Clothing Guide

[gunhilltrain]

No decade in the modern era is as it is remembered. Life wasn't good for everyone in the good-ole-days, people weren't all doing great in the 50s. Not everything in the 20s roared, not everyone was under hardship in the 30s, and not every American contributed to the war effort in the 40s.

Why would the 50s be any different?

You said, "modern era." It happened because we live in an time of rapid social change plus, as I mentioned elsewhere, everything has been commodified, including the past itself. That makes us prone to instant nostalgia.

What did people in the 1840s think of the 1830s? Or the 1740s verus the 1730s? I don't know, but I'm sure things were changing a lot more slowly then.

Plus, nostalgia is very geographically specific. The whole decade thing only applies to North America, some of Europe, and a few other places. What do the "1920s" or the "1950s" mean in Nigeria, Iran or Indonesia? I don't know that either, but there are a lot of people in those places and whatever they think of the past is not what we think.

 

[oggbashan]

In America, and to a lesser extent in the UK, the 1950s were very different if seen from a black perspective.

The advertisers' version of the 1950s then, and in references back from now, is of a Suburban housewife in a then-modern fitted kitchen wearing an apron over her flared dress and standing on high heels.

In the 1950s my mother's kitchen wasn't like that. It had a 1930s gas cooker, a kitchen unit with a pull-down enamel-covered shelf, a ceramic butler sink, and standing in the corner, beside the coal=fired boiler, a mangle for washdays.

It wasn't until the mid-1960s that her kitchen was updated to what would have been shown in adverts in the 1950s.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Speaking from a black perspective, which I only know because my white mum and dad taught me real history, the good-ole-days were terrible for black people. Poor white people hated black people not because of the color of their skin, as much, as for they worked for less than white people would work. Therefore, they took jobs from them.

But the treatment of blacks in those good-ole-days was shit! I would never want to be raised in the any of those days. I'm happy for my adoptive family. I wonder, sometimes, if my birth father had been so deformed emotionally, what my life would have been.

But I'm happy with my life. I have a family I love.

A few years ago, at my fathers insistence, made contact with my birth mother. She urged me to come visit, I did. She then wanted me to go visit my fathers grave and ask him to forgive me for abandoning them. This conversation was our last and I never went and saw her again. I have talked to the woman, who I call by her first name, Sherry, twice on the phone since then, they didn't go well.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Speaking from a black perspective, which I only know because my white mum and dad taught me real history, the good-ole-days were terrible for black people. Poor white people hated black people not because of the color of their skin, as much, as for they worked for less than white people would work. Therefore, they took jobs from them.

But the treatment of blacks in those good-ole-days was shit! I would never want to be raised in the any of those days. I'm happy for my adoptive family. I wonder, sometimes, if my birth father had been so deformed emotionally, what my life would have been.

But I'm happy with my life. I have a family I love.

A few years ago, at my fathers insistence, made contact with my birth mother. She urged me to come visit, I did. She then wanted me to go visit my fathers grave and ask him to forgive me for abandoning them. This conversation was our last and I never went and saw her again. I have talked to the woman, who I call by her first name, Sherry, twice on the phone since then, they didn't go well.

I hadn't even thought of that: nostalgia is also specific according to race, religion, ethnicity, region, and a whole lot of other factors, even within the Unites States. Nostalgia is really a creature of the mass media and popular culture, but I wouldn't under-estimate the impact of those things.

I have a strange story about an adoption in my family, but it's a bit complicated. Instead, I'll say that my ex-wife has two half-bothers on her father's side and a half-brother and a half-sister on her mother's side. The latter three people - William, Sara, and my ex-wife Susan - all had different fathers. You wouldn't guess it from looking at her, but my late mother-in-law seemed to get around the block a few times.

 

[gunhilltrain]

In America, and to a lesser extent in the UK, the 1950s were very different if seen from a black perspective.

The advertisers' version of the 1950s then, and in references back from now, is of a Suburban housewife in a then-modern fitted kitchen wearing an apron over her flared dress and standing on high heels.

In the 1950s my mother's kitchen wasn't like that. It had a 1930s gas cooker, a kitchen unit with a pull-down enamel-covered shelf, a ceramic butler sink, and standing in the corner, beside the coal=fired boiler, a mangle for washdays.

It wasn't until the mid-1960s that her kitchen was updated to what would have been shown in adverts in the 1950s.

Yeah, advertising - another nostalgia mill. Probably most Americans never lived like that, and many still don't. This General Motors "Design for Dreaming" (1956) short film is truly weird. The woman in it is not married - what is she supposed to be, about nineteen? - and she's also strangely sexualized. Yet it is stated that she's still going to wind up in the kitchen, but she'll have so much money that life will still be "fun."

Except, where are the kids? Being raised by a nanny perhaps? That's the implication of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ccAf82RQ8

 

[XerXesXu]

In America, and to a lesser extent in the UK, the 1950s were very different if seen from a black perspective.

The advertisers' version of the 1950s then, and in references back from now, is of a Suburban housewife in a then-modern fitted kitchen wearing an apron over her flared dress and standing on high heels.

In the 1950s my mother's kitchen wasn't like that. It had a 1930s gas cooker, a kitchen unit with a pull-down enamel-covered shelf, a ceramic butler sink, and standing in the corner, beside the coal=fired boiler, a mangle for washdays.

It wasn't until the mid-1960s that her kitchen was updated to what would have been shown in adverts in the 1950s.

We used to envy the people who were bombed out. They were rehoused in 'prefabs' - prefabricated emergency accommodation with a life of about 25 years. They were temporary but had all the mod- cons. Inside toilet, bathroom, running hot water and central heating. We had none of those things 'til much later. The second house I lived in was modernised - a bath was installed in the kitchen with a geyser water heater; when closed the top became a kitchen work surface. The third house I lived in was modernised by converting one of three bedrooms into a separate bathroom and WC, the dining room became my parents bedroom.

My abiding memory of those times is the cold. Through the winter I did my homework in the bedroom on the marble surfaced washstand. On the bright side, all the girls looked like Audrey Hepburn, girls with what they describe as a 'healthy build' these days we would call Fatty.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

We used to envy the people who were bombed out. They were rehoused in 'prefabs' - prefabricated emergency accommodation with a life of about 25 years. They were temporary but had all the mod- cons. Inside toilet, bathroom, running hot water and central heating. We had none of those things 'til much later. The second house I lived in was modernised - a bath was installed in the kitchen with a geyser water heater; when closed the top became a kitchen work surface. The third house I lived in was modernised by converting one of three bedrooms into a separate bathroom and WC, the dining room became my parents bedroom.

My abiding memory of those times is the cold. Through the winter I did my homework in the bedroom on the marble surfaced washstand. On the bright side, all the girls looked like Audrey Hepburn, girls with what they describe as a 'healthy build' these days we would call Fatty.

those prefabs went well past the 25 years, eh?

 

[XerXesXu]

those prefabs went well past the 25 years, eh?

Yes. It took a long time for the general housing stock to catch up and people were reluctant to leave them.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

Yes. It took a long time for the general housing stock to catch up and people were reluctant to leave them.

i recall seeing one of those 'fillers' on a news report some years ago.

i wonder if there are any left? i'll have to look it up. if there are, they'll probably be labelled as unfit for human habitation or something. bit like Montgomery Lines, Aldershot in the 80s

but we still lived in the barracks, eight to a room - with a divider for privacy which meant four to one section. migrants in small boats crossing the channel would turn their nose up and set the place alight.

...if it wasn't a housing estate now.