Wives with Beehives

[DifferentGurl]

Hope she gets a lawyer and reveal what TLC is.

[clover_leigh]

Here's Dollie's response to the episode on her blog. According to her, pretty much everything about the show was fabricated.

missdolliedeville.blogspot.com/2012/12/follow-up-to-wives-with-beehives.html

Yep,just like everything else on TLC. They should be legally made to put a disclaimer on every single one of their shows. I guess they didnt learn from all the backlash they got for faking Breaking Amish and My Strange Addiction/Obsession. :snooty:

[Miggy]

Stories of nylons versus pantyhose reminds me of my mothers stories. Every day at the school gate, prefects checked your school uniform; were there runs in your stockings, was your dress the right length, were your gloves clean, did you have your hat, etc. (Yes, this was a public school. 1950s uniforms look to have been a nightmare in their own right.) Any infringement resulted in a detention. Mum's family (and everybody in the area) weren't rich enough to replace stockings with runs/holes so they darned them. I hated wearing stockings when I was little. It must be torture to add hand-darned patches. My own school uniform also included stockings and I will forever be grateful to have lived in a time when woollen pantyhose could be bought for a reasonable price and replace when necessary!

[Boltingmadonna]

Misery loves company, so I'm happy to see that I wasn't the only girl in the nation to wear one of those horrible gym suits. Gym uniform in my school was blue shorts and a white blouse with your name embroidered on the pocket. However, my parents were given a hand-me-down romper, so I had to wear that instead. It didn't even have buttons or a zipper, but snaps up the front, which had a tendency to pop open if one exerted oneself to excess. I'm not sure if I had to wear it because my parents disapproved of shorts for girls, or if it was just because it was cheap. The other girls wore little white Keds, but I ended up with a pair of black Converse high-tops because my parents got them on sale somewhere. Those shoes were bad-ass and I would happily wear them now, but at the time I took a lot of flak from the other girls because they were "boys' shoes."

When I outgrew the romper, I did get shorts and a shirt. But I had to pull the embroidery out later so I could wear the shirt as a regular shirt.

[GolightlyGrrl]

Hello Brigita, and welcome to the Free Jinger Fold. I'm a big fan of Stephanie Coontz, and I really gained a lot from reading her book "The Way We Never Were." I highly recommend it.

I can understand some people being drawn to a certain era or decade due to the fashion, music, movies, etc. I know of a couple who own a really cool vintage shop, and they totally rock the 1950s rockabilly look. I, myself, love old movies, and I find many of them have messages that hold up today and are really quite current and timely.

That being said, I have not seen "Wives with Beehives"-I don't have cable tv. However, I do hate how some people romanticize the 1950s where it was a magical time where nobody had a bad marriage, nobody divorced, drug use and alcoholism weren't problems, unwedlock pregnancy never happened, and children were always perfect little angels.

Bullshit. I've had plenty of people tell me the 1950s weren't always that great, especially if you were a minority, a woman, gay, or poor. Hey, you could not be any of those things and still struggle.

[apple1]

Talking about things more happily left behind, I forgot this one:

I never had a beehive, but to keep a halfway-passable hairdo, I shampooed it every night and put it up on plastic rollers, then slept on those rollers. Combed it out in the morning.

Got my first blow-dry hairstyle in my senior year of college and never looked back (Thank you, Vidal Sassoon, for bringing blow-dry dos to ordinary hairdressers). :-)

[SisiL78]

This is the blog of one of the women. She describes all the TLC antics and how pissed she is:

http://missdolliedeville.blogspot.com/

I would strongly suggest a play, if it comes to a city near you, called Maple and Vine. Pittsburgh CIty Theater put it on a few months ago and it was great. It follows a couple who, after dealing with some trauma, move from their high powered NYC jobs as an editor and surgeon into a commune where every day for ever it is 1955 and you have to act "authentic" and have a dossier describing their background. So the asian surgeon becomes a box maker and his editor wife a homemaker. The gay residents have wives/beards and sneak around in the park. The furniture and appliances are all 1950s as well, as is the clothing. It was meant to harken to a time when things were easier and when social roles were more defined and we weren't as distracted by technology. It was interesting how they juxtaposed the better parts of "the good old days" with the negative issues. It was just overall an entertaining play, one of the best we'd seen this year.

[NoQuiverNoCry]

Dear God - I just had a flashback to gym class in 1962 and having to wear one of these:

http://www.loti.com/then_now/Gym_Unifor ... nd_60s.htm

I had to wear them until around 1969 when a black gymnastic leotard became an acceptable substitute.

Can you imagine having to do field hockey where the boys could watch wearing those awful blue jumpers? ARGH!

Yup...we wore these too! Had to put your last name in big white iron-on letters across your back, and embroider your first name over the left breast. I was embarrassed every time I wore that stupid thing. My best friend and I got in trouble for taking the elastic out of the bloomer legs, to reduce the puffy-butt look; they made us put it back in. Meanwhile, the boys got to wear relatively normal long t-shirts and shorts.

In Baltimore, beehives and other retro stuff are still celebrated for vintage kitsch in the Hon culture. "The higher the hair, the closer to god" is a common declaration. It's great fun, but no one deludes themselves that the 50s or 60s were idyllic. And the syles weren't even universally accepted during that time period. Like John Waters showed in Hairspray, some Baltimore girls wearing the popular, very high hair were derisively called Hair Hoppers and labeled as rebellious. Sounds silly now, but it was real.

[muffynbear]

In addition to the girdles, I'd love to know if the women on the show keep it real by using period belts instead of tampons. Sorry, didn't mean to sound pervy., but my mom had to wear one back in the 50s.

[apple1]

In addition to the girdles, I'd love to know if the women on the show keep it real by using period belts instead of tampons. Sorry, didn't mean to sound pervy., but my mom had to wear one back in the 50s.

I used pads kept in place by belts 66-69 (adhesive strips didn't exist then). Used babysitting money to buy myself tampons for the first time in 69 and never looked back.

[sugaree]

This show reminded me of the Daria episode where Jane dates a guy who is way into the vintage scene. She ends up dumping him after he yells at her for wearing 1960's shoes with a 1940's dress.

I couldn't believe the one woman who says that when you look at photographs of people in the 1950's, everybody looks so happy. No shit. Most families don't take pictures when they are sad, and she is clearly avoiding news photos of the period.

Also, photography was relatively difficult and expensive before smart phones and digital cameras. People couldn't afford to take a million pictures of daily activities. Photographs were reserved for special occasions.

[ADoyle90815]

Also, photography was relatively difficult and expensive before smart phones and digital cameras. People couldn't afford to take a million pictures of daily activities. Photographs were reserved for special occasions.

[Buzzard]

I refuse to romanticize any era prior to air conditioning. As far as I'm concerned those were the dark ages!

[gardenvarietycitizen]

I refuse to romanticize any era prior to air conditioning. As far as I'm concerned those were the dark ages!

That and the washing machine. That's one chore I just can't imagine having to do purely by hand - it just took up so much damn TIME, even in days where due to that it wasn't expected for regular people to wear freshly-washed clothes every day. That, and if you've ever had to haul around some water-soaked quilt, the strength needed is just way more than I want to deal with.

[tropaka]

Also, photography was relatively difficult and expensive before smart phones and digital cameras. People couldn't afford to take a million pictures of daily activities. Photographs were reserved for special occasions.

Of course people looked happy - 'smile for the camera'.

I do have to disagree that photography was prohibitively expensive prior to digital...once you had widely available cameras and then disposables, it just meant you had to go the extra step of dropping off your film to be processed. My grandparents/parents took,millions of photos/slides from the 30's on. We also had a polaroid.

[Ex 2x2]

I had no idea people live like this!! I am fascinated. I'll have to try to catch the show, although it sounds like it's not exactly reality.

[Guest Anonymous]

This is the blog of one of the women. She describes all the TLC antics and how pissed she is:

http://missdolliedeville.blogspot.com/

I would strongly suggest a play, if it comes to a city near you, called Maple and Vine. Pittsburgh CIty Theater put it on a few months ago and it was great. It follows a couple who, after dealing with some trauma, move from their high powered NYC jobs as an editor and surgeon into a commune where every day for ever it is 1955 and you have to act "authentic" and have a dossier describing their background. So the asian surgeon becomes a box maker and his editor wife a homemaker. The gay residents have wives/beards and sneak around in the park. The furniture and appliances are all 1950s as well, as is the clothing. It was meant to harken to a time when things were easier and when social roles were more defined and we weren't as distracted by technology. It was interesting how they juxtaposed the better parts of "the good old days" with the negative issues. It was just overall an entertaining play, one of the best we'd seen this year.

It sounds like the 1994 movie "Pleasantville" with Reese Witherspoon, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, William H. Macy and Tobey Maguire. Maguire and Witherspoon, a couple of modern teenagers, get transported to the world of "Pleasantville". a 1950s sitcom and shake things up.

[sugaree]

Of course people looked happy - 'smile for the camera'.

I do have to disagree that photography was prohibitively expensive prior to digital...once you had widely available cameras and then disposables, it just meant you had to go the extra step of dropping off your film to be processed. My grandparents/parents took,millions of photos/slides from the 30's on. We also had a polaroid.

Not necessarily prohibitively expensive...but def more expensive. Also, today I take like a thousand pictures and end up deleting like half of them, because I can. I have essentially a limitless supply of photographs; I can keep going until my battery runs out. But even in the 80s or 90s, when film and processing were comparatively cheaper than they were in the 30s or 50s, I was conservative with what pictures I took, because when my roll or two of film was done, it was done for that particular event. And there was no guarantee the pictures would all come out either!

Your grandparents were the exception: there are far more photographs being taken today then back then. Especially slice-of-life stuff.

[Wolfie]

People didn't drink in the 50's? Those were the days before drinking and driving laws. A cop would just follow the drunky home.

Alcohol if anything was consumed more often. There probably wasn't as much massive binge drinking as there is now. However alcohol was consumed more frequently daily, or throughout the day.

My mom has a wonderful photo of her family sitting on a couch in her grandparents' house. Both of her parents are holding cocktails, and my mom and her siblings are arranged around them. I love it because of how stereotyped 50's it is.

My dad's dad owned a bar.

[tropaka]

my grandparents were an exception because my grandfather developed his own photos - but you're right in that we took fewer pictures because they weren't "free" like now. They certainly weren't prohibitively expensive like the first photo generation where you were likely only taking photos of the newly born, married, or dead (I found a memento mori (sp) in a collection of old family photos and kinda freaked because I'd only recently heard about them - I'd stupidly thought they'd caught my gr gr gr grandfather with his eyes closed, but nope, he was dead).

Re drinking....don't forget the smoking too....most "candid" family Christmas photos I've got from the 50's, 60's and 70's (I didn't appear until the 70's) feature at least one person holding a cigarette and most adults holding a drink.

[Wandering]

I watched that "Time Warp Wives" episode on youtube. Those people were rambling on and on about "vintage values" and "loving your neighbor" while at the same time taking every opportunity to judge others based upon what they were wearing, how they were driving, and how they were living their lives, etc. If being judgmental is a "vintage value", I'll pass and live in the real world. At least in the 21st century I have access to air conditioning and vegan hot dogs.

[Coconut Flan]

I'm a little confused about people thinking there was no air conditioning in the 50s. It began being installed much earlier than the 50s.

[Wolfie]

I'm a little confused about people thinking there was no air conditioning in the 50s. It began being installed much earlier than the 50s.

In the area where I grew up swamp coolers were installed in the 50's, but window units or central AC wasn't common until later. Where I live now, swamp coolers are still more common than AC.

ETA- this article http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cult ... oning.html (not breaking links because it doesn't really matter here) only 10% of US homes had Air Conditioning in 1965. (Since I don't have AC here, usually I don't need it, but I resort to some of those other methods, like sleeping outside when there is a heat wave.)

[Coconut Flan]

Interesting. I asked my mother and she said even in our hick town all the stores had A/C and a lot of people had window units for their bedrooms. Full air conditioning of a house there isn't a necessity as 80 is very warm day.

[treemom]

Interesting. I asked my mother and she said even in our hick town all the stores had A/C and a lot of people had window units for their bedrooms. Full air conditioning of a house there isn't a necessity as 80 is very warm day.

I did not have A/C until I was about 14. But it was Northern Indiana and we were poor,