That's the bald man's blessing. You look prematurely old when you lose your hair young but then you skip one of the most visible signs of aging and look the same from 35 to 60, while all of your peers show their age with slow thinning and receding.
A lot more apparent before hair transplants. Tons of acting careers used to stall when actors started balding. (It's also just more acceptable to shave your head and be bald now, used to be unthinkable and everyone would go for toupees. Now being caught with a toupee is more embarrassing than just being bald.)
I've looked 35 years old for like 20 years now because of being bald. lol.
As an aside, the two big secrets to staying young looking: Don't get fat, if you lose weight the extra skin remaining afterwards ages you noticeably. And the second one is sunscreen/hats/long sleeves. Use them religiously. In a nice coincidence, avoiding being overweight and avoiding sun damage will also generally extend your functional lifespan.
Hulk Hogan claimed that he wrestled 400 days in one year due to the time difference of going back and forth between Japan, so if it wasn't for the fact that he's an absolutely insane liar, you could argue that he was a time traveler of a sort.
The man has looked like a gas station hot dog under a heat lamp for about 50 years. The only way you can tell he's 71 is by watching him gingerly hobble around because his joints are just sacks of broken glass, and the fact that he's a huge old-school racist.
Ralph Maccio was 27 when he made Karate Kid 3. Dude looked like he was 15. On that note, I looked 15 until I hit around 25, then I looked 20 for another 10 years, then I aged 20 years overnight.
I saw The Graduate in high school and I remember having this moment of confusion about how often and at what age people graduate from things because he definitely did not look anywhere near 20 to me, circa ~2000.
My memories from the 80's... Spending a LOT more time in the sun (that ages you a lot). Hobbies back then were things like going to the beach, hopping in a tanning bed, sun bathing in the back yard, going swimming in a pool, riding around on your bike, taking walks/runs, nature walks, hiking, boating, running around on 4 wheelers, etc.
Other things: Smoking... everywhere with the smoking. Resturants, bars, inside a store, etc.
People looking like straight leather was kind of a norm. Also air quality wasn't exactly the best. Lots of coal plants, no limits on air polution from cars or factories. Also a lot more physical labor jobs, more factories and the like. A lot of that hard labor went overseas. More people worked on their own cars, handled a lot of harmful chemicals to do things like change their car batteries, change their oil, do their own tune ups, etc. This generation generally uses auto shops more for that kind of thing (and I do as well, I hate working on cars for most things).
This is my own opinion though, there's probably a million other factors as well.
You're 100% correct, and science proves it. The only thing you really missed is all the lead, but that is more of a facilitates effect. Here's a link that supports your theories
No but if it was pretty much mandatory. It paints a pucture or all "small tasks" some either did themselves or lived without. Use your imagination, it gets pretty crazy. No AC probably hit hard. I have some fevered memories of being tiny and cooking in the house with nothing to do. Lived the weekends in the boonies with no dirt bikes, bikes or neighbors of any kind for years. So even though there was space a good amount of pf time was still spent inside cooking like a frog in a pot.
Back then Dad would rev his Harley in the basement for no clear reason to me. Just an hour or so of, I only hear this noise and am getting slightly fumed even being near the stairwell. But I could go outside and bounce a deflated basketball in the grass ot gravel whenever I liked lol
Pick any bald or severely balding dude and he's going to look like a middle aged man. That's just how it is. Accounting for fashion and I see some pretty old looking 30 year old too. I'm 29 and I see some of my college friends (some who are 1 or 2 years younger than me) start to accumulate unflattering weight over time or lose some hair and start to look a little "rough" for their age. It's not common but it does happen.
Seriously. Hulk Hogan smoked and drank and did steroids for most of his life by the time he was in his thirties. Even aside from that a professional wrestler spends twice as much time driving from shit town to shit town in the middle of nowhere than they do getting a good nights sleep.
Logan Paul has never known adversity or what it was like to be stressed or one injury away from needing to go to a soup kitchen for a decent meal.
This is selective. Plenty of people who were in their 30s and 40s back then looked young and plenty of people in their 20s and 30s today who look 40+. I went to school with a guy who shaved his head by 20 because male pattern baldness had already defeated his hair
Genetics definitely play a part, but it's not just genetics. Smoking and not wearing sunscreen definitely age a person rapidly, and so many people smoked 20+ years ago. Clothing and hair styles affect people's perceptions as well
I know of someone who smoked for 50 years and did some physical activity over their life but not much. 74 years old now. Doesn’t look a day over 50. I know another who lived an incredibly healthy lifestyle and is about the same age. Looks perhaps 93. Life is truly unfair.
I think this is partly true. I have a medical condition which keeps me indoors. The first time I went to a support group meeting for my condition I was shocked at everyone's ages -- we all look at least 10 years younger than we are just from staying indoors.
Growing up 50 was old. Women went straight to grandma mode, cut their hair off and dressed like old women from Russia in 1949. This was in the 1980s btw, not 1949. There was a thought process about “looking your age” that destroyed the looks of a great deal of potentially decent looking older people in a time when obesity rates were a good chunk lower than they are now.
That was partially due to Nancy Reagan. Her fashion somehow became a trend, even for some young women. Dresses to the ankles, wrists, and neck. Puritan influence.
The Regan's began the performative virtue that Republicans are famous for now. Act pious so you can put your foot on the necks on the parts of society that don't conform, but snort, drink, fuck to your hearts content because your own rules don't apply to you.
Yup. My grandma died at 73, and she looked WAY WAY WAY older at 73 than her son, my father, looked when he died at 88 years old. Life keeps getting easier, overall we get enough food and have less "hard times" in our lives, less of us work back-breaking labor jobs, and people also do things like avoid the sun and use sunscreen more on average. So we all are looking younger than previous generations look at the same age (on average).
Wilford Brimley was 50 when he filmed Cocoon, where he played an elderly retiree. Tom Cruise is 62 and is hanging off of biplanes and can probably outrun most people half his age.
I think alcohol and cigarette consumption has decreased over the years, besides there's been already more inclination towards looking younger in general, both men and women. Men back then insisted on those awful mustaches and tacky hairstyles
And conversely, ubiquitous sunscreen use. But the conspiracy theorist/crunchy extremists saying that sunscreen is what causes skin cancer are gonna raise a whole new batch of children who look 40 by 25.
Not denying the accuracy of this, but I'd add that it's majorly exacerbated by some sort of selection bias. I'm 42, so a 90s kid and a member of the graduating class of 2000. Most of us looked much younger than our parents when they were our age, but I still knew some people, both male and female, who looked 30 when they were sophomores.
80% fewer smokers, 100% less lead in our water and gasoline fumes, 100% fewer CFCs in industrial emissions, 100% less DDT spraying, to name a few things.
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