Friday, October 16, 2009

Bring Back the Fabulous Fifties!

Remember the romantic thrill of being young, white, Protestant, and conventional?


Remember when people were proud to be "normal" and "regular?"



Remember Ike and Mamie? We all liked Ike! We were all Republicans once yearning for a world made safe for folk just like us. Remember those long lost golden years?


Suburbia!


Cartoons about suburbia in The New Yorker!


Happy housewives in happy kitchens! Hi Mom!


Great big cars with fins that came in colors like "coral" and "turquoise!"



TeeVee! The electronic babysitter blasting us all with cathode ray radiation for hours on end!


Glamorous sad bad misunderstood beautiful young men on motorcycles like Marlon Brando!

Physique magazines to keep homosexuals safely in the closet and off our children!



Segregation!



Polio!


The House Un-American Activities Committee!

Good Times!

And now a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana wants to bring it all back by making sure the next President Obama never happens by refusing to marry racially mixed couples.

Hat tip to Grandmere.

6 comments:

June Butler said...

Well, I always cooked in high heels. I vacuumed in high heels, too.

The guy in the top picture looks a hell of a lot like Rock Hudson, and I suppose you know about him.

And I ALWAYS greeted Grandpère like the woman in the picture - wearing my high heels. I slept in my high heels.

Those were the days!

Whoops! I mean the 1960s! They actually were not that much different from the 1950s.

Counterlight said...

The 60s was pretty much of a continuation of the 50s in dear old Texas too.

My mother cooked and cleaned in high heels all the way to 1967.

Now Michael and I wear pearls when we cook and clean.

June Butler said...

Oh my! I can picture you and Michael in pearls. And twinsets?

it's margaret said...

People in Berkeley never looked like that. Neither did my mom.

Once a film artist came to the door (I forget his name--he did The Red Balloon) and asked my mom if our family could be in a movie he was making for the World's Hemisfair (I guess it was about 1962). My mom said sure! So for two weeks we had film makers in our house, filming us as the "typical American family." Except that they had to buy us a toaster, an electric frying pan, and electric toothbrushes and clothes so that we would be typical. What a hoot! They also had to hang a sheet over the refrigerator because my mom had painted it!

Guess I was lucky!

I keep meaning to go to the Smithsonian to get a copy of the portions of the film we were in... that's where it is. Maybe I should!

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

The white kitchen mashinery most certainly was a blessing compared to what went before... but otherwise!

JCF said...

"I have piles and piles of black friends."

Isn't that priceless! (That's the no-mixed-marrying JofP in Loosiana)

***

Are there any other Mad Men fans here? I love watching this show about an era of which I have only the vaguest fuzzy memories [I was born January 1962: the current eps are up to the fall of '63, and you can tell What Event (11/22) the season will end on.] It's all about waiting-for-shoes-to-drop: Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, Gay Rights. While focusing on straight, white, upper-class males (for the most part), it illuminates the world that Outsiders inhabit: the Closeted Male, the Ambitious Single Female, the Alienated Housewife. Love it! (Sunday nights on AMC)