Wives with Beehives

[Coconut Flan]

The house I grew up in isn't air conditioned still.

[GiggleOfGirls]

My grandmother's house didn't have A/C until a couple years ago when she moved out and some other relatives moved in. I remember staying with her in the summer in the deep south. Crazy hot... I got heat rash from staying there one year.

[Wolfie]

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.

This could be a confusion of decades- my 60-something mom tends to do that with some decades. I think that by the 70's air conditioning in homes was the norm. And the article I linked said that it was common in stores very early on. (good business- get them in the cool store so they buy!) But even in the area where I grew up, where it was common to be in the 90's and 100's in the summer and part of fall, I remember my neighbors and grandparents having swamp coolers in the 70's, and my mom and grandmothers talked about no AC earlier on. The house I grew up in had central heat and AC, but I don't know if had been put in by my parents, or by the immediately previous owner. There is a window in the living room that is just the shape of a cut out for a window unit. Most of the rentals I had, also had those cut outs for units- they were mostly late 1940's built.

[Coconut Flan]

I don't think she's confusing things. Her younger sister agreed with her. The bedroom units were lightweight removable window units from what I can tell. Her sister thinks the doctors and such had full house exterior unit air conditioning by the early 60s.

On the other hand my mother remembers a trip in the 50s to visit family at the beach where it was dreadfully hot and they didn't even have a single window unit.

[B5SnowDog]

My mom spent the first half of the 50's in university and the rest working and in grad school.

I caught an ep of the Twilight Zone during the Syfy marathon today that I thought was relevant to this thread. A man and woman are in the living room discussing plans for their upcoming marriage; her father is in the kitchen preparing dinner.

Man: "Remember, you're a Ph.D."

Woman: "Not yet, I'm not. There's a little matter of an examination, remember?"

Man: "A technicality - anyway, you're going to be a housewife."

Woman's father: "The devil she is! I'm giving you my daughter's hand, not her brain. She's going to get that Ph.D.!"

The episode aired in 1960.

[salsa]

I think these girls (yes, girls - they refuse to grow up to be women) enjoy play acting. And then get pissed off when it doesn't play out.

[Kitty]

Where did they find my old gym suit? I, too, has one just like that. I remember that they changed the style a little to make even more unflattering that it already was. Fortunately, I was able to wear my older sister's which was slightly less hideous. IIRC, one of my best friends was able to do the same.

By the time I was I'm high school, they changed the uniform to blue and white striped t-shirt and blue shorts. It was a bit less awful.

Holy shit, you were allowed to wear shorts that short IN THE FREAKING FIFTIES?!??! TO SCHOOL?! And you were in fact REQUIRED to?!

My high school, as of 2008, requires loose knee-length basketball shorts for gym class. There is no uniform, and things might have changed, but all gym clothes have to conform to regular dress code standards, which means shorts have to come to your knees. They are a bitch to find if you're female.

I mean, those getups in the link are really stupid-looking, and I don't blame anyone for wanting to forget them, but holy shit, my school got overrun by people who idolize the 50s as well and those things would never be allowed, ever. I think Duggars, Maxwells, and other modesty fetishists would have strokes if they walked into a school full of girls wearing those things!

[longskirtlotsakids]

Belted sanitary napkins. Wear those fifties loverd, tell me how awesome the are. Esp when a belt snapped in public or a clip broke fun times.

[Kitty]

Belted sanitary napkins. Wear those fifties loverd, tell me how awesome the are. Esp when a belt snapped in public or a clip broke fun times.

The adhesive ones are awful enough!

[Hane]

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). :-)

OMG--I had forgotten about sleeping in rollers! I had baby-fine hair, and I had to do this in order to give my hair a modicum of body. Every. Damn. Night. And they were bristle rollers--the smooth ones would fall out.

[YPestis]

You know, I can see the appeal of the 50's to some extent. There's the stereotype that women did not concern themselves with education and careers. Aspiring ladies were encouraged to "marry well". In the 21st century, ambitious gals are encouraged to go to school and work hard. To some girls, the former is much more appealing.

There's also the myths that much of societal dysfunctions were nonexistent in the 50's. If a woman's life is filled with abuse or divorce, the 50's whitewash of such events probably seem like a haven.

Much of the appeal of the 1950's is perpetuated by the decade itself, which tended to showcase an IDEALIZATION of life back then. Those that do not understand history mistaken that idealized portrayal for reality. Our world appears messier because we are not afraid to show the flaws that exist. The house isn't clean because you tossed the garbage into a back room. There is no "easy" time period when life is "simpler". We are a complicated species and that means our lives are complicated. I hope that those play acting the 1950's lifestyle understands it's just play, that not all the stereotypes about that period are true. In fact, a big chunk of people today would find the period oppressive. Anyway, I am thrilled to not live in the 50's. And those beehives are kind of funny looking....

[Hane]

Holy shit, you were allowed to wear shorts that short IN THE FREAKING FIFTIES?!??! TO SCHOOL?! And you were in fact REQUIRED to?!

My high school, as of 2008, requires loose knee-length basketball shorts for gym class. There is no uniform, and things might have changed, but all gym clothes have to conform to regular dress code standards, which means shorts have to come to your knees. They are a bitch to find if you're female.

We only wore them in gym class. Around 1966, when miniskirts came into style, I'd occasionally see girls who'd been sent to the home-ec teacher's classroom to have their hems forcibly lengthened. To the home ec teacher's credit, she did the work neatly, without defacing the garments, but the crease from the original hem often showed an inch or two above the new hemline. I used to wonder why the heck anybody bothered with this nonsense--it wasn't as if skirts and dresses had enormous hem allowances to work with, so they couldn't get lengthened very much. By the following year, neither the faculty nor the administration cared very much.

Kitty, where did you go to high school? A girl I know recently moved from Connecticut to South Carolina with her mother. One day, she wore a barely-above-the-knee-length skirt with knee socks to school. She was sent home to change because it looked "provocative." Hell, in the late '60s, parents thanked God if their daughters dressed that conservatively!

[salsa]

Belted sanitary napkins. Wear those fifties loverd, tell me how awesome the are. Esp when a belt snapped in public or a clip broke fun times.

Or one of your safety pins came undone and poked you.

[Wolfie]

Kitty, where did you go to high school? A girl I know recently moved from Connecticut to South Carolina with her mother. One day, she wore a barely-above-the-knee-length skirt with knee socks to school. She was sent home to change because it looked "provocative." Hell, in the late '60s, parents thanked God if their daughters dressed that conservatively!

My flapper great grandma always told my mom that her late 60's miniskirts were too long... They were awfully short, I am taller than her and outgrew them before I was 18. I still have one, but it would have to be a tunic on me with jeans or leggings.

On the other side, I am continually amused about my dad's obsession with my brother's hair being too short. He was bothered by it when we were in high school, he is still bothered nearly 2 decades later.

[nokidsmom]

Holy shit, you were allowed to wear shorts that short IN THE FREAKING FIFTIES?!??! TO SCHOOL?! And you were in fact REQUIRED to?!

My high school, as of 2008, requires loose knee-length basketball shorts for gym class. There is no uniform, and things might have changed, but all gym clothes have to conform to regular dress code standards, which means shorts have to come to your knees. They are a bitch to find if you're female.

I mean, those getups in the link are really stupid-looking, and I don't blame anyone for wanting to forget them, but holy shit, my school got overrun by people who idolize the 50s as well and those things would never be allowed, ever. I think Duggars, Maxwells, and other modesty fetishists would have strokes if they walked into a school full of girls wearing those things!

Oh my God, that suit from the link is the same gym suit I had to wear during high school and I went in the mid-70's. I remember me Mum telling me to be prepared for that gym suit as she had to wear the same thing from the same high school in the 50's. Shortly after I graduated, they changed it to to a T-shirt and shorts, same as the boys were already wearing.

One of the first things I did upon graduation was pitch that thing. Actually, I wanted to ritually burn it, but that was out of the question living at my parents house.