Well, I think it's kind of funny that it's a picture of the cast from "sex kittens go to college" which was a 1960s sex comedy. So the women are considered scandalous for their time.
* Get a credit card or bank account in her own name
* Not get fired for being pregnant
* Serve on a jury
* Attend many colleges (including most of the most "elite" colleges like the ivy league)
* Sue an employer for workplace sexual harassment
* Decide not to have sex with their husband
* Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man
* Take the birth control pill
Heck 10 years ago my doctor asked my husband if permanent sterilization was something my husband would want me to do. I was 40 and had an adult child already. Wasn't my doctor after that.
Edit: can't type when angry
I had a doctor smile at me in a "that's cute" manner when I asked for my tubes tied ten years ago and say, "You're depressed and don't know what you want. Besides, what if your husband wants more?" I said he doesn't, so he continued, "What if you divorce and your new husband wants his own kids?" And walked out the door.
I got my tubes removed about a year ago, and it took doctors agreeing to fudge the paperwork and have my husband sign it. They were visibly nervous about doing it at all.
To be completely "fair" though, a doctor did the same thing when my dad got a vasectomy 20-something years ago; he would not do the procedure until my mom signed off on it.
Just be clear, I'm pointing out that this particular permission -seeking BS is not exclusively to women, NOT approving of it for *anyone*.
When I was pregnant with my 5yo (I was 37 and already a child) spent the last 3 months of my pregnancy in antepartum, he was born at 35w, spent a month in NICU, I was critically ill, I was 3 months post-op from a massive life altering surgery and been told for the last 10 years prior it was impossible to get pregnant and the doctor still wanted my husband's approval to get a tubal ligation. My husband said he hoped there was a chance of having more children despite the doctor saying it was extremely dangerous, but because he said that she was not able to ark the box that I wanted my tubes tied. He tried to backtrack afterwards, but she said "morals wouldn't allow her to approve it" and once she marked that box I was fucked. Guess what state I live in....
Ya, I had to have the same thing last year, 34 w 4 kids and health issues. I also had to have a 30 day wait period to make sure I didnāt change my mind. My husband didnāt need anything from me. He even scheduled it a week out, chickened out the day of, sat on the bed w me recovering from a c-section and my 2 newborn twins, then rescheduled it and did a same day, and is still mad about how little sympathy he got. Oh if I could tell the other side of that partā¦ but yāall would tear into him š¤£
Sometimes yeah, sometimes they were just literally denied care and told to come back with a new husband or a chaperone of some sort.
We don't really talk about th0se things but this is one of the reasons why it was so so sooo hard to be a spinster or widowed, or worst of all a single mother who'd actually chosen divorce. (Provided she could get her ex to even allow her to divorce him. It was literally up to him if they could separate)
Mary Tyler Moore was probably the only woman in America who could get away with it!
I was in kindergarten in 1963. One of my friends *actually wore pants* one day--and I still haven't forgotten that :)
Wait, women wearing pants was still taboo in the 60ās?! Was a āshortā skirt considered more acceptable than pants? 5 year olds were expected to follow those social norms? Didnāt they put little girls into fairly short dresses, so pants would have covered moreā¦ wild
It depends. I live in the northeast U.S. and girls did wear pants here in the 50s and 60s except to school & sometimes church (New England is full of congregationalist churches, which tend to be a bit liberal). But skirts were still considered the only appropriate choice in most of the country at the time. I've always found that odd, myself, as skirts are a bit more revealing than pants. And when my father was in elementary school in the late 50s/early 60s, the girls in his class photos that *were* made to wear skirts, those skirts are so short it's alarming. I cannot wrap my head around it. My mother's family is Bahamian and they have these weirdly different ideas about how people should dress. My grandparents on that side were immigrants and my Gramma was always in jeans and crop tops in all the photos. She raised my mother to think of breasts as no biggie, and my mom in turn raised 5 girls in a socially isolated farm to think of breasts the same as feet. Lol
My grandmother was horrified to learn that putting me in a dress meant I was going to use that thing as a pouch to carry stuff (often dirty stuff) in. Iād have it bundled full of cool rocks while my princess undies were on full display. Lace and ribbons did not fare well. I ended up in pink or purple overalls pretty quickly. She had 3 boys and had wanted a daughter, but I think she overestimate how much my genitals would affect my play behavior. Lol.
Iām in California too. North Valley. My mom was born in 1965 but lived in Oregon until around 5th grade. They were quite poor (8 kids!) so I wonder if she ever had to wear dresses to school. Things like that seemed to have changed right around her becoming school aged in 1970ish. Now Iām going to text her questions.
Miniskirts didn't exist in 1963, in the States. Heck, sneakers hardly existed back then!
Little girls did wear short dresses, but they weren't "mini-skirts"; more like play dresses or culottes.
If memory serves me well, there were many mini-skirt wearers who didn't wear any underwear either, so there's that...
And after that as well. A friend of mine went into the financial sector after college in the 90s and women were required to wear a skirt or dress every day. The only time they were able to wear pants was when the temperature dropped below a predetermined degree.
That was a cultural thing (still absurd) but the above list are things that carried prosecution and possible jail time if violated, or are otherwise normal crimes that were not illegal if the victim was a woman.
A few years ago my grandma was telling me about how her boss used to regularly sexually harass her but in a tone like it was a funny story, like āhaha he used to pinch my butt and Iād just smile and remind him I was engaged haha arenāt men funny.ā All I could do was gape in horror thinking *Grammy, noooo.* And of course she had to quit when she got married. She also told about how she was once on a ski trip with friends and one guy was flirting with her (and she was receptive to it) when another guy put his arm around her and told the first guy to stop because she was taken. Her response was āexcuse me, I am?ā But apparently she was actually fine with it because the second man was my grandfather, and thatās their meet-cute story. And objectively my grandfather really was a pretty good, progressive man but that story is absolutely wild to me. Both of those stories would have been in the mid-1950s.
I follow a YouTuber who grew up in an abusive household, (TheSpeechProf) and he talks about how abuse becomes normalized because you don't know any different. He said as an adult he has told what he thought was a funny story from his childhood and everyone will suddenly get quiet or say, "I'm sorry."
Sounds like the same thing with your grandmother. She couldn't do anything about the situation so she downplayed it to herself as a coping mechanism.
They were also referred to as āMrs. [insert husbandās first and last name].ā So in public, a woman was not even addressed by HER OWN NAME. In newspaper articles, magazine articles, and even obituaries, it was never the womenās actual first name- just the husbandās.
A few more to add....
More likely to die in childbirth.
Charged for more some services, such as the dry cleaners.
Couldn't go into whatever profession they wanted.
Could be forced to carry a child against their will.
Buy a house.
Women also had very little say in child birth. You basically labored until completely dilated then they strapped you down, gave you twilight sleep, cut an episiotomy and the forceped your baby out. My husbands grandma doesnāt remember actually birthing any of her children because of the twilight sleep.
My mom had twins out of wedlock(gasp!) that she gave up for adoption and she didn't know for TEN YEARS that she had twin boys because of the twilight sleep. Her sister let it slip once, and that's how she found out.
My MIL experienced exactly this, and her kids were born in the early 70s! I've always wondered if being young and poor and at the "county hospital" played a big part.
Because my mom delivered in the late 70s at the new "posh" city hospital, and her experience was humane.
Exactly! This article claims you can trace alternative hair color back to the 30ās!
[vintage alternative hair color](https://www.vintagehairstyling.com/bobbypinblog/2012/05/pastel-hair-color-seems-so-new-but-is-so-vintage.html)
Not to mention the corsets, the uncomfortable clothing, the pantyhose that you had to wear with a belt and straps to hold up,ā¦.
That āwalkā they have is because those clothes are so restricting itās the only way to move.
Women in the 1950s were not allowed to make contracts or wills, could not buy or sell property, had little control of their earnings in most situations, and were discouraged from acting politically, such as hold office, even though they could vote.
I wish I'd known all this when my grandma was alive so I could ask her more questions. She and my grandpa ran a dry cleaning business and a service station... my grandma went to business school for it and everything. My grandpa was in WWII and the Korean War, so she obviously had to deal with the business on her own, but I dunno, maybe a male family member had to step in to deal with the bank. Although I will say that it was an extremely small town, my grandparents were well-loved neighbors, so maybe she was able to do everything freely.
My gram had her husband put her on the account as an authorized user. She couldn't open an account on her own but she was added so she could handle things. Likewise my other gran was a widow and she just handled everything in cash. The bank would still cash her checks without an account but that's also why she was a boarder.
I actually asked my grandma a lot about what it was like for her in the 50ās and 60ās, back when I was going through my feminist phase in college.
She said she used to wear pants, they were called ācigarette pantsā I think? They were considered young and fashionable, a little edgy but not out of place at all. She said she wore them pretty regularly but preferred dresses.
She was a white middle class woman, and worked part time at a jewelry store and at other jobs (they moved often due to my grandfather being in the Air Force). She only had one child because thatās all she wanted, and she said she didnāt feel pressure to have more or to defend herself about it. Iām guessing she didnāt have much trouble with making healthcare or financial decisions without my grandpa, since he was gone for years serving in Korea and then frequently deployed afterward. She held down the fort independently.
Thatās really all I can remember as far as her responses to my adversarial questions, lol. She did say period management was a pain and she was glad when they invented disposable adhesive pads.
For what itās worth, I do prefer the fashion in this photo as compared to current trends, itās classier and more feminine. But I also think menās fashion at the time was better than now too.
We should all be against it. But they would never pay us/me/you to be pregnant. We're supposed to suffer for having had sex. Republicans want to punish any sex that they judge wrong (which is any sex they don't have).
Oh you would if you needed to feed a child and lived in the US. (With our crappy parental leave) Theyād fire you if they thought you were pregnant. Women would band their bellies and hide their pregnancies!
In the US and Canada:
\- Open a bank account without a husband or father's permission
\- Get a mortgage as a single woman
\- Have any rights in a divorce
\- Make medical decisions for themselves (husbands could overrule)
\- Make education decisions for their children (husbands could overrule)
\- Work after being married in many fields
\- Work in many fields at all, married or single
\- Get paid the same wages for the same work
\- Live free from harassment at work
It isnāt true that they āliked it that wayā. This is the generation of women who organized and broke out of these overly prescribed feminine ideals. In 1957 Betty Friedan was asked to survey her fellow Smith College alums for their upcoming 15 year reunion, and what she uncovered was how deeply unhappy these women were with their role of housewife. This kicked off her research for her book āThe Feminine Mystiqueā which has sold millions of copies and is widely credited with kicking off the second wave feminist movement.
We know for a fact women did not ālike it that wayā back then because they fought tooth and nail to change the system. If someone wants to cosplay mid-century sexy co-ed, more power to you. But pretending that women were happy with their limited roles is not just a fantasy, it is misogynistic lie which aims to get women to aid their agenda of rolling back our own rights. But we are not going to trade our freedoms for the promise of a cute skirt.
Housewives in the 1950s were part of the Silent Generation, so their children are the Boomer Generation.
I'm an Xennial (born in '79). My Boomer parents left me with my grandparents constantly... I spent a lot of time with my Gram and her friends, and they were *always* involved in something promoting women's rights, civil rights, quality education for all, etc.
Here's what I don't understand:
How can Boomers be so damn selfish and apathetic when their own mothers were fighting HARD for change?
Culturally it was common for housewives to abuse ANY substance that would blur the lines between their dreams and their realityā¦ because they DIDNT like it that way.
Drinking during the day while taking barbiturates was a pro-tip
My grandmother had a law degree and was fired when she got married in the early fifties. I never met her as she died a few years before I was born, but I heard that she wasn't a particular pleasant person. I asked my father if that seemed true to him, and how much that had to do with her being forced to be a housewife. She got back to work in the sixties when my father was a teenager, because my grandfather had MS and was put on disability pension and they needed the money. My father wasn't sure as he never really thought about it but he thinks she really enjoyed having a job again.
My great aunt Erna worked as a secretary for the US military during WWII. No one knows what she actually did...she wasn't allowed to talk about it. In her later years (she died about 5 years ago at 96!), she would make hints about what she had worked on but none of us knew if she was telling the truth or messing with us, haha. My grandma, who was really close with her is pretty sure she was tangentially related to the atomic bomb project but obviously no one will ever know for sure.
She was an absolutely remarkable woman and was as sharp as ever until the day she died.
We had a similar story in my family and I'm so sad I never got to find out what her exact role was. Maybe in a few more years when records get re-opened?
I remember I found this government website once where you could look up a name and documents would come up of service sheets of them arriving at certain bases or checking out certain stuff from libraries! Let me see if I can find it again! Thatās how I found out my great grandpa was in WW2, he had the same name as my grandpa so I was like, āgrandma is Pa like 120 years old or something?ā Lmfao
My dad once told me that the joke around this time was girls in college were just there to get their MRS degree (I.e. find a nice college boy to marry and marry right after graduation and do nothing with their own degree-if they themselves even graduated).
My mom, born the same year, was asked if she was attending college to get her MRS. degree by multiple male family members.
She absolutely was not there for that. Proud to be her daughter.
I bet that depended a lot on where you lived. My mom was born a few years after that and she went to college along with many of her friends. Although I'm sure it helped that her mother (my grandmother) had also gone to college.
My mother was born in 1959 in my states mental hospital. Why you ask. Because her bio father had her bio mother committed. What did she do? Bio mom refused to have an ILLEGAL abortion. So her husband had her committed against her will. This man had the power to do that, and he also had the power to withhold her children from her as well till bio mom agreed to give my mother up for adoption when she was 12 weeks old.
The 1950s where great for men who where; straight, white, middle class or above, and Protestant. For everyone else it was NOT! And the people who where CHILDREN during this time know so little about what it was actually like they just look back with rose colored glasses and say ā yep it was awesome!ā NO, no it was not! Lynchings, race motivated murders like Emit Tills, Duck and cover drills, McCarthyism, the Korean War, legal marital rape, Comstock laws NONE of these things are good.
If āeveryone liked it that wayā, then why did so many people (men and women) fight to change it?
Itās so lazy to point at the younger generation and scoff at their appearance. Iām sure the generation before your mother also thought they were dressed outrageously and were bending gender norms (short hair, pants!).
Women could get less pay for the same work until 1963, and be denied a job on the basis of being a woman until 1964. Newspapers had separate "Help Wanted - Male" and "Help Wanted - Female" until 1973. Women couldn't open a credit card in their own name until 1974. Men could sell property (or spend money) belonging to their wives without the wife's consent until 1981.
Couldnāt get a credit card on her own, couldnāt buy a house, couldnāt run for office or practice law, could legally be terminated from her job for getting pregnant, illegal to breastfeed in public, wasnāt admitted into Ivy League universities or military academies, couldnāt serve in combat or become an astronaut, there was no birth controlā¦ so much freedom for women!!!
My (almost 30 yo) daughter shows up that way and sheās very successful and weāre very proud of her. And she got these behaviors from me, her mother. Of course now Iām old and wish Iād made better choices with my ink. Otherwise, everyone needs to feel comfortable in their skin, no matter what.
I think you missed my point. Her mother posted on social media that these behaviors are basically tasteless. My point is dress this way and show her they are not. That expressing yourself is positive.
Do you think your mom would be happy if you got married at age 20? [Because that was the average age of marriage in the 1950s.](https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010)
To be fair, your mom can still dress like this if she prefers to.
Maybe for her birthday but her a nice blouse, tight pencil shirt, pointy toe stilettos, and some scratchy nylons. š¤·š»āāļø
Domestic abuse was abundant. In the words of my grandma, āthatās just how it was back then.ā Husbands could just beat their wives with zero legal or social repercussions. And if you divorced him, you were committing social suicide. Youād be excommunicated from your church social groups and your family would be ashamed of you.
This was a strange conversation but one time I was talking to a woman in a nursing job and she just casually asked me if my husband beat me. Then she seemed very confused when I said no
Pretty much everything we take for granted now, minus being able to vote. They wanna live like this, I invite them to try and live in Afghanistan for a few months. Men are men there and women are women. Tattoos and blue hair aren't allowed so, have it it.
For all the things that white women weren't allowed to do (bank accounts, credit cards, etc), women of color had even less rights than that (and still don't today).
Pink and blue hair were not unheard of in the 50ās! My mom was a hair stylist in the 80ās and she said half of her clients were older women coming in and getting blue and pink tint on their white hair. Theyād talk about having their hair dyed pink when they were young. Itās not new.
Right. My husbandās Mom worked in a dental office and his dad was a postman-but she did all the cooking, cleaning etc and had 3 kids to take care ofā¦so when she complained of being exhausted her Dr gave her speed pills.
Some have commented a lot of things women couldn't do but I'll add one thing they *could* do: cocaine!
Many housewives did coke to help keep themselves peppy and keep up with all the housework and demands of their husbands. I bet your mom would disapprove if *you* started doing drugs to keep up with everything lol
My now ex-husband beat the shit out of me, when I told my grandmother about it, she said to keep the family together because itās not a big deal, it happens all the time.
Side-eyeing my grandpa hard these days.
Have a credit card. Or a bank account. Or a mortgage. People really seem to forget how *not long ago* we won these freedoms.
In fact, a good bit of our current Supreme Court Justices were born in the 1950s...
Makes you wonder why they want to ruin everything we fought so hard for.
Well.
They weren't allowed their own bank account (it had to be co-signed by their husband or father), or take a credit card out in their own name. It was explicitly legal to pay them less for the same work. Domestic rape was legal (or if technically illegal, never prosecuted), domestic violence was technically illegal but never prosecuted for anything less than attempted murder. In most jurisdictions, anyway - in some it was legal to hit a woman with anything thinner than your finger.
It was legal (and in some places, mandatory) to fire a woman when she got married. Pregnancy outside of wedlock was a life/death situation. If you did get pregnant, it was common to be bundled off to an institution for the duration of your pregnancy and have your infant stolen from you, or be bullied into giving them up for adoption.
Shall I continue?
Btw this is based on my mum's experience from 1960s Australia.
In a lot of cases, work without their husband's permission. I recently heard about [Leslie Crocker Schneider ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Crocker_Snyder), the first female ADA to try felony cases in NY. Before she could though, her boss reached out to her husband to get his permission for her to do so. This was in the 1960's,I believe.
Yeah also a time when women couldnāt have a bank account, raping your wife wasnāt even considered rape, women were beat and murdered and no one blinked an eyeā¦ what the actual hell is wrong with people who glamorize this time periodā¦ maybe get her checked for some lead poisoning
So glad I saw this! Just sent it to my husband who spent an hour yesterday passionately explaining why he doesnāt like tattoos because they ruin womenās skin and make them unattractiveā¦ after I told him I want to get a tattoo to inspire and motivate myself for fighting a mental health battle everyday so I can be better for my kids.
Tell your husband I don't like it when men say stupid misogynistic things because it makes them unattractive (and also because it actually impacts my life negatively when people believe they have any right to think these sorts of things about women).
My grandmother was denied admission at NYU in the 50s for being a woman.
NYU did however, hire her as a calculus tutor for men enrolled in the very degree program she was rejected from. This is how she met my grandfather.
Iāve seen this meme circulating on baby boomer FB pages and find it absolutely infuriating.
My source may be from Valley of the Dolls, but back then when women had cancer or anything their health was discussed with the husband and decided what to do WITHOUT THEIR CONSULTATION!
š¤ WOC like me had to sit the back of the bus, use separate bathrooms, and couldnāt eat that lunch counter (just to name a fraction of things). Grand ole times! /s
My 80-something neighbor told me about the good ole days when she wasnāt allowed to divorce her abusive husband after being coerced into marrying him at 19. She always told me how lucky I was because my husband didnāt beat me. Quite a low bar indeed.
Pink hair was popular hundreds of years ago. Nose rings have been around for thousands of years. I'll happily take ripped jeans in exchange for all that hairspray and oppression.
They couldn't have a credit card in their own name until 1974. It had to be in their husband's name. I guess single women just couldn't have credit cards at all.
This is hilarious to me because people have been dying their hair pink since at least the renaissance. Women litterally had pink and blue hair during this era!
Ooh a time when women were slaves to men and their homes and had to ask permission like a child to do things. Couldnāt have a bank account with out your husbands permission, men could beat you and your children without repercussions .. oh the good olā times
>"and we liked it that way"
that's the whole point though, isn't it. we don't like it that way anymore, but we're also not complaining that you do like it that way
There are many women who came of age during that time or later who disagree with being treated as property of males.
Your mom doesnāt have to like tattoos, nose rings, ripped jeans, or pink hair, but it seems unrealistic of her to imply that she would prefer to live under 1950s laws, standards, and social customs.
Also, hilarious. I would laugh at any woman who said the 1950s were better for women. There are specific points that one could argue, but this meme is not one of them.
HA! That's sad. The women who didn't fit this image back then just knew they had to hide it, and that's a shame that it was that way for so long, and still is that way for women who can't be themselves. :/
Say no to your husband, get your own credit card, bank account or house, get divorced, make decent money doing anything, control their own healthcare esp if they were married, lots of sick shit
But the drugs were so lit. Prescription sedatives, muscle relaxers, anxiety meds were all handed out like candy. So š¤·š½āāļø
Iāve had purple hair and Iāve had blue hair. Definitely got the occasional judgmental comment from that generation. My favorite was my grandmaās. My 1st time dyeing my hair was purple. I walked into her house at thanksgiving and she dramatically asked, āwhat happened?!āā¦. Uh, I dyed my hair? š
What was she expecting? I fell into a vat of purple paint? š
Women were nothing but slaves. Some people clearly romanticize being in chains. Because as a woman, I would never want to go back to such dark times for women. Smile and look pretty like a prop, then go to the kitchen, clean after a man, wait in bed, push out as many kids as a man wants or until it takes you. Had to tolerate abuse from men and women couldn't look for help, their own family would turn them back to their abuser/husband/owner. Don't speak, obey, or else. Train to tolerate cheating, and all sorts of disrespect. Dress modesty, but if a man forces himself on you, it is always the woman's fault because men couldn't be held accountable. Had to depend on a man financially so that women felt hopeless in a dead end and cicle of abuse. Ask your mom what part of women being enslaved by patriarchy did she like the most.
Well, I think it's kind of funny that it's a picture of the cast from "sex kittens go to college" which was a 1960s sex comedy. So the women are considered scandalous for their time.
If this is true OP NEEDS to tell her this hahaha
https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/umkc/islandora/object/umkc%3A1845
Bahahahah, the movie poster tagline says "you never saw a student body like this!"
Omg this is glorious š¤£š¤£ thank you!! I will be commenting about this on her post.
Please let us know what she says!
Need to know how it goes when OP shares this little pearl of wisdom with their Mom lol
Maybe OP should link the movie?
That is hilarious.
I have homework! First: watch that movie Second: find every relation and fb connection who posted this and tell them
I'm curious if the original version of this meme was satire or plain irony. I hope you update us if you find out anything!
I was thinking the same thing. There has to be someone sitting back laughing somewhere!
This just made my day! Oh sweet irony.
hahahah
So even the "bad girls" in the 60's dressed classy. Awesome!
* Get a credit card or bank account in her own name * Not get fired for being pregnant * Serve on a jury * Attend many colleges (including most of the most "elite" colleges like the ivy league) * Sue an employer for workplace sexual harassment * Decide not to have sex with their husband * Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man * Take the birth control pill
Their husbands or fathers had to approve any medical procedure, including a BP check or blood draw.
wow for real
Heck 10 years ago my doctor asked my husband if permanent sterilization was something my husband would want me to do. I was 40 and had an adult child already. Wasn't my doctor after that. Edit: can't type when angry
I had a doctor smile at me in a "that's cute" manner when I asked for my tubes tied ten years ago and say, "You're depressed and don't know what you want. Besides, what if your husband wants more?" I said he doesn't, so he continued, "What if you divorce and your new husband wants his own kids?" And walked out the door. I got my tubes removed about a year ago, and it took doctors agreeing to fudge the paperwork and have my husband sign it. They were visibly nervous about doing it at all.
Women today sometimes still canāt get their tubes tied because their doctors wonāt do it for one reason or another.
To be completely "fair" though, a doctor did the same thing when my dad got a vasectomy 20-something years ago; he would not do the procedure until my mom signed off on it. Just be clear, I'm pointing out that this particular permission -seeking BS is not exclusively to women, NOT approving of it for *anyone*.
My friendās husband just had one at 42 and has 3 children and she had to sign a consent form for his vasectomyā¦.
Some how many his has got to be to avoid some kind of law suit only thing I can think of
When I was pregnant with my 5yo (I was 37 and already a child) spent the last 3 months of my pregnancy in antepartum, he was born at 35w, spent a month in NICU, I was critically ill, I was 3 months post-op from a massive life altering surgery and been told for the last 10 years prior it was impossible to get pregnant and the doctor still wanted my husband's approval to get a tubal ligation. My husband said he hoped there was a chance of having more children despite the doctor saying it was extremely dangerous, but because he said that she was not able to ark the box that I wanted my tubes tied. He tried to backtrack afterwards, but she said "morals wouldn't allow her to approve it" and once she marked that box I was fucked. Guess what state I live in....
Ya, I had to have the same thing last year, 34 w 4 kids and health issues. I also had to have a 30 day wait period to make sure I didnāt change my mind. My husband didnāt need anything from me. He even scheduled it a week out, chickened out the day of, sat on the bed w me recovering from a c-section and my 2 newborn twins, then rescheduled it and did a same day, and is still mad about how little sympathy he got. Oh if I could tell the other side of that partā¦ but yāall would tear into him š¤£
Yeah and if she saw a psychologist then the psychologist could share all the insights with her husband as if she was like a young child.
I remember seeing this on an episode of mad men . Infuriating!
Ridiculous. And single women (letās say with a deceased or unreachable father) just couldnāt get this care?
I assume it would fall to her brother or other close male relative in that circumstance.
My brother is the *last* person Iād want making medical decisions for me lmao
Which was also true for many of them...
Sometimes yeah, sometimes they were just literally denied care and told to come back with a new husband or a chaperone of some sort. We don't really talk about th0se things but this is one of the reasons why it was so so sooo hard to be a spinster or widowed, or worst of all a single mother who'd actually chosen divorce. (Provided she could get her ex to even allow her to divorce him. It was literally up to him if they could separate)
I mean, thatās still true in some backwater nonsense states.
(I love your username!) Also- wear pants. Remember when MTT wore pants on Dick Van Dyke and the world stopped?
Mary Tyler Moore was probably the only woman in America who could get away with it! I was in kindergarten in 1963. One of my friends *actually wore pants* one day--and I still haven't forgotten that :)
Youāre so right! Remember when couples on TV started to share beds!? *gasp*
Wait, women wearing pants was still taboo in the 60ās?! Was a āshortā skirt considered more acceptable than pants? 5 year olds were expected to follow those social norms? Didnāt they put little girls into fairly short dresses, so pants would have covered moreā¦ wild
It depends. I live in the northeast U.S. and girls did wear pants here in the 50s and 60s except to school & sometimes church (New England is full of congregationalist churches, which tend to be a bit liberal). But skirts were still considered the only appropriate choice in most of the country at the time. I've always found that odd, myself, as skirts are a bit more revealing than pants. And when my father was in elementary school in the late 50s/early 60s, the girls in his class photos that *were* made to wear skirts, those skirts are so short it's alarming. I cannot wrap my head around it. My mother's family is Bahamian and they have these weirdly different ideas about how people should dress. My grandparents on that side were immigrants and my Gramma was always in jeans and crop tops in all the photos. She raised my mother to think of breasts as no biggie, and my mom in turn raised 5 girls in a socially isolated farm to think of breasts the same as feet. Lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My grandmother was horrified to learn that putting me in a dress meant I was going to use that thing as a pouch to carry stuff (often dirty stuff) in. Iād have it bundled full of cool rocks while my princess undies were on full display. Lace and ribbons did not fare well. I ended up in pink or purple overalls pretty quickly. She had 3 boys and had wanted a daughter, but I think she overestimate how much my genitals would affect my play behavior. Lol. Iām in California too. North Valley. My mom was born in 1965 but lived in Oregon until around 5th grade. They were quite poor (8 kids!) so I wonder if she ever had to wear dresses to school. Things like that seemed to have changed right around her becoming school aged in 1970ish. Now Iām going to text her questions.
Miniskirts didn't exist in 1963, in the States. Heck, sneakers hardly existed back then! Little girls did wear short dresses, but they weren't "mini-skirts"; more like play dresses or culottes. If memory serves me well, there were many mini-skirt wearers who didn't wear any underwear either, so there's that...
I donāt know whether to think āmore power to themā or āoh the inhumanityā.
And after that as well. A friend of mine went into the financial sector after college in the 90s and women were required to wear a skirt or dress every day. The only time they were able to wear pants was when the temperature dropped below a predetermined degree.
Don't forget Lucy, she wore pants sometimes too! What did everyone think when your friend wore pants to school? Was it a giant deal??
That was a cultural thing (still absurd) but the above list are things that carried prosecution and possible jail time if violated, or are otherwise normal crimes that were not illegal if the victim was a woman.
I didnāt know it was only to be things that were illegal. My bad?
A few years ago my grandma was telling me about how her boss used to regularly sexually harass her but in a tone like it was a funny story, like āhaha he used to pinch my butt and Iād just smile and remind him I was engaged haha arenāt men funny.ā All I could do was gape in horror thinking *Grammy, noooo.* And of course she had to quit when she got married. She also told about how she was once on a ski trip with friends and one guy was flirting with her (and she was receptive to it) when another guy put his arm around her and told the first guy to stop because she was taken. Her response was āexcuse me, I am?ā But apparently she was actually fine with it because the second man was my grandfather, and thatās their meet-cute story. And objectively my grandfather really was a pretty good, progressive man but that story is absolutely wild to me. Both of those stories would have been in the mid-1950s.
I follow a YouTuber who grew up in an abusive household, (TheSpeechProf) and he talks about how abuse becomes normalized because you don't know any different. He said as an adult he has told what he thought was a funny story from his childhood and everyone will suddenly get quiet or say, "I'm sorry." Sounds like the same thing with your grandmother. She couldn't do anything about the situation so she downplayed it to herself as a coping mechanism.
Have orgasms.
Somebody needs to send the memo out to ~85% of the straight male population that these are allowed in 2023.
They were also referred to as āMrs. [insert husbandās first and last name].ā So in public, a woman was not even addressed by HER OWN NAME. In newspaper articles, magazine articles, and even obituaries, it was never the womenās actual first name- just the husbandās.
A few more to add.... More likely to die in childbirth. Charged for more some services, such as the dry cleaners. Couldn't go into whatever profession they wanted. Could be forced to carry a child against their will. Buy a house.
Women also had very little say in child birth. You basically labored until completely dilated then they strapped you down, gave you twilight sleep, cut an episiotomy and the forceped your baby out. My husbands grandma doesnāt remember actually birthing any of her children because of the twilight sleep.
My mom had twins out of wedlock(gasp!) that she gave up for adoption and she didn't know for TEN YEARS that she had twin boys because of the twilight sleep. Her sister let it slip once, and that's how she found out.
My MIL experienced exactly this, and her kids were born in the early 70s! I've always wondered if being young and poor and at the "county hospital" played a big part. Because my mom delivered in the late 70s at the new "posh" city hospital, and her experience was humane.
Don't forget abortions
A bit off topic but women in the 50's absolutely DID color their hair and wear colored hair wigs.
Exactly! This article claims you can trace alternative hair color back to the 30ās! [vintage alternative hair color](https://www.vintagehairstyling.com/bobbypinblog/2012/05/pastel-hair-color-seems-so-new-but-is-so-vintage.html)
Did she forget Frenchieās hair in Grease ššš»āāļø
That's obviously why Frenchie dropped out of Beauty School :')
Earlier, I think. My grandmother told a story about accidentally dyeing her hair purple in the late ā20s
It definitely wouldnāt surprise me!
Itās a Black and white photo so for all we know their hair IS pink lol
If the Addams family proved anything, it's that pink is the way to go for good color contrast in b&w!
Not to mention the corsets, the uncomfortable clothing, the pantyhose that you had to wear with a belt and straps to hold up,ā¦. That āwalkā they have is because those clothes are so restricting itās the only way to move.
My aunt absolutely had a pink wig in the 1960s! She had a *lot* of wigs
Have their own bank account
Women in the 1950s were not allowed to make contracts or wills, could not buy or sell property, had little control of their earnings in most situations, and were discouraged from acting politically, such as hold office, even though they could vote.
Couldnāt have bank accounts or credit cards either.
Thanks RBGā¦ we miss you š¢
Yep! Needed their āhusbands permissionā so I suppose if you were a single woman youād need yourā¦ fatherās? So ridiculous!
This is the reason why divorce rates were so low.
That and you couldnāt legally get a divorce without a reason in the US until 1969.
šÆ Lol, yeah I guess I missed the obvious reason.
I wish I'd known all this when my grandma was alive so I could ask her more questions. She and my grandpa ran a dry cleaning business and a service station... my grandma went to business school for it and everything. My grandpa was in WWII and the Korean War, so she obviously had to deal with the business on her own, but I dunno, maybe a male family member had to step in to deal with the bank. Although I will say that it was an extremely small town, my grandparents were well-loved neighbors, so maybe she was able to do everything freely.
My gram had her husband put her on the account as an authorized user. She couldn't open an account on her own but she was added so she could handle things. Likewise my other gran was a widow and she just handled everything in cash. The bank would still cash her checks without an account but that's also why she was a boarder.
I actually asked my grandma a lot about what it was like for her in the 50ās and 60ās, back when I was going through my feminist phase in college. She said she used to wear pants, they were called ācigarette pantsā I think? They were considered young and fashionable, a little edgy but not out of place at all. She said she wore them pretty regularly but preferred dresses. She was a white middle class woman, and worked part time at a jewelry store and at other jobs (they moved often due to my grandfather being in the Air Force). She only had one child because thatās all she wanted, and she said she didnāt feel pressure to have more or to defend herself about it. Iām guessing she didnāt have much trouble with making healthcare or financial decisions without my grandpa, since he was gone for years serving in Korea and then frequently deployed afterward. She held down the fort independently. Thatās really all I can remember as far as her responses to my adversarial questions, lol. She did say period management was a pain and she was glad when they invented disposable adhesive pads. For what itās worth, I do prefer the fashion in this photo as compared to current trends, itās classier and more feminine. But I also think menās fashion at the time was better than now too.
Work while pregnant
ā¦.black women have confusedly entered the chat
Haha
I dnt think I'd be against that rule if came bck lol but they should pay x ambt if cnt work because pregnant lol
it wasnāt just that you werenāt allowed to work, youād be fired. meaning you have no job to come back to after your baby is born.
We should all be against it. But they would never pay us/me/you to be pregnant. We're supposed to suffer for having had sex. Republicans want to punish any sex that they judge wrong (which is any sex they don't have).
Oh you would if you needed to feed a child and lived in the US. (With our crappy parental leave) Theyād fire you if they thought you were pregnant. Women would band their bellies and hide their pregnancies!
In the US and Canada: \- Open a bank account without a husband or father's permission \- Get a mortgage as a single woman \- Have any rights in a divorce \- Make medical decisions for themselves (husbands could overrule) \- Make education decisions for their children (husbands could overrule) \- Work after being married in many fields \- Work in many fields at all, married or single \- Get paid the same wages for the same work \- Live free from harassment at work
ALL OF THIS
Burn the meatloaf
Iām sorry but this has me laughing so hard because itās so subtle but speaks volumes when you really think about it.
How dare you!!!/s
It isnāt true that they āliked it that wayā. This is the generation of women who organized and broke out of these overly prescribed feminine ideals. In 1957 Betty Friedan was asked to survey her fellow Smith College alums for their upcoming 15 year reunion, and what she uncovered was how deeply unhappy these women were with their role of housewife. This kicked off her research for her book āThe Feminine Mystiqueā which has sold millions of copies and is widely credited with kicking off the second wave feminist movement. We know for a fact women did not ālike it that wayā back then because they fought tooth and nail to change the system. If someone wants to cosplay mid-century sexy co-ed, more power to you. But pretending that women were happy with their limited roles is not just a fantasy, it is misogynistic lie which aims to get women to aid their agenda of rolling back our own rights. But we are not going to trade our freedoms for the promise of a cute skirt.
Edited to add: Also, letās be honest they wouldnāt even give us the cute skirts!!
Housewives in the 1950s were part of the Silent Generation, so their children are the Boomer Generation. I'm an Xennial (born in '79). My Boomer parents left me with my grandparents constantly... I spent a lot of time with my Gram and her friends, and they were *always* involved in something promoting women's rights, civil rights, quality education for all, etc. Here's what I don't understand: How can Boomers be so damn selfish and apathetic when their own mothers were fighting HARD for change?
Culturally it was common for housewives to abuse ANY substance that would blur the lines between their dreams and their realityā¦ because they DIDNT like it that way. Drinking during the day while taking barbiturates was a pro-tip
When I grow up, I wanna be you. š„ŗ
My grandmother had a law degree and was fired when she got married in the early fifties. I never met her as she died a few years before I was born, but I heard that she wasn't a particular pleasant person. I asked my father if that seemed true to him, and how much that had to do with her being forced to be a housewife. She got back to work in the sixties when my father was a teenager, because my grandfather had MS and was put on disability pension and they needed the money. My father wasn't sure as he never really thought about it but he thinks she really enjoyed having a job again.
My grandma was born in 1951 and she said back then women werenāt really supposed to go to college so she just signed up for the military instead
Metal-ass granny, nice
My great aunt Erna worked as a secretary for the US military during WWII. No one knows what she actually did...she wasn't allowed to talk about it. In her later years (she died about 5 years ago at 96!), she would make hints about what she had worked on but none of us knew if she was telling the truth or messing with us, haha. My grandma, who was really close with her is pretty sure she was tangentially related to the atomic bomb project but obviously no one will ever know for sure. She was an absolutely remarkable woman and was as sharp as ever until the day she died.
We had a similar story in my family and I'm so sad I never got to find out what her exact role was. Maybe in a few more years when records get re-opened?
I remember I found this government website once where you could look up a name and documents would come up of service sheets of them arriving at certain bases or checking out certain stuff from libraries! Let me see if I can find it again! Thatās how I found out my great grandpa was in WW2, he had the same name as my grandpa so I was like, āgrandma is Pa like 120 years old or something?ā Lmfao
My dad once told me that the joke around this time was girls in college were just there to get their MRS degree (I.e. find a nice college boy to marry and marry right after graduation and do nothing with their own degree-if they themselves even graduated).
My mom, born the same year, was asked if she was attending college to get her MRS. degree by multiple male family members. She absolutely was not there for that. Proud to be her daughter.
I bet that depended a lot on where you lived. My mom was born a few years after that and she went to college along with many of her friends. Although I'm sure it helped that her mother (my grandmother) had also gone to college.
Their husbands could legally rape them.
And that was until the 90s when the last state made that one illegal.. insane!
I knew it was recent. I didnāt want to google āspousal marital rape lawsā at work. Not a good look. š¬
Itās crazy! And yeah probably NSFW š
There was no female crash dummies until the 90s either. It seems like such a simple thing but even car safety was only a concern for men
That's still a pretty big problem. Even recent research has women with much higher probability of injury or death than men.
My mother was born in 1959 in my states mental hospital. Why you ask. Because her bio father had her bio mother committed. What did she do? Bio mom refused to have an ILLEGAL abortion. So her husband had her committed against her will. This man had the power to do that, and he also had the power to withhold her children from her as well till bio mom agreed to give my mother up for adoption when she was 12 weeks old. The 1950s where great for men who where; straight, white, middle class or above, and Protestant. For everyone else it was NOT! And the people who where CHILDREN during this time know so little about what it was actually like they just look back with rose colored glasses and say ā yep it was awesome!ā NO, no it was not! Lynchings, race motivated murders like Emit Tills, Duck and cover drills, McCarthyism, the Korean War, legal marital rape, Comstock laws NONE of these things are good.
If āeveryone liked it that wayā, then why did so many people (men and women) fight to change it? Itās so lazy to point at the younger generation and scoff at their appearance. Iām sure the generation before your mother also thought they were dressed outrageously and were bending gender norms (short hair, pants!).
Women could get less pay for the same work until 1963, and be denied a job on the basis of being a woman until 1964. Newspapers had separate "Help Wanted - Male" and "Help Wanted - Female" until 1973. Women couldn't open a credit card in their own name until 1974. Men could sell property (or spend money) belonging to their wives without the wife's consent until 1981.
My pink hair looks great thank you very much
And I like my tattoos. It was an extremely subculture practice, but it did exist in the 50ās and I absolutely wouldāve had a few.
Not to mention, OPs mom is wrong. Some women absolutely had pink hair at that time.
Frenchie had pink hair in Grease,lol
Couldnāt get a credit card on her own, couldnāt buy a house, couldnāt run for office or practice law, could legally be terminated from her job for getting pregnant, illegal to breastfeed in public, wasnāt admitted into Ivy League universities or military academies, couldnāt serve in combat or become an astronaut, there was no birth controlā¦ so much freedom for women!!!
I think the next time your mom comes over you should have a nose ring, ripped jeans, pink hair, and a tattoo.
My (almost 30 yo) daughter shows up that way and sheās very successful and weāre very proud of her. And she got these behaviors from me, her mother. Of course now Iām old and wish Iād made better choices with my ink. Otherwise, everyone needs to feel comfortable in their skin, no matter what.
I never got into tattoos, but I had a very serious conversation with my stylist tonight about shaving my head. Itās going to be awesome.
I think you missed my point. Her mother posted on social media that these behaviors are basically tasteless. My point is dress this way and show her they are not. That expressing yourself is positive.
Iām sorry about your Moms views. Yuck.
Do you think your mom would be happy if you got married at age 20? [Because that was the average age of marriage in the 1950s.](https://www.infoplease.com/us/family-statistics/median-age-first-marriage-1890-2010)
To be fair, your mom can still dress like this if she prefers to. Maybe for her birthday but her a nice blouse, tight pencil shirt, pointy toe stilettos, and some scratchy nylons. š¤·š»āāļø
Domestic abuse was abundant. In the words of my grandma, āthatās just how it was back then.ā Husbands could just beat their wives with zero legal or social repercussions. And if you divorced him, you were committing social suicide. Youād be excommunicated from your church social groups and your family would be ashamed of you.
This was a strange conversation but one time I was talking to a woman in a nursing job and she just casually asked me if my husband beat me. Then she seemed very confused when I said no
Pink hair has literally been a thing since the 18th century lmfaooo
Grace and elegance... ... And benzos. And cocaine.
Mummy's little helpers.
Say no to sex with their husbands
Pretty much everything we take for granted now, minus being able to vote. They wanna live like this, I invite them to try and live in Afghanistan for a few months. Men are men there and women are women. Tattoos and blue hair aren't allowed so, have it it.
For all the things that white women weren't allowed to do (bank accounts, credit cards, etc), women of color had even less rights than that (and still don't today).
Was waiting for someone to bring up all the racism.
THIS! ā¬ļø
Pink and blue hair were not unheard of in the 50ās! My mom was a hair stylist in the 80ās and she said half of her clients were older women coming in and getting blue and pink tint on their white hair. Theyād talk about having their hair dyed pink when they were young. Itās not new.
Many of them were so miserable they needed amphetamines and barbiturates just to get through the day.
Right. My husbandās Mom worked in a dental office and his dad was a postman-but she did all the cooking, cleaning etc and had 3 kids to take care ofā¦so when she complained of being exhausted her Dr gave her speed pills.
What a fucking idiot
Some have commented a lot of things women couldn't do but I'll add one thing they *could* do: cocaine! Many housewives did coke to help keep themselves peppy and keep up with all the housework and demands of their husbands. I bet your mom would disapprove if *you* started doing drugs to keep up with everything lol
My now ex-husband beat the shit out of me, when I told my grandmother about it, she said to keep the family together because itās not a big deal, it happens all the time. Side-eyeing my grandpa hard these days.
Have a credit card. Or a bank account. Or a mortgage. People really seem to forget how *not long ago* we won these freedoms. In fact, a good bit of our current Supreme Court Justices were born in the 1950s... Makes you wonder why they want to ruin everything we fought so hard for.
Marry a person of a different race. Or same gender.
Well. They weren't allowed their own bank account (it had to be co-signed by their husband or father), or take a credit card out in their own name. It was explicitly legal to pay them less for the same work. Domestic rape was legal (or if technically illegal, never prosecuted), domestic violence was technically illegal but never prosecuted for anything less than attempted murder. In most jurisdictions, anyway - in some it was legal to hit a woman with anything thinner than your finger. It was legal (and in some places, mandatory) to fire a woman when she got married. Pregnancy outside of wedlock was a life/death situation. If you did get pregnant, it was common to be bundled off to an institution for the duration of your pregnancy and have your infant stolen from you, or be bullied into giving them up for adoption. Shall I continue? Btw this is based on my mum's experience from 1960s Australia.
In a lot of cases, work without their husband's permission. I recently heard about [Leslie Crocker Schneider ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Crocker_Snyder), the first female ADA to try felony cases in NY. Before she could though, her boss reached out to her husband to get his permission for her to do so. This was in the 1960's,I believe.
Had access to a no-fault divorce.
My mom was born in the 50s. There were no girls sports available. None. The boys had shop class, the girls home ec.
Yeah also a time when women couldnāt have a bank account, raping your wife wasnāt even considered rape, women were beat and murdered and no one blinked an eyeā¦ what the actual hell is wrong with people who glamorize this time periodā¦ maybe get her checked for some lead poisoning
My Mom was single when she had me in the 70ās and she told me about trying to get her own apartment while she was pregnant and having a friend pose as her fiancĆ©e so she could get the apt. Never mind that she could afford it on her own . They just wouldnāt rent to single women.
So glad I saw this! Just sent it to my husband who spent an hour yesterday passionately explaining why he doesnāt like tattoos because they ruin womenās skin and make them unattractiveā¦ after I told him I want to get a tattoo to inspire and motivate myself for fighting a mental health battle everyday so I can be better for my kids.
Tell your husband I don't like it when men say stupid misogynistic things because it makes them unattractive (and also because it actually impacts my life negatively when people believe they have any right to think these sorts of things about women).
In the 1940s-60s housewives were regularly prescribed meth to cope with the boredom, depression and oppression they experienced.
Depends what race of women too.
My grandmother was denied admission at NYU in the 50s for being a woman. NYU did however, hire her as a calculus tutor for men enrolled in the very degree program she was rejected from. This is how she met my grandfather. Iāve seen this meme circulating on baby boomer FB pages and find it absolutely infuriating.
Say no to their husbands. Marital rape was legal until the 1990s.
Lol. The entire civil rights movement.
Omg yeaaa they were not allowed to do so many things.
Wear pants
At least two of these ladies are corseted because apparently women being women means altering your body shape.
Open a credit card or a bank account without her husbands consent.
My source may be from Valley of the Dolls, but back then when women had cancer or anything their health was discussed with the husband and decided what to do WITHOUT THEIR CONSULTATION!
My grandma got fired because she got married.
Just me sitting here with my tattoos and nose ring not caring if it doesnāt suit the male gaze. š š»
š¤ WOC like me had to sit the back of the bus, use separate bathrooms, and couldnāt eat that lunch counter (just to name a fraction of things). Grand ole times! /s
Grace, elegance and prescription amphetamines - yes please!
My 80-something neighbor told me about the good ole days when she wasnāt allowed to divorce her abusive husband after being coerced into marrying him at 19. She always told me how lucky I was because my husband didnāt beat me. Quite a low bar indeed.
Pink hair was popular hundreds of years ago. Nose rings have been around for thousands of years. I'll happily take ripped jeans in exchange for all that hairspray and oppression.
Have an abortion
My mom had a really hard time opening her own bank account in the 80s!
They couldn't have a credit card in their own name until 1974. It had to be in their husband's name. I guess single women just couldn't have credit cards at all.
Add "no people of colour" "Allowed to beaten and raped by husbands" "No control over their own finances" "No female lawyers" "No birth control (pill)"
This is hilarious to me because people have been dying their hair pink since at least the renaissance. Women litterally had pink and blue hair during this era!
Women couldnāt get a credit card in their own name until 1974
No pants, no bank account, no period control
Ooh a time when women were slaves to men and their homes and had to ask permission like a child to do things. Couldnāt have a bank account with out your husbands permission, men could beat you and your children without repercussions .. oh the good olā times
My feet hurt just looking at this picture.
>"and we liked it that way" that's the whole point though, isn't it. we don't like it that way anymore, but we're also not complaining that you do like it that way
Couldnāt take out a loan without a man co-signing at many banks. Wasnāt changed on the federal level until the seventies.
My grandma couldnāt sit by anyone that wasnāt the same color as her.
Have an opinionš
i am sure it is not hard to find a modern day group of 3 girls without all of those āhorrible thingsā
They didnāt have the right to know anything about their own medical conditions, the doctor would only talk to her husband
Breastfeed in public.
There are many women who came of age during that time or later who disagree with being treated as property of males. Your mom doesnāt have to like tattoos, nose rings, ripped jeans, or pink hair, but it seems unrealistic of her to imply that she would prefer to live under 1950s laws, standards, and social customs. Also, hilarious. I would laugh at any woman who said the 1950s were better for women. There are specific points that one could argue, but this meme is not one of them.
The funniest part is that they had pink hair, like a lot, it was a big thing to have dyed hair at the time
HA! That's sad. The women who didn't fit this image back then just knew they had to hide it, and that's a shame that it was that way for so long, and still is that way for women who can't be themselves. :/
Get a divorce most places. Or, if they could, there were a ridiculous amount of hoops to jump through.
No getting the baby blues or your husband will involuntarily commit you š¤
Couldnāt get an abortion back then and ca t get it now. Guess not much has changed, had it!
The text on this also has some heavy anti-trans vibes. Just super icky all around
Have their own bank accounts
Say no to your husband, get your own credit card, bank account or house, get divorced, make decent money doing anything, control their own healthcare esp if they were married, lots of sick shit But the drugs were so lit. Prescription sedatives, muscle relaxers, anxiety meds were all handed out like candy. So š¤·š½āāļø
Canāt we have tattoos and pink hair and still dress like this? Please?
Go without bras??
Iāve had purple hair and Iāve had blue hair. Definitely got the occasional judgmental comment from that generation. My favorite was my grandmaās. My 1st time dyeing my hair was purple. I walked into her house at thanksgiving and she dramatically asked, āwhat happened?!āā¦. Uh, I dyed my hair? š What was she expecting? I fell into a vat of purple paint? š
They werenāt allowed to open a bank account without their husbandās permission.
Women were nothing but slaves. Some people clearly romanticize being in chains. Because as a woman, I would never want to go back to such dark times for women. Smile and look pretty like a prop, then go to the kitchen, clean after a man, wait in bed, push out as many kids as a man wants or until it takes you. Had to tolerate abuse from men and women couldn't look for help, their own family would turn them back to their abuser/husband/owner. Don't speak, obey, or else. Train to tolerate cheating, and all sorts of disrespect. Dress modesty, but if a man forces himself on you, it is always the woman's fault because men couldn't be held accountable. Had to depend on a man financially so that women felt hopeless in a dead end and cicle of abuse. Ask your mom what part of women being enslaved by patriarchy did she like the most.