This ain't your Momma's Decade anymore and in many ways it's a crying shame.
While I thoroughly enjoy most things about being a woman these days (I don't think I could be repressed or seen and not heard anymore if someone was threatening to kill me), there are some things about decades past that I do wish were not so different, so hurried or overlooked these days.
Approximately one day a year I wish I was a woman living in the 1950s.
Welcome to today. Sex: Wouldn’t it be nice if having sex out of wedlock would actually feel risqué, rather than expected? What could be more exciting while at the drive in than thoughts of later moments before curfew, when after a short drive to lovers lane he would make you shiver by removing your cone-breasted bra and Sears girdle... or doing that sexy necking dry humping tease in the back seat?
Anticipation is quickly becoming extinct for many. It really bothers me that my kids are growing up in a world where so many lines are crossed so quickly and cavalierly. Finding a man: In that bygone era, it seemed as if all a woman had to do was wash her hair twice weekly and wait at home with her “good” family to snag herself a thickly-bespectacled man to honor and obey.
A woman in her 30s wouldn’t worry so much about finding a man to whom she would devote her life. She would smartly resign herself to the fact that she was probably only going to be an auntie and would get on with typing up the church newsletter and her spinster life. There was not much thought about biological clocks ticking or having a set of twins at age 67. Food: Oh, the sweetness my life would take on with all sustenance being made straight from a Betty Crocker cookbook. Are we having dessert tonight? Why, don’t we always, dear? Did we make it with Nutrasweet?
I’m not sure what you’re talking about, honey, but it does have two cups of Crisco in it! [Insert Pleasantville laughter here.] Life would be full of freshly-baked, lard-full cookies and lots and lots of Coca-Cola from the bottle. And we wouldn’t even have to recycle the glass or worry about breaking the new trans-fat laws.
Work: Let me stay home. Let me do it even for a year. I might strike a bargain with you and bear your children if I could just stay home and eat my own cooking for 365 days. I’m also a great 50’s bargain as I don’t fear cleaning; I’m a 2007 woman who still doesn’t have a Swiffer or a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, so in a pinch I can do the whole place with a mop and some Windex.
Exercise: How many of your mothers were slaves to a stair or Thighmaster, or beat themselves up on a daily basis if they were not?
Women were light years away from the pressure of a Jane Fonda or Olivia Newton-John “Let’s Get Physical” video. Of course, hand washing cloth diapers and ironing 500 of your husband’s work shirts probably burned some calories. At least you didn’t have to wear a violet unitard and matching headband while you did it. Plus, just think about it. In between baking pies and wondering whys some girls wasted their time going on to further education, you could come up with the blueprint for Tab or Valium before anyone else did.
I'm quickly becoming a dinosaur in society because I'm not a raging feminist and feel no desire to constantly find offense in any utterance that just possibly might "offend" anyone with XX chromosones. I'm not threatened by the thought that I'm 100% female, I embrace it. I have no NEED of a career (I teach and fly because I ENJOY it, not because I feel the need to climb the ladder...I could quit and settle down tomorrow, become a wife, mother, and lover and be blissfully happy)...I actually enjoy raising my kids AND I adore men that are hard working and appreciate women that like to be female. What's wrong with me??
What's a woman to do?? *wink*
(She says as she gets ready to go back to the classroom this morning...has it been TWO weeks already?? Heck, it's only 2am, the alarm doesn't go off until 5...who needs sleep? It's a darned good thing I love what I do! *LOL*)
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