Why many Soviet schoolgirls at their young age already looked like aunts

Sometimes I look at old pictures of my mother and I wonder. Why? Soviet schoolgirls Did you look that mature at your age? And then there was no cult of beauty, no one brought marathon to school. And after the release, let’s be honest, not everyone began to put on a layer of plaster. What's the problem? Today we will try to find the answer to this question together.



Old Soviet photographs show a completely different life. It is alien to the modern generation, and that is normal. However, at the same time, there are a lot of questions that many people want answers to. Like me.

I didn’t know why Soviet girls looked so mature despite their age. Dressed the same, smiles stretched, but in the eyes a kind of longing. But how not to be sad when you have to live in a totalitarian country under the Iron Curtain?



It is important to note that the Soviet Union has long struggled to recover from World War II. We should not forget the Stalinist regime, which brought an unthinkable amount of grief. Both men and women had to work hard to survive and put their children on their feet.

As a teenager, young children began to help their parents. It was possible to work in factories, construction sites and logging. Carefree childhood smoothly flowed into a routine adult life.



There is an opinion that in the USSR people of intellectual labor were in the minority. And those who worked physically did not follow themselves very much. It turns out that people in adolescence could look much older than their years.

In addition, do not forget about nutrition. Not everyone could be balanced. And in those days, the understanding of what a really good diet was quite mediocre. For example, not every family could afford vegetables and fruits on a regular basis. Also, do not forget about the shortage of certain products and products.

The concept of beauty in the USSR was vague. The girls watched who knew how. No one sat on the exhausting diets. On the contrary, there was a cult of stocky girls and women. They were the ones who could do hard physical work. In addition, it was believed that it would be easier to bear and give birth to a child. And frail and tenacious girls called sprats.



Instagram / @staraya_plenka Nobody went to beauticians then. And beauty salons, familiar to us today, simply did not exist. There were barbershops with a minimum of available services. Soviet schoolgirls did not use decorative cosmetics. It’s no surprise, though, that everyone in the U.S. school was supposed to look the same. No one has heard of self-expression through appearance.

In general, few people risked getting out of the crowd. Often, such creative natures entered theater universities, where they could at least somehow realize their potential. But even then everything was aimed at satisfying the interests of society, not their own.



Instagram / @olgamatuzko Living well and standing out from others was not accepted. In fact, they were ashamed of it. Therefore, in the life paradigm of Soviet girls, taking care of themselves and their appearance was far from in the foreground. Add to this the general turmoil in the country, a difficult way of life - and a couple of extra years literally on the face.



Instagram / @kulturologiaru Fortunately, times are changing. Schoolgirls now look older for other reasons. I wonder what you think about that? Do you agree with the opinion that Soviet schoolgirls are visually very different from modern ones?