Cool, thanks all for the answers (re: age/attractiveness).
I do think it’s a bit odd, Dio, to assume no one can ever look older. I think the average whatever year old does look their age, but there are of course some who look older and some who look younger. And different people do age…well, differently. I’ve always looked really young for my age, and it definitely seems to run in the family (my mom in her fifties looks really young, as does my 80 something year old grandmother). At 18 I wasn’t looking hugely different than at sixteen, though I do look different now…and I get the sense from others’ reactions that my face has changed somewhat more now a little later in life. It’s kind of been a very gradual process.
I’ve met high school kids who could carry on more intelligent conversations than some college students I’ve had the misfortune to run across.
I think that your hidebound attitude has been displayed time and time again, as you chronically refuse to accept any evidence that doesn’t jive with your memories of your personal experience, exactly as **Dio **has been doing in these two threads. However, I will concede that the snark was rather out of line for IMHO, especially as you weren’t involved in either of the threads. So while I stand by the accuracy of my statement, I *do *apologize for making it. Just because I was getting frustrated with **Dio **was no reason to drag you into things.
This last Christmas I walked into my bro’s house where we were all gathering. I took my coat off, set down my purse, noted the gal sitting in the chair who I assumed was my SIL’s friend or something.
It was very very disconcerting to realize that was no adult stranger. That was my 12-year-old niece. I’d been there at least ten minutes and could see her out of the corner of my eye the whole time before I realized who she was.
She’d done her hair different, she was wearing makeup, and clearly had changed subtly but significantly in the three months (?) since I’d seen her last. She’s already 5’8" on her way to being over 6’ tall. What was a tall 11-year-old suddenly became a lanky, skinny, could-pass-for-20 12-year-old.
When I was in 8th grade I was dating a 14-year-old who already had a receeding hairline. By the time we hit high school, he routinely passed for a 30-something teacher.
My younger brother admitted that he sold cigarettes in middle school and high school for 25-50% over sticker price to people underage. He started doing this…at age 13 1/2. He had a full-on beard, and we all have very dark hair/eyes, which always helps. Frankly, he should have been carded, but he easily passed for 21. Now, if you heard him ask for more than cigarettes, it probably would have been obvious that he still watched cartoons.
As for serving people in a bar, the nicer the establishment, the more slides. Six or eight months ago the SO and I were at one of our favorite $20-40/plate restaurants, and saw 16 year old girls with their parents being served.
Good news for girls who get their period at 9 and breasts at 11.
Certainly young teens can pass for 21, at least physically. That’s usually when people start paying attention to them again, after the lonely gulf between kiddie cuteness and object of lust. I got into bars at 15, 16, though I also had my age guessed by older men who were very nice but too smart to even think of hitting on me (others clearly knew but didn’t care). I wasn’t lying to anyone beyond the bartender and the doorman, really, and it probably would have taken all of 30 seconds to figure out my real age.
Okay, then, thanks for your apology - insofar as it was. But the main point remains. Three, actually: one, I’ve never said or believed that no one could have an experience other than my own, as you claimed; two, you’ve apparently decided to pass on finding examples of my having acted the way you described; and three, I’m no more hidebound than any of the board’s UHC posters. How many of you have reversed your position based on what Sam Stone or any of the board’s other conservatives have posted regarding UHC? Why is it only the posters who refuse to come around to your way of thinking who are the hidebound ones and not vice versa?
There’s a difference between getting breasts and hips vs. having them make you appear as an adult. The youngest I’ve seen that could pass for an 18-year old is maybe 14. But I’m sure exceptions exist somewhere. The normal distribution curve has no upper or lower limits.
Depending on the state, that may be legal. In Wisconsin, people under 21 (I think with certain age restrictions) can consume alcohol if their parent or legal guardian is present and approves. I think it might technically involve something like the parent having to order it and give it to them, but in practice it usually just involves something like the teen ordering and the parent giving the server the thumbs-up.
To be blunt, it literally causes me mental pain to read what you write when you’re acting that way. You can disbelieve it if you want; but enough people have accused you of it and offered evidence of it time and time again that I don’t feel it’s necessary to subject myself to reading through, say, that terrible pretty mom Sarah Palin death panel fiasco thread to pull up specific examples.
Off the top of my head, think about something like, oh, teen pregnancy. You’ve been shown cite after cite after cite that prove that teen pregnancy rates were terrible in the decades you laud as the golden age, yet you maintain that they must all be wrong, because they do not fit with your worldview. You come to a conclusion, and then you determine the veracity of the data based on how well it supports you.
You are one of the people on this board who I see as most chronically carrying on with this type of behavior. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of it from Dio, too. But you’re pretty much the poster child of, “It’s not what I experienced, so your data must be wrong.”
I, too, am sorry for the continued hijack, but it’s difficult to let inaccurate or biased appraisals of my posting history go unchallenged out of concern that they be accepted as factual otherwise, and I’m afraid that as long as Shot From Guns is allowed to make inaccurate comments about my posts here, I’m going to have to come back in to defend them.
If you will recall, SFG, I did not dismiss comparisons of fifties pregnancy rates with those of today out of hand and simply because they didn’t fit with my preconceived notions. I dismissed them largely because I don’t believe an accurate comparison is possible and I said so at the time.
First of all, no one could even agree on what the term “teen pregnancy” meant within the context of the fifties vs. now. Did that include women over 18, or just minors? Did it include married women, and if it did, did it pertain to married women over 18, or girls who got married younger? And were they pregnant when they got married? And if so, did they get married only because they were pregnant? And what about girls younger than 18 who got married and then became pregnant? And on and on and on it went.
And then we have the fact that the Supreme Court invented a right to privacy that didn’t exist then which to my mind would make it difficult to get an accurate reading on teen pregnancy rates these days, when girls in some states can get abortions that even their own parents don’t know about.
And then we have the fact that birth control pills and other birth control options are widely available now and that the current teen pregnancy rate is occurring despite the fact that many people already have their kids on birth control
And another factor is the prevalence of sexual imagery and music in society these days in which even grade school kids are being constantly bombarded with references to fucking and sucking dick. I read an article just a week or so ago about kids in a day care center engaging in oral sex with each other (and in Oklahoma, no less, the heart of the Bible belt), and even the former sex symbol Raquel Welch is complaining about the mores of middle school kids these days where girls don’t think oral sex is really sex and defend it by saying “all the kids are doing it”. Cite and Cite
Now, you tell me what makes the most sense - that fewer kids got pregnant during an era when premarital sex was frowned upon and virtually absent from public discourse, where girls often would have nothing to do with a boy who so much as said the word “fuck” in front of them, and where the subject of oral sex was almost totally taboo…or in today’s society where TV and music is full of sexual images and references, and where every 7-11 magazine rack is full of magazines giving girls advice on how to give “amazing” blowjobs and other ways to keep their boyfriends happy in bed?
It’s absolutely ludicrous to contend that there is less sexual activity among adolescents and even grade school kids now than was the case in the fifties, and it was this contention which brought up the whole teen pregnancy, STD and promiscuity rate debate to begin with. And it was on this basis, as well as the other things I mentioned just above, that caused me to dismiss claims that teen pregnancy was a worse problem in the fifties than it is now, and to me they are all perfectly valid reasons and go a good deal further than not accepting someone’s teen pregnancy data simply because it doesn’t jive with my personal experience.
Now, having said all this, I’m perfectly happy to let this hijack drop. I trust Shot From Guns will do the same without having to let off another shot on her way out.
Prove it. Stop arguing from incredulity. Give actual evidence other than your own personal anecdotes for why something can’t be true.
Put your money where your mouth is, and I’m sure we’d be able to set up an experiment where we give you tons of photos with known ages and test your apparent ability to never not know how old someone is. Or don’t, and prove that you are just talking bullshit in an effort to look like you know more than everybody else.
As for my answer: It would be arrogant of me to assume that, just because I haven’t seen something, it must be impossible. I would be biased if I assumed no child under 9 could look over 18. But, in my own experience, it is quite common for a 14 year old to be fully developed enough to pass as 18. Many women I know did not change in looks between those two time periods.
I love how Dio is the only person in the poll to vote that only a 17-year-old can look older than an 18-year-old.
I worked at a liquor store for some time, so I encountered a lot of 21-year-olds that looked 15 or 16. I wouldn’t know about the opposite since anyone who I thought was over 21 wouldn’t get carded.
I chose 15 for the poll because I once met a 15-year-old guy who looked 18. It was very weird because I would assume he was my age until every so often he would say something to remind me he very much wasn’t.