn only for outdoor stuff like heavy yard work, or such leisure pursuits as fishing and camping. So wearing jeans at all was a statement of differentiation from our parents, and identification with youth culture. Moreover, young guys generally tucked their shirts in, unless we were wearing some kind of casual shirt with a straight bottom. Having round shirttails outside your pants was considered a little-boy thing (sorry). I think a big reason we tucked was that we mostly could, because we didn't have bulging bellies. It was our overweight middle aged dads who were more likely to let their casual straight bottomed shirts hang out over the waists of their Sans-A-Belt slacks.
I am not sure if kids looked older back then, but I love your premise that kids are shorter now. I am a grandma and my grandkid played high school sports. I was very curious about all of the super petite, tiny, short, lightweight girls. When I was growing up, the girls were average heights (like 5'5") and weighed around 120. Now the cheerleaders in high school were all less than five feet and under 100 lbs.
What ought to seem weird is college students not trying to look like (or act like) adults.
I've seen old photos of USC with most of the male students wearing suits, while UCLA seems to have been considerably more casual all along.
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None whatsoever, since this is the History forum I chose to emphasize something I've noticed as being a key quality of generational difference that may play into appearance, albeit, subtly. 
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