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  1. Stanley Doble

    The extra time you spend getting ready because you wear vintage.

    Perhaps we should distinguish between every day and dressed up. Many women in the 30s and 40s wore little or no makeup in the daytime. Dress and hair styles simpler too. But getting dressed up to the nines for an evening out could be quite a bit more complicated starting with a visit to the...
  2. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Geez you make it sound like the fifties are as remote as the Pyramids. But someone born in 1950 is now 62 years old and would have memories of growing up, and be able to tell you about their older relatives who were born before 1900. We are talking about someone the same age as Jay Leno, Cybil...
  3. Stanley Doble

    Best European cities for pretending it's 1937

    No one has mentioned Spain. It was neutral during WW2 and not damaged much in its own war during the 30s (not the cities and buildings I mean). Plus it was something of a backwater under Franco so not too many hideous new buildings in the sixties and seventies. Have never been there but I...
  4. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    In the sixties a unionised worker with a skilled trade, and some seniority, could own his own split level bungalow in the suburbs, drive a new car, have nice vacations and even a bass boat.
  5. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    ^^ You have a point. In the fifties the president of a manufacturing company typically made 7X what his (unionised) employees made. Today the CEO and top executives of a major bank can make 1000X what the typical worker makes. The factory worker of the fifties and sixties, had what would have...
  7. Stanley Doble

    There should be a word for a person who likes old clothes

    Vintagent?
  8. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Maybe the people who were making the products and creating the advertising were themselves middle class consumers and just assumed that everyone else would respond to what they themselves liked. Marketing and consumer research were in their infancy.
  9. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    I'm also leery of conspiracy theories in spite of being a conspiracy buff. I prefer to explain things as being the result of self interest, laziness, conformity, short sightedness and stupidity whenever possible. A lot of advertisers had something to gain by pushing their products by any means...
  10. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Lizzie you are right as usual. I don't mean everybody thought or acted a certain way. Was just pointing out how some people thought and acted, perhaps I put it too strongly.
  11. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    There was kind of a drought of new families during the depression because a lot of people simply could not afford to get married, set up a home and have children. Then during the war years so many young men were overseas. When the war ended there was a boom in marriages followed by a baby boom...
  13. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    I disagree with the idea that there was some kind of campaign to keep women out of the work force in the fifties. Quite the opposite. Women working in factories and other traditional male jobs was commonplace during the war years. Once the war was over women quit these jobs with a sigh of relief...
  14. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    This brings up another easy-to-overlook factor and that is the sheer number of children running around in the fifties. This was after all the baby boom generation. Every house seemed to have 2, 3 or more children in it. When we went out to play we were never alone, there was always some kind of...
  15. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    In case the above is not clear, my issue is with the way the past is presented in the media - often slanted for a certain agenda, or written by people who don't know what they are talking about. If I offended you, I apologize. That was not my intention at all.
  16. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Actually I am a man trying to protect you from bad information. I got the impression you had an inaccurate, superficial view of the period and tried to correct it. On reflection, I suppose I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. The prevailing view of women in the past as weak, stupid and...
  17. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Mrs H I think your impression of "Suzy Homemaker" or the typical American housewife is a caricature and bears as much resemblance to reality as Bugs Bunny does to an actual rabbit. Now that is blunt talk. I do not say it to be offensive, I want to make the point that if you want a real...
  19. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    There is another thing I just thought of and that is the frozen food locker. Before home freezers became available in the fifties, every town had its frozen food locker. This was a building with a giant refrigeration system in which the public could rent lockers for the storage of frozen food...
  20. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Re: grocery shopping. Many things were delivered then like fresh milk, bread and baked goods, dry cleaning and laundry.There were drivers who covered a regular route. Houses built in the fifties often had a little trap door beside the side door, this was for the milk man to deliver the milk...
  21. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    As to the question of whether women had bank accounts. In most families I knew the women handled the money or at least, had shall we say a very strong influence on how it was spent. It would be a very brave, or very foolish man indeed who made a large purchase without consulting his wife. I knew...
  22. Stanley Doble

    Reconstructing Suzy Homemaker

    Maybe it was rare for women to drive in cities but in small town and rural areas it was routine. Among my older relatives some had a driver's license, some didn't. Entirely their choice, or inclination. One had a driving license but never learned to drive. She got it in the thirties, at the...
  23. Stanley Doble

    Looking for 1950s American Service Station Hat

    Motorcycle cap like Brando wore in The Wild One. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkdqCTcDkbc

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