Why did people used to look older? 👴🏾☀️
We chat with a plastic surgeon to get to the bottom of this phenomenon.
Once again, people are sharing that infamous Cheers cast photo from the 1980s. It’s going viral because young people are saying the cast looks relatively old—like they’re in their 40s, 50s, or even 60s.
But after doing the math, it turns out they were MUCH younger. It's another example in the growing conversation about why people in the past seem to look older than people do today.
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There are countless examples of this: look at the college athletes on this 1985 Penn State team.
It’s not just nostalgia or low-res photos—there may actually be biological and cultural reasons for these differences. To get to the bottom of it, I spoke with Dr. Caroline Hudson, a facial plastic surgeon based in Chicago and co-author of Analysis and Assessment of Facial Aging. She breaks down how and why our faces age over time—and how that’s changed in recent decades.
ICYMI: Why Does Dasani Water Taste Like That?
What teenagers looked like at a 2008 prom:
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Additional links
Is 60 the New 50? Examining Changes in Biological Age Over the Past Two Decades
How Old Do I Look? Aging Appearance and Experiences of Aging Among U.S. Adults Ages 50–80
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I think the only thing missing from this discussion is that the desire to be perceived as youthful is fairly new, or at least its complete dominance is. For a long time, if you wanted to be take seriously in society, you needed to look like an adult. I’ve read that this change began post WWII, but I’m guessing probably didn’t fully take over the way we’re seeing it until the 90s. So it may be that older generations looked older on purpose, and not just because they weren’t caring for their skin like we do.
A fun exercise to have the opposite experience is to find a photo from the 1800's or early 1900's of a bunch of men with moustaches and big beards and top hats etc. And then zoom in really close on their face: many of them have total baby faces, hiding behind their facial hair and hats.
I agree with your final note in the episode that we often think we look younger than we actually do. And I also think that many of us just aren't in touch with what people in high school actually look like now, or looked like then, etc. (I have a baby face and had virtually zero facial in high school, whereas a few of my classmates had beards in grade 9.) I have a friend who has always looked like he's in late 40's, even though he was 26 when I met him.
Also, looking young at 33 isn't evidence that you can continue to not wear SPF. It catches up with you when you get to 50+ so... stop fooling yourself. :)