The three things that age you the fastest are:
- Alcohol
- Cigarettes
- Sunlight
Young people in the 1970s got all three in abundance, plus some dangerous drugs like heroin.
This look had a name – “heroin chic”. It had the lovely side effect of keeping your weight down.
In most of the United States and Canada, the drinking age was coming down to 18 (It was 18 throughout the 80s in Ontario when it was raised to 19), everyone smoked (even 7th graders) and you were encouraged to get a nice healthy tan.
Gary Trudeau joked about tanning and it’s effect on your in his strip Doonesbury
The result was usually premature aging, particularly of the skin of the face.
By the 1980s, young people were cluing into the fact that these things, although incredibly cool, had some bad side effects. Even my parents gave up smoking.