Home | Notifications | New Note | Local | Federated | Search | Logout
Note Detail
lain@lain@lain.com (2026-09-20 19:41:55)
gwern did an interesting review into the question about why people in the past used to be so ugly https://gwern.net/beauty
---Reply---
ⰎⰅ ⰀⰍⰨⰒⰎⰫ@genmaicha@stereophonic.space (2026-09-21 02:17:54)
@lain >for example, there is a famous photograph “Migrant Mother” from the Great Depression of a despairing worn-out woman with her children, who one might guess was in her 50s—she was 32.
holy shit
---Attachments---
image: https://stereophonic.space/media/ba/f9/a9/baf9a9cabd5e34cf502dc05bb8577c450ad3737528a898542d8ec9ce944d8009.webp
Reply
---Replies---
ⰎⰅ ⰀⰍⰨⰒⰎⰫ@genmaicha@stereophonic.space (2026-09-21 02:27:23)
@lain I think he sells the historical upper classes short, a lot of the women he mentioned were actually quite beautiful especially among europeans. and the quantitative stuff at the end seems totally specious.
but it was shocking to learn how horribly the lower classes aged... maybe people got married so young in part because nobody would want to marry a 30-year-old who resembles a moldy tangerine. it's wild that for essentially all of human history, the vast majority of people - almost everyone's ancestors - were dirt-poor, until just a couple generations ago.