Well, there is nothing wrong or aging about weekly baths and fewer changes of clothes, although now days that wouldn’t work for most people, but as far as the sun goes, many people and especially men, work outdoors just like they always have, construction, roofers, yard men, farmers, all of the outdoor work still gets done.
When I read old books from the 1800s, the women were covered from head to toe, in one of my collections of women and wagon train crossings, they talk about the difficulty, but they also point out how they had to put their collective foot down to get some of the husbands to quit pestering them about abandoning dresses for pants, the women absolutely refused to lose control of their femininity.
I wonder what some of our current men would think of slender, fit, young ladies with soft, milky white skin, instead of tattooed couch potatoes that live on fast food and big gulps and are 20 to 60 pounds overweight and have no muscle tone.
My overly sensitive nose would object to the weekly baths. Some of my customers cease to bathe at the first sign of cold and they aren’t too regular in the summer either. I can handle the smell of someone who is doing an honest day’s work fine. I can’t handle old sweat, cheap liquor and stale cigarettes.
Oh I definitely agree that most men would rather see a woman from the pioneer days than trailer park trash. Even the ones still in their teens look like blobs.