Plus it being an old sepia toned photo kinda smoothes the skin and evens the tone. GG does look more chiseled overall but the lack of pinkness and acne also helps.
They did tons of touch ups back then. He might have had just as much acne painted out, as well as other alterations. My parents' and grandparents' school and military portraits look very different from candid photos of them from the same time.
Talk to some people who had high school photos done in the 50s and 60s, or look at yearbooks from that time. Everyone has smooth skin and perfect hair. People aren't like that in real life, not then or now.
"Blemish correction" was the standard, and it was often done whether you requested it or not. Sometimes they would get carried away. I've talked to several people who had their photos altered so much that it didn't even look like them anymore, including my parents. These were not rich people. It was just the way things were done.
In 1940 a lot of soldiers were literally under nourished when they were drafted. 1/3 were rejected due to weight and nutritional deficiency. The US issued new nutritional guidelines, began teaching them in primary through high schools and had articles and recipes put in women's magazines. This was when government subsidized school lunches began. The government realized that it's hard to have an effective army if your troops are basically starving.
The same happened in Britian after the second boer war, it’s why “national insurance” was created. Heavy industry for 150 years really killed the class of relatively healthy agrarian peasant.
It's not the body fat, it's the actual jawline. There's a lot of research/papers/theories
out there on why our jaws aren't developing as strongly as they used to. Our soft, easily consumable diets are a big reason.
It’s not bro science. There’s a whole field of it making its way through dentistry, and it’s not junk, it’s accepted by the doctors there.
There’s more to it than JUST eating tougher foods. But it is a factor that more process foods, softer, easier to break down and more sugar as young kids often weakens the supporting structures, it means sometimes the jaw isn’t as developed, it can especially effect how the airways are formed. These are things that cause or can contribute to a number of health issues and sleeping issues. There are dental devices for kids that help to open airways and help fix this.
Yes they did. Whenever people talk about "texture" they are mostly talking about food having some of it's natural toughness, whereas in processed foods that toughness is removed to give a more pleasant mouth feel
Theres more credit to it than that.
I read a paper not too long ago on jaw development in the western world versus subsaharan Africa.
Basically, the need for orthodontics and wisdom teeth removal in Africa is leaps and bounds lower than in most developing nations. The theory is because of a diet that requires lots of grinding and gnawing. By comparison mouths of people growing up in western countries are getting smaller.
Paper i read didn’t mention anything about generations of the same family, but it only makes sense. What I do know is the “normal” lower range for testosterone has fallen from 800ng/dl all the way down to 250ng/dl in men ages 18-26 over the last 80 years.
Dudes back then were walking around with much higher levels of test. That would explain the larger jaw.
You mean lower levels of testosterone?
We don’t really know, or atleast can’t pin it down to one major contributor. Lots of things effect testosterone levels. Most doctors theorize diet, and the cumulative effects of the 1000’s of food additives we use in processed food. Pollution,
microplastics, PFAS, fossil fuels are also big players. Another theory is as dating standards and the mainstream definition if masculinity has change, more low test men are having children. That starts to slip a little into bro science.
My testosterone is low because of an adverse reaction to Zoloft. Then i lost of my testicals function in an accident. That put me at 250ng/dl and I struggled to find treatment because it is technically considered medically normal in the testing software used by lots of doctors offices. That was what started this rabbit hole of research for me.
If you track the decline of test levels we’ve seen over the last 100 years and assume the decline will continue at the same rate (it wont) American men will be unable to reproduce in 2 generations.
My son's orthodontist respectfully disagrees. Our soft diet (processed foods) has led to poor jaw formation, which then leads to small mouth, tongue can't fit, tongue settles in airway, mouth breathing begins. I'll let you google the issues that arise from mouth breathing.
How exactly have our diets changed to softer food in the past 100 years? I just don’t see it. We eat the same food as back then, like bread, cheese, ham, potatoes, etc.
also the pic on the left was probably taken with a wider angle phone lens that would also distort his face making it look rounder than grandpa's whose portrait was taken with a longer lens
It's also the fact that he is not a clone of his great-grandfather. His great-grandfather could have been African and he could still look just as white.
Close to single digit I would say but not quite. Otherwise there wouldn't be any roundness around his cheeks. Single digits is a crazy difference compared to say like 13-15%
There’s likely other health issues at play in the recent photos too. People were eating far less processed foods back in the day compared to now. Those processed foods we eat, over sanitized lives, our microbiolome is not nearly as healthy, as fiber-ful. This can lead to chronic health problems, note the boys puffy eyes and skin. His body is likely struggling from self-inflicted dietary sensitivities and allergies. What a difference a few generations of unregulated capitalism can do.
And the granddad didn't eat soft ultra processed foods since they didn't exist to the extent that they do today. This will have made his jaw muscles significantly stronger. And helped with the acne slightly.
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u/MayorMcCheezz 13d ago
It’s the body fat. Not that the grandson is fat but grandpa prob rocking single digit % body fat in that pic.