I was born in 1952 so I was just a kid and not exposed to some of the bad things that others have mentioned. I do remember that the Holidays were simply wonderful. I enjoyed being a kid then.
Don't you wish life could be like the fifties?
In the words of the late, great John Wayne, "Not hardly!"
I left school in 1952 and got my first job. It paid $13/week. Pretty good money in those days.
In Australia at that time religion still held much power and commanded big congregations. As a result politicians who hoped to be re-elected always had an eye on the pulpit vote which gave the churches far too much power.
We had a "White Australia" policy restricting immigration, with a few exceptions, to white Europeans. But it wasn't just in Oz. I remember a visiting black American preacher named Gardener Taylor thanking us for inviting him to speak. He said, "In my country I wouldn't be allowed to enter your church."
So racism was bad but so was sexism. Women were treated shamefully -- both in employment and socially. This was the era of "the little woman" who stayed home and looked after her man.
If a woman didn't "put out" she was frigid; if she did, she was a tart. A baby born out of wedlock was a bastard and there was still shame attached. (This was a hangover from the puritanical Victorian era and remained in place well into the swinging sixties.)
It wasn't all bad.
There were no drugs, or drug related crime, in Oz in the 1950s. They also came with the 60s. Good manners were the norm, and I still miss those. We enjoyed simple things like dancing, and sing-alongs, and radio (TV didn't arrive in Oz till 1956).
For beach goers, bikinis arrived on the scene about then. Scandalous things that they were. By today's standards they were very modest indeed. I remember having more than one pair of swimming trunks that had a "skirt" on the front -- a second layer of cloth -- that camouflaged any embarrassing dangly lumps that might show through.
No, I don't want to go back to the 1950s. Been there, done that, threw away the t-shirt.
Yeah, but only based on the movie Grease. They way they acted and their social customs and behaviour was so much simpler.
I also like the 80s, though.
No. I don't want to stay home and clean my house in a dress, kitten heels, and pearls. The FDA did not approve the BC pill for a contraceptive until 1960. Black people were still segregated and being lynched in the south. No, no, no. We've come a long way.
Not really.
You think racism and bigotry is bad now? Remember how it was BEFORE the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.
Government corruption was also a lot worse, before the internet and modern communications made "outing" such things to a widespread audience much easier.
No. As a woman I really don't. Women had limited choices and if they wanted to have a career had to really fight for it. Not to mention just going to the grocery store meant you had to put on a dress, girdle (even if you didn't need one is was the proper thing to do.), stockings, heels, make-up and your hair had to be done. No running in to grab milk and bread in shorts and flip flops.
Even if you went back to those standards but with today's technological advances, I am still not the domestic type and am not going to build my life around my husband's when he has not social expectation to do the same for me.
The 50's have been romaticized by shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. The reality was much worse. Many women were married to abusive husbands. The had little rights and few ways to get out such marriages. Divorces were much harder to get and were expensive. Since most married women either didn't work or worked for little money there was no way out.
Hatred was common. People would use fear to promote that hate, The KKK in the south with their lynchings. McCarthy having people turn in their friends as communists, just to keep themselves from being prosecuted. If you didn't marry within your own faith or ethnicity you were often disowned. If you think people are narrow minded and intolerant now, the 50s would blow your mind.
I think I am happy living in the time I am. There is technology around and tests that can be done annually so I can catch the disease that killed both my grandmothers early and not have to go through what they went through. Hopefully should I ever get it, they will have found a cure by then.
Beisides I couldn't stand all those people smoking around me.
NEEEAAAOOUU!!! I GOTTA HAV MAH INTUHRNET (derp)
Every era has its good and bad parts so if I wanted to go back it would be the late 60s hippie era
