The human condition underlying civilization will always contain the same elements from generation to generation and from millennium to millennium, there's no argument by me about that. But the way of expressing that condition and of interacting with others that is seen in daily life in society changes from era to era. The major change I see in the way people act and dress in public is things are more individualistic now. For instance, the massive use of cell phones, ipods and the like in public means people are interacting with others far away and not with the people around them as was necessary in times gone by; the other people on the bus may just as well be furniture because they don't figure into the bus-riding eperience. That type of thing to me is a big difference between the fifties and now in ways of interacting in society.

And the point is ?

Two points, smelka:

One, that, as Olfacta points out, the Fifties really did have some hypocrisies and "unseen" intrigues, and

Two, it's hilarious to hear a nice Christian 70-year-old South Texas lady matter-of-factly use the words "lesbian" and "hooker".

A lot of positive, great things happened since the 50s, we all know them, no need to repeat. On the other hand, what I would call a wave of vulgarization, crudeness threatens to engulf us . The most terrible thing is that nothing shocks us. Let's take gossip, yes, simple gossip, I won't pretend that when I was young people didn't gossip, but it was always considered "bad manners" or among religious jews " Lashon Raa"- bad or wicked tang, a sin, in other word. But now the pop culture thrives on gossip, nobody thinks that it is uncouth, we are one big gossip factory.

On the whole the 50s were about discretion and fear of scandal, and you could say there was more hypocrisy, but there is a saying that " Hypocrisy, is a homage that vice pays to virtue".

Yes, we are less hypocritical, but virtue became a casualty.

You friend called a spade a spade. She was 70 years old, do you think she wouldn't have known what those words mean?

I think this has much to do with the explosion of media and communications that has engulfed us.... Including the very Internet we're all gleefully typing on right now.

EVERYTHING gets boosted in visibility, it seems, from the sublime to the sordid... Lots of beautiful information (movies, music, perfume communiques) gets communicated nowadays also.

Regarding the explosive visibility of, say, Fundamentalist Christian tenets and personalities in the 1990's and Millenium, other social critics have simply maintained that ALL voices are now more visible... including personalities and bodies of opinion which were already there before.

Other, even more pointed and shrewd social critics, allege that "things become more visible when they are in their death-gasp".

There certainly were four-letter words in the Fifties, witness novels like THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer, and the "naughty" comedy of Lenny Bruce (arguably the father of all the raunchy comedy we hear nowadays.

Oh God, no. But to use those words in reference to one's own relatives!

It's amusing to see a presumption that a 70-year-old might not know the meaning of those words. Do people think old people are working down in age from 100 and haven't reached the knowledgeable age of 25 yet?

I wonder how many people are posting who actually remember or participated in the 50's.? I did.

Her mother had nothing to worry about. Scroll down until you see her name -- do you think this could be her?
http://www.realityexploits.com/2007/06/09/...100-sexy-women/

So did this old broad Gloria, I saw Elvis in person (up close) before he dyed his hair black, I smoked cigarettes, wore tight levis, read "Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller and thought it was 'dirty', as well as Lady Chatterly's Lover. Read movie magazines, watched Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy (where Lucy & Desi slept in twin beds), drank Royal Crown Cola...........oh I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

Oh, one more thing. My curfew until I was 18 years old was 10PM. I fell asleep right after my senior prom on the way home in my date's car, not used to being out so late. Our senior trip was to Belle Isle (Twitchly/Jeffrey know where this is) where some jumped into the fountain there. It's a very small island across the Detroit River.

Dave, When I was eight, my seven year old male friend and I climbed into a discarded kitchen cabinet that I used for a playhouse. We were playing Steve and Betty from Petticoat Junction. And we did kiss. My mother came out and put a stop to that.

Isn't that the strangest thing? Same exact name spelling. Even at eight I was making women go Lesbian.

Well, I SO-O-O knew that Pat new those words. She came from serious hardscrabble and knew from rugged people and lifestyles from her birth.

But Pat was also a devout Catholic, her house strewn with religious gewgaws and framed prayers everywhere, rarely one to speak ill of others. I just... didn't EXPECT it, that's all. Ya had ta be there, as they say. No slur on the "elderly".

In Boston, MA, I knew a man in his 70's who had actually been a pornstar-- IN THE 1940'S!! As a teen during WWII he was making underground stag films for pay when someone approached him to do so. Yes, in the USA. When I knew him, he was a kindly old gay gent; but these pornos had been straight. Can you imagine?

Lest the modern generation be thought to hold the patent on smut.

Rasputin, I didn't think you were making any slurs at all. I was just commenting on the general conversation.

And rightly, too! The Older Woman leading that poor boy astray!

LOL!

I still remember my first crush on Larry Dunn and my first kiss! I'll never forget it!!!

Now, CHAR, don't tease us: you HAVE to tell us this story!!

Oh his hair was dyed black, everyone knows that. He was performing at the Fox Theatre in Detroit and my Mom got me front row seats.

He was absolutely gorgeous, sexy and so talented. My Mom also, knowing how much I adored him, allowed me to stay home from school so I could take all day getting ready to see him that night. She went with me, as a chaperone, and probably enjoyed that sexy, exciting man as much as I did. I was a very starstruck teenager at the time.

I liked him so much better with his dirty blonde hair, but he liked it better black.

Okay Glo, mine was Jerry Bosca and he was my first kiss as well!

One thing's certain: Generation X'ers have certainly got a lot of mileage burlesquing the 1950's in greeting cards, book covers and so forth. I know you know what I mean here: Like these attachments.

Article and discussion on image of the fifties, depicted as largely constructed (one commenter says invented no, packaged for sale yes).
http://www.metafilter.com/75374/The-Fiftie...-Rondald-Reagan

EDF, I would need to know the age of the author of that text.

I have no idea who the author of that text was , though it was interesting but I was diverted by a link to the Onion which resulted in much chortling ...Panic over retro , go on clickety click.

Well, the fifties...60s, etc, may have been darned nice for some people, but I have to say, I'd rather not live in any other time but the present. I don't think I could survive with the internet. Which is not to say I wouldn't say the same were I living in the 50s and I didn't know what wonders the future held. You can't miss what you don't know

I created the 80's!

(Ducks for cover)

I reveled in your creation Deme. The '80s were my decade to howl.

I was just 6 when the 50's ended. These years are blissful in my youthful memory. Life was a Howdy Doody, Fiesta-wear hued, Daddy built a playhouse for sister and me, skating (ice and roller) nirvana. Polio loomed, but stayed distant from us and all we knew.
I was admittedly very little, but it all changed during the Cuban missle crisis, then Kennedy was shot.

Oh yeah! The 50s were great if you weren't female, Jewish, Black, gay or poor. I was born in 1954. Grew up in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. My mother dressed to go to the market--heels, stockings & girdle, hair done, make-up, etc. People in their early 20s were more like people today who are in their early 40s . in terms of attitude, formality--they were OLD before their time.

My aunt was a very small girl in the fifties... and contracted poliomyelitis just MONTHS before Jonas Salk came out with the vaccine!!

It did freeze the growth of her right leg, while the left leg kept growing. She's always worn a leg brace, and has always had a wonderfully upbeat atttude, never ever letting it get her down.

She was such a pretty little girl.... brown eyes and chestnut locks.... that the MARCH OF DIMES used a photograph of her happily beaming face--- and arms in crutches balancing a clunky steel legbrace-- as their "poster child" image for their communiques. It touches me terribly to think about this.

My father was just a couple of years older than she was, and has confided that his parents always implied that HE had brought home the polio from grade school. Can you imagine?

Oh Ras, your Dad carried this guilt throughout his life. Little ones really do feel responsible when something bad happens.

The photos and TV spots of kids in Iron Lungs were pretty scary to us in the '50's.
Most of us got measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox. Some with protracted high fevers were damaged for life. I do know others (plural!) to whom this happened.
We all got immunized from the Small Pox and have the scars on our arms or leg to prove it.

Julia, if you mean that 20-year-olds acted more grownup and mature in the '50s, I would agree. To me that's a good thing because by the age of 20, you're supposed to be independent and act like a grownup, IMHO.

Adding to post: By age 20 a a young person if at college would be close to graduating and about to start out on their own. If they had not gone to college, they would have been expected to be in the workforce and on their own after high school. At that time, joining the workforce was not the iffy question it is today. For some young women at the time the "get married after high school" model was still in and families where the mom stayed home as a full-time homemaker were very much the norm.

Fifties prosperity is looking pretty darned good today!

Nope, I mean in terms of attitude and formality. A woman got married right after high school, or college, if she went to college (and far fewer women did in the 50s), usually had children right away, dressed like a matron when they were 24, and often even aged faster what with having all those children (and often not well-spaced) starting when they were 22 or so. By the time they were 35, they were indubitably middle-aged, both physically and mentally.

And the funny thing is that now we know that our frontal lobes (the most important part when it comes to planning, organizing goals, etc.) isn't even finished developing until around age 25.

[quote name='Julia in Maryland' date='Oct 7 2008, 10:44 PM' post='410480']
Nope, I mean in terms of attitude and formality. A woman got married right after high school, or college, if she went to college (and far fewer women did in the 50s), usually had children right away, dressed like a matron when they were 24, and often even aged faster what with having all those children (and often not well-spaced) starting when they were 22 or so. By the time they were 35, they were indubitably middle-aged, both physically and mentally.

And the funny thing is that now we know that our frontal lobes (the most important part when it comes to planning, organizing goals, etc.) isn't even finished developing until around age 25.
[/qu





We also know that after 30 + your chance of having healthy children diminishes.

...another thing about the Fifties -- no credit cards.

Stores had "layaway" plans where, if you bought something you couldn't afford, you came into the store and paid it off a little at a time, and when you had paid it all off, you got to take it home.

I can still remember when my parents got their first MasterCharge. It was sometime in the mid or late Sixties.

Maybe we're going there again...horrible thought, but could happen.

Yep! Layaway. I'd go to Rich's Atlanta and put some $ on the clothes I bought. NO interest.

I remember Layaway. In fact, I think if we went back to that, instead of being such a gotta have it NOW/YESTERDAY, society, we'd be much better off.

I guess in a way, I am still in the "layaway plan". We don't have credit cards. We just simply choose not to have them. So we have to "layaway" our money and once we have enough to get what we want we get it. But, if we don't have enough laid away, we do without.