Quote from: Lyric on September 07, 2018, 11:35:49 AM
Every era has it's problems and it's advantages. For instance in the 1950s most women with children were married and stayed home with their children. While this was less than fulfilling for the wives, the children benefited from having parenting during the critical early years of life.

This was actually common only in one specific demographic, which happened to be culturally dominant and so reported on as being the 'standard and usual practice'.

In other demographic groups both the mother and father were working full time, sometimes with a grandparent or neighbor helping to supervise what were essentially latchkey kids.  These demographics were generally underreported in the popular media.

The culture and it's self-image in media in the 1950s USA was very interesting both for how it was seen and recorded, and for what was hidden from sight.

Yes, there were certainly different groups in other situations, but the United States had an actual middle class in the 1950s, greatly due to government benefits aimed toward WWII veterans and other factors. The larger part of manufactured goods were made in the US then, and there was more of a cultural norm of retaining employees for long periods.

That said, most of those advantages tended to be more available to anglo saxon citizens, while ethnic minorities suffered greatly in many areas. The "make America great again" slogan seems to aim toward a 1950s-like period, but the apparent greatness was the result of turning a blind eye to the darker side of society.

Ah, the good old days  ... for some.

Quite severe racial discrimination was legal in many countries including the USA, Australia and African colonies. 

Women, as the article Dena presented confirmed, were also encouraged to be submissive and sometimes had it much worse.  I'm an Andy Capp fan but there is a 1950s Andy Capp cartoon that still chills me.  It shows his wife Florrie lying on her back with Andy standing over her.  The caption is

"Look at it this way, honey.  I'm a man of few pleasures and one of them happens to be knocking yer about."

Like the other Andy Capp cartoons, it was obviously intended to be funny.

My memories before 1960 are those of a very small child but from 1963 to 1975, I spent about ten years of my life in countries in which television had not been introduced, racial discrimination was common and usually legal, and attitudes generally were mostly very conservative, so I think that my upbringing had an early 1950s-like background. 

I do sort of miss listening to the radio instead of watching television.  Television requires too much concentration but with just radio, I could read, write and do my homework without worrying about what programmes I was missing.  I haven't indulged for quite a while but my nostalgia caused me to acquire a substantial collection of OTR (Old Time Radio programmes), during which time I found that there are many like me.

My parents married in 1957.  My mom is from a small town in Hokkaido Japan, dad from a small town in Utah.  They caught some flak for that.  A decade before they met, US citizens who looked Japanese were automatically sent to prison (internment camps) for several years under US Presidential Executive Order 9066.

When I was born my existence was evidence of a felony in several US states and continued to be illegal until 1967 when the Supreme Court overruled local laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage. 

I have seen and experienced things that help explain why some people have said "enough" and pushed for change any way possible.

I was with my parents in 1971 when we stopped at a fuel station in Marysville, Washington State - an hour north of Seattle.  We had purchased fuel at that business on a regular basis, but never again.  The employees thought my mother was Native American and told her she was not allowed to use the restroom.  The fuel station is still there today.  I don't know where those employees are now but I hope their kids know better.

Well personally I survived the 50's by being totally hot for my friends' older sisters who were still wearing girdles with suspender stockings, petticoats, swirrly skirts and protruding sweaters.  Not to mention hanging onto sort of greasy looking guys with sideburns and cars with loud exhausts.  My friends' older sisters all thought we were pests and they were right.  We'd sneak through their laundry baskets after they went to bed when they got home and play with their damp panties. 

Ah yes, the 50's.  Good times.   

   Carolina

Quote from: Julia1996 on September 06, 2018, 06:09:20 PMAnd I found the duck and cover films really funny. A nuclear bomb is about to be detonated over the city and they tell school kids to crawl under their desks. Did they think being vaporized under the desk was better somehow to dying in your seat? And I loved when they told people if they were outside and they saw the flash to drop and cover their head. If they saw the flash they would be part of the upper atmosphere before they had time to drop and cover. Lol.

Going by witness accounts from Japan of the A Bombs, there were actually a lot of survivors in the cities within buildings, the problem was that the buildings were on fire or the people in them had been peppered with shards of glass from the windows, etc. I would say the picture I got from those books about it wasn't a scenario in which everyone would be instantly vaporized within a mile, so I suppose getting under a desk would have helped provided the building was strong enough.

That said, the A bombs they used in 1945 are feeble compared to the H bombs they've got now. They probably would just 'glass' everything.

You mentioned the moral panics of the 50s, 'parking' and 'beware the homosexual'... stuff that "corrupts the kids". They never go away, they just move on to something else. At one time it was collecting picture cards, then heavy metal and Dungeons & Dragons, then "video nasties" in the 80s, then video games in the 90s and 00s... and now the latest moral panic is for having a conservative opinion. Lol.

Most of use that were born in the 50's had war veteran fathers and supportive homemaker mothers. My farther was a WWII vet from a very strict old fashioned family him self. All the things we take for granted today were taboo in those days. Yes, all those warning films of 50's, 60's and even the 70's are pretty silly by todays standards. Unfortunately todays duck and cover means there's a shooter somewhere. I'm glad that we have evolved far beyond the old fashioned, limited views of the old days. Back then reefer made you crazy. And now it's a valuable medication and is even legal in a lot of states. My family had those old fashion radios but we also had one of the first B&W TV's. I was glued to it with uninterrupted fascination during the Apollo 11 mission. All those things from the past had their place. Besides, I think I look great in those old fashioned shirt dresses. I mother could of been a supermodel.

Didn't you love watching the space launches? I happened to be in Hawaii when the moon landing astronauts splashed down. Big parade.

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Quote from: JudiBlueEyes on September 06, 2018, 09:13:11 PMCasual clothing as we know it wasn't around.  Jeans (actually "Bluejeans" were something sailors and farm workers wore, though different styles.

When I was in school, dress codes were rigid.  In elementary school (in the U.K.), kids had to wear a uniform.  It was a big treat when we moved to Canada, and we could wear civilian clothes to school. 

Girls had to wear skirts, even when the temperature was -35C!  It was considered a major victory for sanity when the school board relented under pressure and allowed girls to wear slacks to and from school, provided they changed into skirts before classes started.

Guys were not allowed to wear jeans.  Only juvenile delinquents wore jeans.

We didn't do any "duck and cover" drills.  They did have air raid sirens around the city, though, which were tested once a year.

There was no sex education in the schools.  There was none at home either, which is why the schools finally put together an experimental sex ed class when I was in my grade 9 year.  My parents refused to sign the permission slip, so I had to sit in the humiliating "alternative" class with the younger kids.  I still haven't forgiven them for that.

Quote from: KathyLauren on September 08, 2018, 02:55:08 PM
My parents refused to sign the permission slip, so I had to sit in the humiliating "alternative" class with the younger kids.  I still haven't forgiven them for that.

Oh that's soooo not fair! I'll sign your permission slip for you Kathy. I'm not afraid of sex education classes.

Hugs,
Donica.

The weird thing is, 50 years from now people will probably be saying "How did anyone survive the 2010s?"

Quote from: Sephirah on September 08, 2018, 03:10:05 PM
The weird thing is, 50 years from now people will probably be saying "How did anyone survive the 2010s?"

I can answer that one. We transitioned!

Stephanie

Quote from: Donica on September 08, 2018, 03:08:40 PM
Oh that's soooo not fair! I'll sign your permission slip for you Kathy. I'm not afraid of sex education classes.

Hugs,
Donica.

Thanks, Donica.  I kinda figured stuff out since then.   

A lot of the weird stuff that I realize now is trans-related, such as my not fitting in, I attributed for a long time to that event and my subsequent lack of knowledge in that area.

Quote from: Steph2.0 on September 08, 2018, 03:29:35 PM
I can answer that one. We transitioned!

Stephanie

Oh Stephanie!!! You always know just what to say lmao again. Yes indeed, WE TRANSITIONED! DUH!!!

Hugs Shephanie!
Donica.

Quote from: Sephirah on September 08, 2018, 03:10:05 PM
The weird thing is . . . "How did anyone survive the 2010s?"

lol "Transitioning" is kinda like the free-love hippie thing of the 60's . . . really don't see much difference!  At the time was still too young to really participate "Going up the Country" but, then again, managed to avoid Vietnam too. (youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0Dm-OaTNk)

Am told all those communal, anti-establishment "love children" of the 60/70's are the biggest democratic fan base today.

It was a much more innocent time, couples on TV were shown sleeping in separate beds.  I tell people that we're "transgendered" now, because that other word has the unspeakable letters S*E*X in it, this delivered in a shocked/hushed 1950s schoolmarm voice.     Heaven forbid you even broach the subject back then!  But at the same time you had bombshells like Monroe/Mansfield/Van Doren striding across movie screens, just oozing lust. 

Nuclear weaponry actually reached its apex of power in the early 1960s, as bombs were a bit inaccurate, so a warhead that missed its target would deliver such a punch plenty of damage would occur.  Later on ICBMs were more accurate, and delivered multiple smaller warheads.  I was big into this all during the 80s, when things looked really dire on the international stage.  I learned about Duck and Cover from a great doc on this subject, The Atomic Cafe.

Back then I also loved all these weird educational films we'd watch in HS on 16mm film, which would inevitably break down at some point.  They all seem to have been made at least 20 years earlier, people in cars being pulverized by trains they'd failed to see coming, Your Body And You, etc.  Also hilariously awful cinema like Reefer Madness - or Glen or Glenda.  Fun times.

Quote from: KathyLauren on September 08, 2018, 02:55:08 PM
...
There was no sex education in the schools.  There was none at home either, ...

My mother told me I was a boy because of my teeth, so I thought that if I wore dresses, grew out my hair and kept my mouth shut, I could be a girl.  When I was eight, my hopes were dashed when my mother told me that women didn't have willies.  I wonder whether there could be any little trans girls like that nowadays.

It was the really early 60s. I had a crystal radio and listened to radio plays on am radio. No power, no electronics. My patents couldn't afford to get the family a portable 1 transistor radio.

The iPhone X has 4.3 billion transistors.

I loved that radio. It was in the shape of a little rocket. The nose of the rocket had a little rod you would push in and out to tune. I had a little ear piece.




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 I think the reason they had  kids get under their desks was so they could use the seating chart to identify the remains.
Also if you see the flash you have already been exposed to gamma radiation as it travels at the same speed as light.

As a 1950 model myself, I have survived that and subsequent decades so I may have a different perspective -

I am the elder of two children in a prototypical 50's family; my sister is three year younger. But my upbringing was somewhat unconventional in that I was allowed to crossdress at an early age.
I really don't remember too many details but I had several dresses in my closet by the time I was six and had total freedom to express my femme self around the house and, occasionally, elsewhere. My underwear drawer was full of panties and tights and most of my shoes were decidedly girly. For years, my sister wore my hand-me-downs.
When I started first grade I was distressed when I was told I had to wear boy's underwear, socks and boy's shoes every day. Damn. Up until then, since I had the option of "he" or "she," it was a massive letdown.

Yes, my mom was rather "liberal" and not afraid of letting me express myself; Dad was another story altogether. After they divorced in 1963, I was able to "unhide" and expand my wardrobe. Mom taught me about gay men, lesbian women and Christine Jorgensen; she also taught me how to shave my legs, gave me make-up tricks and taught me how to walk in heels starting with a pair of tan suede thigh-high boots with a 3-inch stacked wood heel. (Talk about 60's retro... )

I don't deny the 50's and 60's were dark periods for a lot of reasons but I am ever so grateful for coming to age when - and how - I did.

As Sephira said, "The weird thing is, 50 years from now people will probably be saying 'How did anyone survive the 2010s?'"

Susan