star wars isn't a utopian society, though. lukes family can't afford or won't spend the money on a droid that could do all the work for them. or the might be supply issues on tatooine - they buy c3po and r2 off jawas, after all.

I mean...none of what you said is incorrect, but none of it precludes the premise either.

On Earth here in 2023 we have cars and trucks, yet many people in developing countries still walk or ride animals to get where they need to go.

E-waste is a major issue and smartphones are ubiquitous, yet there are still areas even in the US that have limited or no Internet access, and in developing countries, access to even fresh water, let alone electricity and Internet, can be hard to come by.

We are capable of amazing medical feats like gene therapy and advanced prosthetics, yet millions lack access to basic care, and millions more die from preventable disease every year.

So maybe in Star Wars it's less an issue of "they have bad skin because there's nothing that can be done about it" and more, "They're poor people struggling to get by in an unforgiving, backwater location, so that type of care is inaccessible, prohibitively expensive, or seen as a non-essential luxury."

IDK, maybe not. It's easy to think of space travel and robotics as more complex than medicine, but I don't think that's necessarily true. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we have mass produced droids before we've totally cured skin aging. Maybe not interstellar travel, but you never know

High tech, low life. Star wars is dystopian

None of those technologies have anything to do with skin. Well, ok, the replacement limbs do, and showed that they can produce artificial skin that even includes the sensation of touch. But what moisture farmers have time to book an appointment on a medical ship when it happens to be in the area (or a quick light jump away)? Oh right, abundance of droids that could be doing whatever labour is involved on a moisture farm (carry the daily bottle of water to the fridge? What is their output even like?).

The next star wars should be about a trade deal between Tatooine and some ocean planet to exchange some water for some sand and moisture farmers hiring some force using mercenaries (let's explore one of the other cults of the force instead of just the Sith and Jedi again). It would be interesting if the whole thing was written to make everyone morally ambiguous, like a lot of chaotic goods, true neutrals, and lawful bads so that at the end of it, there's a debate about whether the outcome was a good one. That's a lot better than debate about what the dumbest parts were.

I guess it's like Patrick Stewart/Picard's "in the future nobody cares if you're bald".

Then why do all the ladies love Riker and his glorious hair?