Free of materialism? She says her happiness is dependent on being able to buy 50’s antiques, she is the zenith of materialism. As for the next one, she won’t be friends with anybody who doesn’t also love the 40’s, then moans about not knowing her neighbours. The way they so swiftly turn their odd personal preferences into oughts for all society amazes.

I rememember when I was quite young and read 1984, I thought doublethink was a big over-exaggeration. Every article like this makes that seem longer ago.

The name I have given to these kind of women are colluders. I believe that what they do supports patriarchy and helps in the construction of women as other.  Whenever an MRA tries to sell the message about how men are deprived or a gender essentialist calls for a return to traditional roles they whip one of these colluders out of their back pocket as proof that women naturally prefer to be oppressed in this manner.

do they ever get tired of trotting this same old shite out year after year after year after….
GGAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of these women may be perfectly matched to their partners - in a manner similar to doms and submissives, or well-matched furries - and may never hit a snag in their fantasy role-playing. If so, I wish them the best.

But sadly, I can almost guarantee that some of them will be very surprised when their husbands - who, after all, go to work and are exposed to the outside world, with its drinking, materialism, and variety of different sorts of attractive women (and men) - decide to dump the whole Life of Lovely Anarchronism, and their wives with it. Then the women will discover that they have no bank accounts, no credit in their own names, no skills that are useful outside of the home (and a 1950’s home, at that), and a dearth of social skills for dealing with the larger world. And then what will they do?

Those women in the “Time Warp” article are living in the fantasy role-playing version of the mid-20th century upper middle class. Shouldn’t the 1940s gal be trying to scrape together meals using ration cards and produce from her victory garden? And they all neglect the fact that many women in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s did work outside the home and were then expected to do all the household chores without the benefit of modern appliances.

These people need to read some Richard Yates, Dawn Powell, or John Cheever—or watch Mad Men or something. That time sucked really bad for almost everybody. I was born in 1965 and I remember—this is in my living memory—that my mother could not get a bank loan, a mortgage, or a credit card without it being co-signed by her father of husband. Which, considering that her husband had run off with an eighteen-year-old… well anyway. Not a good time. (The federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act was enacted in 1974.)

As a history geek, this romanticizing of the past just angers me.

In a conversation I had this week with a group of people, several were complaining that “we don’t value kids anymore!” Uh, you mean like back in the 1800s, when the entire concept of childhood didn’t exist? Or, how about the 1900s, when kids went to work ASAP. How about the 50s, when we were obsessed with getting teenagers married off and beating kids with all sorts of fun instruments was to be expected. Hell, even the 80s, when it was NORMAL, and expected, to spank?

Yeah, in 2008, we don’t value children the way we used to. Not at all.

****

And as a history geek and swing dancer, I love old music and I think the clothes are beautiful. Doesn’t mean I want to live there.

So, they’re like the SCA, but for the 1950s? I don’t know many SCA people who genuinely believe that we should all live just like people lived in the Middle Ages. What the fuck is wrong with these morons?

I like the aesthetic of the pre-feminist era.  More and more, as I hone my design aesthetic for work purposes (especially personal branding stuff like portfolio and business cards), and my home and wardrobe aesthetics just for myself, I find myself gravitating to the post-war era. 

But you know what?  You can have the cocktail shakers and club chairs, the kitten heels and “pixie” haircut, the typefaces and color schemes reminiscent of 50’s Switzerland or 60’s Manhattan and still enjoy the fact that you get to have a career, control your own reproductive system, and expect a modicum of respect as a human being.  Just because you thought the Dick Van Dyke show was the bees knees and love inviting the neighbors over for martinis and bridge (does anyone under the age of 70 still play bridge?) doesn’t mean you have to throw away all the good stuff the intervening 50 years has brought us.

Gosh, do you think people didn’t drink in the 50s?

Of course! And every other person didn’t have a cigarette hanging out of their mouths, because they were sooo advanced in their understanding of health and medical science.

My favourite is the 1940s girl who’s all “The age of innocence has been lost and it is such a shame,” in one breath, and “My idol is Ava Gardner,” in the next.

You mean, Ava Gardner, one of Hollywood’s great bad girls? Ava Gardner, who was married three times, including to Frank Sinatra (and aborted his child, according to Wikipedia)? And had an affair with Ernest Hemingway? Not to mention I’m pretty sure she was a notorious drunk? Really, I’m sure she spent all the time she wasn’t cavorting with bullfighters tending to her home.

I once heard about this lesbian separatist group in the UK who were all about recreating the 20’s (I think?  Maybe the Victorian era?).  Except, of course, that lesbianism was reviled, possibly even criminalized, in the era they have such a hard-on for.  I think that aspect of it might even have been fetishized.  I’m forgetting 90% of the facts about this, unfortunately, and don’t want to generalize any further.  But when I was first reading this post, I was immediately reminded of that.

I cannot for the life of me remember what these people called themselves, or how I found out about it.  I feel like it was through some insane Wikipedia tangent.  Googling isn’t helping, because I don’t really know what to google.

Opoponax, I too like older aesthetics. This ultra-modern simplicity bugs the crap out of me; I’m more a fan of Victorian lace and an English country garden. But it’s just that, an aesthetic.

As for SCA people, they by and large don’t recreate the Middle Ages. The official SCA rules is that it has to be passably medieval from 10 feet away; so a polyester tunic with fleur de lys pattern sewn by a machine with cotton thread and knee-length leather steel toe boots are totally fine. SCA at least knows how to have fun with it, and separate reality from fantasy.

These women, not so much.

It’s not about reliving the past as it actually was it is about an unrealistic understanding of what a particular time period stands for.

“my mother could not get a bank loan, a mortgage, or a credit card…”

This wasn’t just in the 50s and early 50s.  In the early 70s, in down state NY, so a fairly modern place, my grandmother could not get a car loan without her husband’s signature.  The problem was, she was getting him a new car for Christmas.  And she had her own job.  And was going to pay for half of it up front, repaying the loan over the course of the following year.  And the banker she saw for the loan had been acquainted with her for years.  But, it just couldn’t be done.

I’m amazed people take this stuff seriously - it’s like they watched a few episodes of “Full House” and started lamenting how in the 80s, everybody was so sweet to each other.  That would get laughed off the stage, and this should too. 

On the other hand, the 50s were pretty cool, what with the Beatniks and all.  That’s what they’re talking about, right?

Also, looking through the photos in the article, I couldn’t help but notice that the TV is apparently retrofitted for cable, DVD, and the like (you can also see a row of DVD’s on a shelf and a DVD player behind her in the same photo).  Another woman mentions watching Ava Gardner movies “all the time”, which wouldn’t have been possible back then—you were generally at the mercy of whatever was showing at the cinema, Ava Gardner or no. 

I also noticed a framed movie poster in one of the bedrooms.  While I’m sure the poster is to period, that would NEVER fly as actual decor in a 50’s home.  Especially in an adult’s bedroom, professionally framed (I could imagine a teenager tacking up movie posters they’d begged off the local theater).

Couldn’t help but notice that “40’s woman” has a 50’s dress on, and a lot of the furniture in her house is probably from the 60’s.  If they’re going to live their lives in a historical reenactor bubble, they have no excuse but to get it fucking right! 

Also hilarious is that she mentions “kitchen gadgets” and “eradicating every trace of the modern age” in the same sentence—the obsession with a gizmo for every. little. thing. is a relatively new concept; I’m not sure there were many “kitchen gadgets” in the UK in the 40’s, beyond maybe a toaster (especially in postwar Britain!).  And oh, the hilarity of the 30’s woman bragging about finding vintage clothes on the internet!  Though I will say she’s much more to period in the photos, aside from the ceramic tile floors in her kitchen.

I also noticed it was mentioned that one of the husbands is some sort of graphic designer.  If an English graphic designer gets paid enough (and has steady enough work) to support a wife who spends all her time collecting antiques, I wanna move to Britain!

Juan Stoppable FTW!

What amuses me about these couples is that they have all chosen not to procreate, and don’t appear to see any irony in that.

30’s gal shouldn’t have a formica countertop, anyway—she’s doing good with tile.  40’s and 50’s women are not doing very well at the concept of LESS STUFF.  Especially 50’s woman.  This idea of just having piles and piles of crap displayed all over the house is too Pottery Barn, sorry.  Don’t even get me started the way she has her hearth set up, with the candles in the fire place.  NOT PERIOD.  30’s woman at least has the right approach—less stuff, less of it matching and perfectly symmetrical.  Pictures hung higher (off the moldings, which is a nice touch), though I don’t really get what that little scale doo-hickey is for—I cook from scratch pretty often and rarely see measurements by weight.

I wonder if they have to cook to period, too?  Because blech.  One of my favorite “nostalgia” activities is to go through old cookbooks, especially 40’s-60’s, to see what people ate back then.  To my 21st century palate it’s usually ick, ick, ick and eeeewwww, wtf, aspic?!

RacyT, I wonder how many of these women are on the pill, have IUD’s, or have undergone tubals?  None of which would have been in any way available during their selected time periods.  Though I guess if Miss 40’s couldn’t bother to avoid futurist mod 60’s furniture, why bother delving that deep?

Let’s see:
1930’s: world wide Depression, the rise of totalitarianism, and the start of wwII
1940’s: wwII (between it and the Chinese civil war, about 100 million died)
1950’s: the Cold War and its hot spots in Korea, Vietnam, ... Also the turmoil that came with the ending of the European colonial period

Then, of course, there was the widespread discrimination and violence against pretty much all minorities (up to and including the mass slaughter of the Holocaust).

Also, parents spent much less time with their children (in England many were sent to boarding schools which were notorious for how badly the children were treated), ...

The average person is much better off now than then. Only idiots wouldn’t realize that. Oh yeah, they are idiots.

These people aren’t recreating a time period, they are recreating entertainment from that time period, and getting the two confused.  It’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, only lived out loud.  I think the dynamics are the same too- Mitty felt unapreciated, and was, to tell the truth, not the most socially graceful or capable guy on the block, so he compensated with his fantasy life.  If you noticed, none of these women really had the education or experience necessary to advance in a profession, so it seems as if they just created a fantasy world for themselves where their personal shortcomings don’t hinder them.  I think that is much more a commentary on the sad state of the global economy and the inherent inequity of late capitalism than it is a commentary on gender role shifts, but again, these women don’t seem to be capable of making that distinction.  Heck, “Mitty” itself is one of Thurber’s ruminations about the “problem” of castrating females imposing upon men.  Society just can’t get enough of trying to shove the wimmin back into their “place”!

I did notice the repeated mentions to “television” and “movies”.  They don’t seem to have ever cracked open a history book to REALLY see what the time periods were like- they just have black-and-white tinted glasses on.

I have to say the timing of this post is hilarious—I just came home from CB2 with pillow covers it turns out are too contemporary for my post-war inspired living room.

This might offend a certain type of person.  But I take comfort, and thank God, that, as we once gave women the vote, so can we take it away.

Watch your step, ladies.

Awesome! A troll. And one that brings a real sense of the period to this discussion. Thanks, troll dude!

The style of the women in the first article does seem pastiche, at least in the sense of being mix-and-match.  The DVD player and internet connection seem better if you think of it that way.

I don’t see a problem with appropriating the styles of the the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. We wouldn’t have the B-52’s otherwise!  The people who created those earlier styles were seldom the people who were responsible for the misery.  Admiring the oppressive political atmosphere from then is a different matter, unless you’re being obviously ironic like Nellie McKay.

But I take comfort, and thank God, that, as we once gave women the vote, so can we take it away.

JW, darling, I don’t think it works that way.

Watch your step, ladies.

Oh, I’ll watch it. I’ll see to it that my stiletto heel meets your groin with some force on the second step, too.

That’s a lie. I wear Harley-Davidson motorcycle boots, not stilettos.

I liked this shot of the 1950s TV room, until I realized that the photographer screwed up so that all the lighting equipment is reflected in the TV screen. Bad Daily Mail photographer! No biscuit.

This might offend a certain type of person.  But I take comfort, and thank God, that, as we once gave women the vote, so can we take it away.

Dearie, what part of “numeric majority” don’t you understand?

Having given women the vote, a democracy cannot take it away without ceasing to be a democracy, because WE OUTNUMBER YOU.

Societies that decide to take away women’s basic democratic rights must first go fascist. And I hate to break it to you, but under fascism, men die and get disappeared also.

So, like, if a job is not the best way to be independent, what is?  Inherit money?  Oops, I forgot to do that.

Someone said it really early in the thread, but these women are fetishists.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, but treating it like it’s part of a larger cultural backlash is silly.

And hopefully, in addition to hand-picking the parts of the aesthetic they like (50’s dresses: in, 50’s availability of birth control: out), they’re taking advantage of the financial independence feminists fought for.

Then again, that could be part of the larger 24/7 kinkfest and they’re sadly reliant on a partner not flipping out and going full metal asshole.  Other than that, and the fact that they’re at least somewhat inclined to act like they’re acting out something other than a niche fantasy every day, these women seem pretty harmless.

Feel good: Debbie’s lifestyle makes her feel ‘as if I’m living in
one of those old-fashioned TV shows where everything is always wonderful’

I guess if your whole life is a black-and-white classic movie, you can’t see that the flags are red.

The SCA’s motto, which maybe unofficial is: The Renaissance as it should have been. In other words, plague free, misogynist free, and with goddamn escape zippers sewn on the side of the tightly laced corset. Or, the use of modern tools and ideas when it makes life easier for the SCA member.

So, these people aren’t at all like the SCA. And for the record, some of the best heavy weapons fighters I know are women, like these women here. When I went for heavy weapons training as a lark, not one man said “oh you can’t, it’s not period” to me. http://swordmaiden.com/

However, there is a fair amount of “well actuallies” types running around the SCA. These are the people who say at Pennisic, “well, actually, coolers weren’t invented yet, so we can’t use them” Most sane and those with lives outside the SCA just roll their eyes at the “well actuallies’ and move on.

How quaint.  An adorable fetishist couple.  Just as cute as that nice bondage pair down the block.

The whole romance with an imagined period free from violence, greed, or materialism wears thin under the lightest scrutiny, as does most romance.  Imagine how this play-acting would play out if, say, darling hubby started beating little wifey.  Old rules:  she’s stuck without laws to protect her, with law enforcement unlikely to enforce her safety, and no alternative to staying in the playhouse with an abusive playmate. 

Or, hubby infarcts—and dies: he has medical conditions undetectable or unmanageable under existing medicine.  She’s on the street; creditors could take the house and all other assets to satisfy his debts.  All of wifey’s property rights flowed through hubby.  Hubby gone, rights gone.

Of course, the whole doll house is imperiled if the couple is not white. 

The truly offensive part of this whole snotty Barbie-and-Ken bit is that they’re riding high on the social advances made possible by women and men who sacrificed to make life safer, saner, and more equitable for all.  These fatuous fools can’t move past their silly selves enough to give back even a little to compensate for the now-cleaner air that they breathe.

I bet 30s woman thinks that 50s woman is a whore.

Again with the confusing of the middle and upper classes with the entire cosmos.

At the risk of repeating myself: gender stereotypes regarding work are 1000% horseshit. Again- women have always worked outside the home. Women have always labored, gotten filthy, done terrible, shitty, hard things for hours and hours and hours, been exhausted at the end of their days, in attempts to feed themselves and their families. Most of the women in the world, the majority of the women on the planet, have neither the leisure nor the luxury of “opting out” of work. Goddammit.

I guess it’s nice, though, that folks with some disposable income have found themselves a hobby.

So, these people aren’t at all like the SCA.

Actually, they’re exactly like the SCA.  They went to a flea market and bought a bunch of stuff of “hey, this looks pretty old!” questionable provenance, filled their houses and closets with it, copied their hairdos from photos of Bettie Page, and decided that they were really and truly living life exactly like people “back then” did it.  They of course kept the supermarket, the birth control, the DVD player, the DSL, the credit card, the domestic violence laws (every third episode of I Love Lucy makes light of one of the sassy heroines’ frequent beatings at the hands of her husband), the cheap consumer goods, the readily available specialty foods, and on and on and on.

The only difference I can see is that SCA folk know they’re playacting, and these women don’t, or at least don’t seem to want to confront the idea (each woman mentions not liking to interact with the outside world, read the papers, etc).

“I once heard about this lesbian separatist group in the UK who were all about recreating the 20’s (I think?  Maybe the Victorian era?).”

Especially when I was younger, I used to have moments of geuine concern that maybe I was actually a hallucinating brain in a vat, etc*. - And while I’ve moved on to other irrationally obsessive worries, I still find this sort of thing reassuring, because there is simply no way whatsoever that I ever could have come up with this sort of thing myself. It really is a strange and wonderful (sometimes) world . . .

* Solipsism: It’s all in your head.

Oh, yeah, these people were actually far weirder than I’m even giving them credit for—I just can’t remember for sure and can’t for the life of me figure out how to look them up again, and don’t want to gild the lily too much. 

They were like a 70’s feminist group combined with a Living History exhibition, with a little Diano-Celtic neo-paganism thrown in (in fact I’m starting to suspect that I heard about this through pagan channels, because my brain keeps connecting them with vague wishy-washy Mists Of Avalon type goddess worship).  I’m probably their prime demographic (being into at least 2 of those 3 things and being at least potentially interested in another), and they still really weirded me out.

“But I take comfort, and thank God, that, as we once gave women the vote, so can we take it away.”

Given that it’s women who gave us life, I’m not sure how far you want to push this reasoning . . .*

* Besides the whole ‘utterly rejecting the trollish premise’ bit, of course. 

“I just can’t remember for sure and can’t for the life of me figure out how to look them up again”

Although it certainly makes for interesting googling.

Neither of us drinks and our social life revolves around visiting like-minded friends for tea and cakes.

I’m sorry, but if you’re going to recreate the 50s without the non-stop cocktail parties and extensive, high-end barware, then there really doesn’t seem to be much of a point.

OK, after hours of googling and combing through Wikipedia (where I’m almost certain I heard about these Victorian reenacting separatist lesbians), I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t some sort of extremely elaborate Wikipedia hoax which has since been discovered and removed. 

I’ve decided that these folks don’t really exist after all, unless someone else can verify.

Now I’m really confused…

It’s not these folks, is it?

http://www.aristasia.co.uk/

YES!!!!!!

I kept thinking it started with the letter A, and kept searching things like “Aradia” (no), “Avalonia” (no), etc.  coming up with nothing…  I was soooo close!

I’ve done my good deed for today, I can go back to bed now (it’s 7 am here).  A friend told me about them some time ago—maybe one of these days I’ll delve more into what they’re all about.

I combed wiki to see if I could dig anything up, Opo, and nothing.  It’s entirely possible you did see it, but the article (or portion of an article) got wiped out because of a total lack of cites.

I mean, it’s not like the National Lesbian Separatist Archive is, uh, a thing that exists.  So it’s hard to provide a cite, which means it’s hard to keep a wiki about something like that going.  All the cites I saw in the lesbian separatist articles were to lesbian separatists’ autobiographies, and a handful of critical papers.

After reading all those wikis, and from what I already knew about lesbian separatists from my time as an undergrad, though, I’m fully prepared to believe *someone* idealized flappers as a romantic vision of lesbian life.

Though it seems that A) this whole Aristasia thing is not necessarily lesbianism oriented? and B) they idealize everything pre-1960’s, not a particular time period like Victorian or turn-of-the-century, like I remembered…  I also either didn’t realize or didn’t remember that this was part of the “fetish” community, I thought it was really a bunch of lesbian separatists in a commune somewhere.

oh man, beat’d like whoa.

”. This ultra-modern simplicity bugs the crap out of me; ...”

I <u>wish</u>: the current aesthetic is HIP HOP, with it’s walking-piles-of-laundry, ass-hanging-out look.  Fuck that shit.

And taggers are punk vandals, bite me arts-theorists.

How quaint.  An adorable fetishist couple.  Just as cute as that nice bondage pair down the block.

Exactly what I was thinking.  So what’s next?  S & M as the new template to advance anti-feminism in mainstream publications? 

“Mandy left her high powered executive career 3 years ago and is now a happy sub to her husband George.  Does she represent the wave of the future?  Are women turning in their business suits for leather teddies and ball gags?  We think so.  Because we found five other women who appeared to be doing something similar, this is obviously a trend that is sweeping the nation.  Once again, random anecdotes proving that women’s liberation has failed!”

Once again, random anecdotes proving that women’s liberation has failed!

If they were truly random, they’d be unlikely to show such a hand selected bias.

I think you definitely called this one with “fetish”. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with having one of those. But yeah, an article that tries to wring some kind of larger, political truth out of that? Nuh-uh.

Her ‘whites only’ drinking fountain is probably still on layaway.

Indeed. I wonder how many gay, black women are involved in this alternative lifestyle.

As a working woman with infant twins, a spouse (of sorts), a house, a dog, a career, and a home life all of which are experienced in the UK, may I add my two cents (or pence, whatever) worth? 

Absolutely the home life suffers.  You can choose between work, home, sex every Friday night, whatever - something’s gotta’ give.  This is where the moral terpitude of the “retro” women comes out - but you should focus on family!  Meat and two veg!  Take care of the home!

To which I’d say I would do, darling, but someone’s got to earn a living around here.

The independents would reply - but get the man to help!  It should be 50-50!  What’s the issue here?

Again, I’d reply: Would be nice, but the reality is here, and it’s the kind that believe the laundry fairies do all the work.

I don’t understand this idealism of the past.  Women had it much harder - my spouse’s parents divorced in the 70’s (the shock!  the scandal!) and his mum really suffered.  In the 40#s and 50#s rattioning was rampant.  Times before that meant women were, in essence, baby-making factories.  There were no real peace times in the past 100 years, really - even the 50’s and 60’s as it was Cold War central.

As for the woman whose social life revolves around like minded people who don’t drink, but gather for tea and cakes, I think there’s a term for her: boring.

Yes, home life suffers.  But at the end of the day, what’s more important - playing pattycake or paying the bills?

“. . . the idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone
Every century but this, and every country but her [his] own . . .”

(on the Lord High Executioner’s list, in The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan)

disclaimer: didn’t read all the comments, so someone else may have said this first.

Really, I don’t have any problem with the data here. The problem I have is with the conclusion. As a family therapist, it seems clear to me that it’s true that family life suffers when the mother has a full time job. Of course, family life also suffers when the father has a full time job. I can’t even begin to tell you how many people there are out there who have suffered because of a workaholic dad.

So the conclusion isn’t “hey, women need to work less”—it’s “hey, men need to be willing to pick up some of the slack here and employers need to figure out some better ways of being family friendly.”

Opoponax, British recipes are often done by weight rather than volume measurements, so a scale makes sense.  (Something I’ve had to get used to in converting recipes - that and GAS MARKS for oven temperatures instead of degrees, whether F or C!)

“I mean, it’s not like the National Lesbian Separatist Archive is, uh, a thing that exists.”

Actually, while I don’t know if any are devoted to separatists, there are lesbian archives.  The Society of American Archivists lists some here: http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/lagar/guide/newyork.html

When I said ultra-modern aesthetic, I was talking largely about interior design/decorating.

Can I just say that I don’t understand why anyone in their right mind looking for “a more peaceful time” would pick 1940’s Britain?

I mean, do they have air raids and a bomb shelter in the backyard?

This thing of people (in this case women) dressing like some stereotype of the 1950s?

Yet another thing I’d be blissfully unaware of if it weren’t for the internet.

So the conclusion isn’t “hey, women need to work less”

From what you say, it becomes clear that everyone needs to work less. 

I wonder how the figures above correlate to national policies on things like vacation time, how many hours are in a work week, fully paid parental leave, and the like?

I’ve been in the SCA for nearly 20 years and have never seen a zippered corset, FWIW…:)

I also have no desire at all to live like a real woman of the 15th century, especially since I’d have died of a strangulated hernia at age 12.  I’m in it for the quilting and the ceremony.

Being a student of history and hearing many accounts of actual life in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s from family, older friends, and some older neighbors, all I can say is….interesting periods to study, especially when one considers how people in regions outside of the US also lived.  Having said that, I am totally grateful that I do not live in such time periods as depending on region/nation concerned, I would also have to accept political persecution*, almost no chance at a higher education**, living with the impending fears of war/actual exhibition of hostilities/mandated 2 years of military service***, the strong possibility of starving to death****, the strong possibility of my being brutalized/killed in war as a soldier/civilian*****, etc. 

* At the hands of Chinese Communists, Chinese Nationalists, Joe McCarthy, racist politicians, etc.

** Higher education in the US from the 30’s-50’s….even with the GI Bill was almost the exclusive preserve of the racially and socio-economically privileged with a few lesser privileged students who were topflight students in their high school classes until the late 1960’s.  In mainland China, there was a political, ideological, and socio-economic litmus tests used to determine higher-ed eligibility on top of the extreme competition due to the dearth of college places in relation to the number of applicants.  In Taiwan’s case….the 1930’s and 40’s under Japanese colonial occupation meant that only Japanese nationals and a minority of Taiwanese who collaborated with Japanese colonial authorities and thus, deemed “loyal”  were eligible to attend university.  During the late 40’s/early 50’s after the end of the Japanese occupation, the fact there were only 3 higher ed institutions on the island combined with around 30,000 applicants for less than 3,000 seats per year….some of whom already had some college back on the mainland before escaping the Communist takeover meant that competition for college entry was extremely fierce. 

*** Even after the Korean war, US had a “peacetime draft” which continued into the Vietnam war era.  Taiwan(ROC) had 2 years of mandated military service and had several major and minor hostile incidents from Chinese Communist Forces during the 50’s and 60’s. 

**** Great Depression and WWII worldwide, extreme poverty and chaos due to simmering hostilities across the Taiwan straits in Taiwan, aftermath of poorly conceived Maoist project known as The Great Leap Forward. 

***** Japanese colonialist invasions in China during the 1930’s-1945, Chinese Civil War, Korean War, various major and minor hostilities between Communist and Nationalist China, etc.

Jessilikewhoa: popped collar = douchebag. Always.

Having said that, I am totally grateful that I do not live in such time periods as depending on region/nation concerned, I would also have to accept…

I think this is the bottom line about all people who idealize life in another time, whether it’s the first half of the 20th century, the antebellum south, czarist Russia, 15th century Europe, etc. 

Everyone who pictures themselves in that time period pictures themselves as sitting in “prime real estate”—they would of course be wealthy, have an interesting career/lifestyle, occupy a part of the cultural or geographical universe where they wouldn’t be exposed to anything bad like persecution or bigotry or having their human rights curtailed.  They’d be the upper middle class conveniently childless housewife, the plantation owner, the landed gentry with a townhouse full of servants in St. Petersburg and a Dacha out in the countryside, the nobles to the manor born (or maybe something else really cool like a knight, a midwife, the owner of an inn).  They would somehow manage to avoid being a black man in the rural south, poor white trash, the peasant, or the serf. 

Nobody signs up for the SCA to be a scullery maid.  And even if you opted to start as a foot soldier, you’d do it with the assumption that you’d eventually move up, and at the end of the battle, you’ll always still be alive and free to drive off in your SUV with the air conditioning and the XM radio, and stop at Target on the way home for a gallon of milk, toilet scrub, and a pack of underpants.

Whenever the conversation rolls around to ‘would you like to live in the past’, and someone points out how bad it would have been if you weren’t at the top of the heap, I like to point out to them that it’s no different from life today.  Most people living in this time are in danger of being killed by starvation, disease and war, and are subject to persecution and lack access to even the most basic ‘good things’ in life—but I’m at the top of the economic food chain in this time, so wouldn’t it be logical to imagine myself in the past as someone at about the same socioeconomic level?  If I were living in the Middle Ages, say, I’d be the well-educated daughter of a high-level artisan or mechanic in western Europe, and would undoubtedly have found myself teaching, writing and praying in a convent—not a bad life, I would have thought.

I would actually like to live in the past—it would be a miracle to live at a time when ‘all farming was organic farming’, air pollution didn’t exist outside the cities, and the animal world wasn’t on the brink of destruction.

Everyone who pictures themselves in that time period pictures themselves as sitting in “prime real estate”—they would of course be wealthy, have an interesting career/lifestyle, occupy a part of the cultural or geographical universe where they wouldn’t be exposed to anything bad like persecution or bigotry or having their human rights curtailed.  They’d be the upper middle class conveniently childless housewife, the plantation owner, the landed gentry with a townhouse full of servants in St. Petersburg and a Dacha out in the countryside, the nobles to the manor born (or maybe something else really cool like a knight, a midwife, the owner of an inn).  They would somehow manage to avoid being a black man in the rural south, poor white trash, the peasant, or the serf.

In addition, there is also plenty of ahistoriosity in those imaginations.  To take an example from those of many Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan straits regarding the Japanese colonialist invasions in 1931 and 1937/Second-Sino-Japanese war, most Chinese of my generation(US Gen X…including myself or younger…especially the men would like to imagine themselves as brave and patriotic enough to volunteer as soldiers/officers to fight the Japanese colonialists.

What we’ve often forget was that Chinese nationalism in that period was pretty tenuous along with the longstanding old Chinese notion dating back to the early Sung dynasty (960 CE - 1279 CE) that being a soldier…even a military officer was a lowly occupation only fit for those lacking intellectual acumen and prospects.* 

Even as late as the 1930’s, the level of interest in joining the military…even as a member of the officer corps was so low that the Whampoa academy accepted cadets who barely had the rudiments of a middle-school education.  If one even had finished high school…or better yet…some college….they were considered the educational elite by the standards of that time.  Moreover, military personnel…including officers were not accorded much social respectibility…..even Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek had problems trying to marry one of the Soong sisters because his prospective father-in-law had concerns that his being in the military meant his social status was “too low” in relation to someone from a wealthy merchant household or better yet…someone with high educational attainment regardless of actual wealth.

If those of younger generations like myself want to be honest with ourselves, we’d be more likely to not only avoid military service, but those of us with a high school or better educations are more apt to scoff and look down upon those who did as “undereducated fools” without other prospects and thus, not worthy of any respect. 

This applies to both the Nationalist and Communist sides.  You could say that while there was much patriotic noise made by most Chinese on both of those sides…...they were mostly of the chickenhawk variety…..and I say this even though I have an uncle who did join the Nationalist army as a Whampoa Academy cadet in the 1930’s and died fighting the Japanese colonialist invaders during the Second Sino-Japanese war. 

* The first Sung emperor gained his throne through a military coup so to discourage future military coups, he started the process of devalorizing the social respectability of military personnel that is underscored by the Chinese proverb “Good steel should not be used to make nails, good men should not aspire to be soldiers.”

Yeah, back in the good old days they used all natural arsenic and Paris Green on the crops. Your other choice was to spend all day in the field picking insects off your crops by hand.

I think part of what is going on is the Forrest Gumping of history.

In the 50s, the Baby Boomers were children.  Therefore their personal narratives of the 50s are those of children - of course it’s an “age of innocence” to them.  (And they’ve been so demographically overwhelming, and the Silent Generation sufficiently silent, that even younger people have accepted the narrative.)

This is very timely, considering that I was reading a wiki on Daphne DuMaurier, and as a result started reading wikis about all her (alleged) lesbian lovers and their lovers, which lead me to Tallulah Bankhead, who is rumored to have slept with just about every beautiful woman in Hollywood at the time (and most of the men, too) and it wasn’t exactly a secret—how times have changed!  Tallulah Bankhead could shag Ava Gardner et al., and end up getting a hysterectomy from advanced gonorhhea she got from (probably) Gary Cooper, and everyone knew about it, and yet she still got work.  There is no lady I know of in Hollywood who could “get away with” having this many lovers today, and yet Tallulah did it with aplomb.

The 30’s-50’s—-Not necessarily what we thought they were.

If I were living in the Middle Ages, say, I’d be the well-educated daughter of a high-level artisan or mechanic in western Europe, and would undoubtedly have found myself teaching, writing and praying in a convent—not a bad life, I would have thought.

Even high-level artisans in the middle ages were vulnerable to being treated with some contempt by the “higher orders” of aristocracy/nobility and subjected to sumptuary laws and other restrictions to ensure artisans like yourself don’t forget your place in the medieval hierarchy.  Are you also prepared to be subjected to arbitrary violence and/or violations of your property/dignity at the whims of those aristocrats with little/no legal recourse because they control the legal courts?

I would actually like to live in the past—it would be a miracle to live at a time when ‘all farming was organic farming’, air pollution didn’t exist outside the cities, and the animal world wasn’t on the brink of destruction.

Are you prepared to accept the far greater mortality rates resulting from the lack of sanitary hygiene, poor state of medical care, and the prevalence of wars and arbitrary violence because there was no effective checks on the powers of the aristocratic nobility who controlled nearly all aspects of the medieval world…..

I don’t know what it is about those pictures, but even though the women are fully clothed, they have a weird porn feel to them.

I think part of what is going on is the Forrest Gumping of history.

In the 50s, the Baby Boomers were children.  Therefore their personal narratives of the 50s are those of children - of course it’s an “age of innocence” to them.  (And they’ve been so demographically overwhelming, and the Silent Generation sufficiently silent, that even younger people have accepted the narrative.)

Not only the Forrest Gumping of history, but also a US-centric one.  With the exception of a few Japanese right-wing revisionist die-hards and a few colonial collaborators & their descendants, no one I know in East Asia looks upon the 30’s-50’s as anything but a period of war, social chaos, starvation, and misery with the levels of poverty unimaginable to anyone living in the Western industrialized world today who did not have firsthand experience with it.

If I were living in the Middle Ages, say, I’d be the well-educated daughter of a high-level artisan or mechanic in western Europe, and would undoubtedly have found myself teaching, writing and praying in a convent—not a bad life, I would have thought.

How do you know this?  On the other hand, your high-level artisan father might have declined to have you educated because he had plans to marry you off ASAP to someone his own age over at the guild who he wanted to curry favor with.  He could have sold you into slavery if he’d wanted to, or had you drowned at birth, or farmed you out as hired help to an unscrupulous family with a passel of young sons who thought nothing of taking turns raping you, until of course you got pregnant at 13 and died in childbirth, in a gutter, considered a whore by everyone you knew and a lot of people you didn’t.  Or maybe he did send you off to the convent.  Except it would have been at 3 or 4, not 18.  And maybe you would have hated it there.  Remember the etymology of the word “cloistered”? 

I’ve played that imagination game before, and while it’s easy to imagine an OK life for myself—daughter of an enlightened and egalitarian physician and midwife team, apprenticed to my mother at an early age, married off to a prosperous apothecary or surgeon, or maybe, if my father was as loving and sensitive to my interests and talents as he is in this life, to some sort of poet or scholar.  Or, you know, maybe any of the horrible fates I mentioned in the above paragraph.  Or worse. 

The bottom line?  Before the 20th century, you were born the property of your father, and, as a woman, you were destined only to become the property of your husband.  It’s fun to imagine that they’d be swell guys, but the bottom line is that you’re talking about a time when your only hope was to end up with a good master—freedom was impossible.

Exholt, what we currently have is a financial aristocracy. On a large scale, it’s not terribly different.

Yes, it’s ridiculous to idolize the past while ignoring its problems, but it’s just as ridiculous to condemn it entirely while—in relation—praising the present. Creating a past/present moral dichotomy encourages old people and conservatives to ignore new ideas, and it also encourages young people to believe that they have all the answers and have figured out the best way to make the world work—and that therefore they don’t need to read history or listen to what older people say. In reality, every generation has a limited and problematic understanding of the world.

There are all sorts of directions this conversation can go, but essentially my point is that all of the horrific fates you’re describing as the inevitable lot of most people in past civilisations are also the inevitable lot of most people in present civilisations.

This is the traditional relationship freakishness.
I am married to a black woman who is a Republican of all things. lol
She is a huge fan of Dr. Laura. My wife liked to tell me that she wants a traditional relationship where I work and she stays at home. (She only said this twice I gave the same answer both times)

——————————————————————-
Wife: I was thinking I would like to try having a traditional relationship with you.

Me: That is a GREAT idea!! (sarcastically) (Smiles broadly)

Wife: So I will quit my job and stay home and take care of the house like a traditional relationship.

Me: If you stays at home you will have to do whatever I tell you to do, you will do as I say like in a traditional relationship.

Wife: That is not what I meant, I just wanted to stay home and have you work like it was in the 50s.

Me: Yes I know what you meant, and if you don’t want to work like in the 50s then you will have to obey my every command like in the 50s. (winks) (laughs and gives her a hug)
———————————————————————————-

She didn’t like that at all.

Yes my wife is still working. lol

Well, Carolyn, yes and no. 

If we’re talking about poverty and disease, sure. 

But there is one really fundamental social rule that has changed in the last couple centuries, even in most developing countries.  The patriarchal structure, in its truest sense, where law only recognized the paterfamilias, and thus male heads the family had the power of life or death over women and children (and even lower ranking men in some cases), no longer exists.  Even in the most ruthless totalitarian states.  Even in places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran.  Women don’t have a lot of rights, but they’re seen as individuals by the law, and thus have a certain level of control over their lives, or at the very most basic sense, a legal recourse.  We like to lament the existence of Sharia law, but at least such laws allow that women are fully human and have certain fundamental rights independent of their father and/or husband.  There are problems in the ways the laws regard women, and even in countries with more enlightened legal systems there are problems of access and enforcement. 

But the bottom line?  Your father doesn’t have the right to kill you if he thinks you looked at him wrong.  If your husband abuses you, there is some recourse outside of just hoping he stops, or hoping your family would care about it if they knew.

Of course that doesn’t necessarily address the original topic, women wanting to reenact the first half of the 20th century.  But it’s definitely a substantive change you can point to which shows that, no, it’s not just a grand trade-off, plague vs. HIV, stultifying manual labor vs. pollution, getting stabbed in a duel vs. getting shot in a drive by.

The lengths some people will go to be allowed to smoke whereever they like…

A question for the Opoponax:  do you think women in developing countries are continuing to fare better than they did in the past, or did their condition peak in around 1980 (or some other relatively recent date)?  I agree with you in general—a woman should not offer to trade places and go back in time, because she’d be taking a cut in power and civic identity—but am not sure how long that deal has held or will hold.

I don’t know, Unree.  I just know that the troll JW was onto something when he alluded to women’s suffrage—they can’t take it away from us.  I guess one could question what value the vote has, whether we really have any real say in our government, whether life is ultimately better under the fledgling non-patriarchal system than it was under classical patriarchy (bad shit can still happen, and we’re still at the mercy of several levels of overlords).  But something has changed over the last couple of centuries, and I don’t think it can change back. 

One could question whether it really matters much, in a material sense, whether one technically has legal standing in a religious court in an Islamic country, or whether it matters in China and India that women are technically regarded as equal to men under the law (the law that is either unenforceable, as in India, or subject to totalitarian whim, as in China).  And I guess the bottom line is that bone crushing poverty, totalitarian rule, and repressive social structures still really suck. 

It’s definitely better to have both human status and material sustenance.  I’m not sure which I’d pick if I could have only one, though.

About the same number of West Germans (37%) agree; but the number there has risen, having been just 24% in the mid-1990s.

A few weeks ago a large German magazine called the common model where a woman with children is working part-time a trap, self-sabotage and generally failed and said that better child care and more reasonalbe working hours would benefit everyone. It’s not new, but it needs to be said about twice a year, on the front page, really.

Part time work excludes women from having career, and tends to lower their pensions below the poverty line. And with the current changes in law, a person who investst effort into their spouse’s career instead of their own is officially Not Getting It.

I’m not sure how much stock to put in this study,

I have to read more about this, but the women doing their 24/7 historical re-enactment can pretend that they are leaving their rights behind, but they cannot escape being free and equal at early 21st century level (unless the emigrate to a place with laws more to their tastes). They might refuse to be treated with antibiotics, drive cars without seat-belts and air bags, smoke like a chimney and drink gin like water, live in tiny houses and hang the washing in the yard to dry, do the dishes by hand and not use a computer, learn to mend things instead of throwing them away, they may refuse to work or have a bank account, but unless they are living in an authoritarian backwater community or kill themselves with their choices, they can change their lifestyle back to modern as fast as a medieval re-enactor who has stepped on a nail can rush to ER to get a tetanus shot. Of course, they might be badly disadvantages by their past choices, but they can still leave them behind.

Their children, now… well, at least they won’t have to wait for Rock’n'Roll.

That said, under aesthetic aspects I have to join the choir here and say, “go for it”. The good thing about postmodernism is that you can go all retro without looking like a weirdo or a moron, and ebay and the likes make it so much easier to get your hands on the pretty stuff.

Tinter: The way they so swiftly turn their odd personal preferences into oughts for all society amazes.

If they do not surround themselves with like-minded people they cannot act out their fantasy.

pseudonymous: It’s the Daily Mail, which in the actual 1930s was busily cheering on Hitler. (Godwin me not.) It’s the silly season.

There’s that.

theunmarrieddaughter, re: SCA and limits of re-enactment: What never fails to make me grin is that the whole middle-ages scene here seems to be solidly pagan. I guess they wouldn’t legally be allowed to re-enact period christianity in Bavaria (might be considered blasphemy, or disturbing the peace), but even the folks who’d never bring a cooler and sew their clothes by hand from natural fabrics wear pagan symbols, openly do divination, curse by pagan gods, and all that fun.

Opponax - Basically, yeah. I think one thing people forget about the ‘50s is that, on average, people made more money for the work they do (adjusted for inflation, of course). So families didn’t need to put in as many hours as they do now.

What really gets me is that even though Conservatives yearn for the ‘50s, in general they ignore the fact that largely Republican policies that have encouraged the increasing income divide between the rich and poor and shrunk the middle class actually make a return to ‘50s style social norms completely impossible.

_______

Beside that, I think it’s clear from a family perspective that no matter how many hours a week need to be worked to maintain quality of life, the absolute most efficient way to split those hours is 50/50 between the parents. If a family needs 60 hours of total work, then ideally the mother does 30 and the father does 30, and they split housework evenly. 80 hours splits to 40/40 and so on. This way children have access to both parents and both parents have time for their own friends/hobbies and the couple itself has time to be a couple together. These ingredients are very important for a healthy family.

In something like a 60/0, 80/0, or god forbid 100/0 split, the partner that is working all the time is going to have trouble fitting those things in, and as a result EVERYONE in the family suffers. From a systemic perspective, problems in one family member (which are likely with a very heavy workload like that) are likely to perpetuate problematic cycles throughout the system. If mom or dad has no time for the other partner or no time for their own hobbies/friends and no time for the kids, it just sucks for everyone.

Unfortunately, the economy and work system in the is country is not set up to make an ideal split feasible. Like others have pointed out, part time work does not make for a good career, and for many families the economy is bad enough that it’s impossible to get enough work even with both partners taking as much time as possible. Furthermore, on average, women get paid less for the same hours. Thus it generally isn’t economically efficient to split hours evenly. Finally, although women are increasingly socialized to value careers (a good thing), men’s socialization to value relationships has not caught up (a bad thing). It’s very common to see men who have a lot of difficulty with a partner (male or female) who makes the same or more money than they do. I occasionally see women who have the opposite problem (difficulties because they make more money than their partners), but that side of the coin is a lot less common in my experience.

Making the economy truly family oriented would require a complete restructuring of the way we conceptualize and incentivize work.

I would actually like to live in the past—it would be a miracle to live at a time when ‘all farming was organic farming’, air pollution didn’t exist outside the cities, and the animal world wasn’t on the brink of destruction.

Everything that kills you nowadays was once a minor side-effect from the stuff that stopped you from dying in the ways you used to.

Yes, it’s ridiculous to idolize the past while ignoring its problems, but it’s just as ridiculous to condemn it entirely while—in relation—praising the present. Creating a past/present moral dichotomy encourages old people and conservatives to ignore new ideas, and it also encourages young people to believe that they have all the answers and have figured out the best way to make the world work—and that therefore they don’t need to read history or listen to what older people say.

Jessie,

I wasn’t meaning to make an absolute moral dichotomy between the past and present…..merely setting out the negative aspects that are often left out of the usually “historical” imaginings of persons pining for a “golden innocent” past.  Imaginings that I often find are made by those who either don’t really know the history of the period too well and/or are so sheltered/blinded by their first world socio-economic privilege to the point they omit nearly all of the negative aspects of those periods from their imaginings.  Also wanted to point out how US-centric and ahistorical it really is. 

If you’re going to imagine placing yourself in the past to attempt to understand how you would have fared, you need to account for both the positive and negative aspects to make as fully informed decision as possible.  Anything else is ahistorical fantasizing which if carried over into public policy/politics can have seriously negative consequences as Amanda and several commenters have already noted.

So, they’re like the SCA, but for the 1950s?

I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, but Charles Stross’s Glasshouse SF novel adapts this premise: set in the far future, a group of volunteers reconstructing the material culture and social mores (including marriage) of the 1950s (with some hilarious anachronisms) discovers the sinister purpose of this social experiment. . . .

i don’t think i have ever heard anyone but closed-minded, bigoted morons long for the company of the “like-minded.” It’s a religious-right/Repuke code word. Seriously. I’d wager money that anyone who desires to surround themselves with the like-minded also thinks Rev. Phelps has a point there about them hummasexshools….

Another thought; wouldn’t recreating the typical 50s home in ENGLAND be like recreating a wee bit o’ hell? Post-WWII England was a wreck for a long time.

There was a TV documentary about these women on UK tv the other week. One of them hid a microwave under the counter of her ‘perfect’ 40s kitchen. I think she had a secret electric kettle stashed away too.
I think that says a lot really…

If I had been born in any other time than this, I would have been dead, so my yearning for the past has been limited to admiring the costumes and bitching because we don’t use Latin as the international language any more.

These women remind me of Marie Antoinette playing at being a milkmaid.

Late to the party, but - Tyro, I think I love you!

“I’m sorry, but if you’re going to recreate the 50s without the non-stop cocktail parties and extensive, high-end barware, then there really doesn’t seem to be much of a point.”

So true.

The Daily Mail is the most godawful paper around - my friends and I play the DM bingo - i.e. “how many pages does it take for them to have an anti-immigrant/woman/gay story” - usually around 9-12, although it’s the silly season…I still dream about growing up and taking them over. Heh heh heh.

Another thought; wouldn’t recreating the typical 50s home in ENGLAND be like recreating a wee bit o’ hell? Post-WWII England was a wreck for a long time.

From what little modern British history I recall…the economic situation was hell for the working and middle classes along with the ruins of mostly working class urban housing blocks still around.  Combined with the starkly drawn class lines, many Britons who were not already at the very top of the socio-economic elite chose to emigrate to British commonwealth countries, colonies, and other places. 

Then again, I doubt the upper-crust aristocrats and wealthy commoners were being deprived of their afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches and crumpets…notwithstanding their chronic complaints of paying high taxes. 

Moreover, as bad as the 50’s postwar situation in Britain was….I’m betting if most of the East Asian residents of the 1950’s….elites excepted…had a choice….they’d choose Britain’s 50’s postwar situation over those of their home countries in a heartbeat.

And, Exholt, you’d be exactly right.  I’m not sure there was a big East Asian exodus to the UK in the 50’s, because I’m not sure how many would have had the connections to get there.  But there were massive numbers of immigrants from South Asia and the Caribbean.  Sure, it probably wasn’t paradise, but at least there were no famines or civil wars.

One thing that no-one seems to have mentioned yet: all three couples are childless, which would make the fantasy-role play that much easier. Children would rapidly gut the fantasy of keeping the perfect, ordered “immaculate home” with hubby’s needs at the center: they’re sticky, noisy, demanding lil’ beasties, and washing endless fold-and-pin cloth nappies isn’t nearly so much fun as baking or collecting vintage 40’s hats. 

There’s something very ‘Peewee’s Playhouse” about the whole thing. Their kink, of course, as so many here have pointed out, but still…

cory, in case your rant against the word “like-minded” was addressed to me (as I have used it)—I am neither from the US nor a native speaker of English. What would be a neutral US American adjective for people of similiar worldview and interest? (“fannish” doesn’t quite fit). What about British English? Connotations, alternatives?

Uh, what? Why are people still doing sub-par “research” on this stupid shit? Like we honestly need to hear more of this than have oral contraception for men.

Anyway, I’d be interested to know how much of this has to do with conditions in the economy and women actually being scared, so to speak, back to the house by low-wage, crap-condition, nonsupportive jobs. At a lecture I attended a year or so ago, a Chinese professor at my U argued that after the era of Mao, an era during which women were strongly encouraged to work outside the home, increasingly bad work conditions and feelings of futility all around as the country opened itself to trade caused women to return full-time to the house. They get paid less than men and are expected to work harder anyway, and no longer had the same basic benefits they had under Mao. Not to glamorize the Mao regime, of course, but to point out that women’s inequality in the workforce will affect their feelings on how actually good or fun it is to stay at home. Compared to working 30 hours a week at Wal-Mart for $7 an hour and no benefits, staying at home might be great.

I’m in the SCA and quite into material authenticity (although I still use a sewing machine and sometimes have to compromise on my materials, I think I’m sliding down the slope towards weaving my own cloth, or would be if I had a floor loom and time), and it’s nice to do a serious reenactment event sometimes, but srsly?  I do not want to be an Elizabethan woman!  And I like being able to tell dirty jokes and do archery and not be a Srs Reenactor all the time.

Even more serious reenactors than Scadians tend to not want to actually live in the past—part of being a serious reenactor is knowing about the unpleasant aspects of the past, even if they’re not always recreated.  I probably would have walked into a ditch and broken my neck by age 12 prior to corrective glasses.  Mind, I don’t think the past was an unmitigated hell compared to the present, either—it had pluses and minuses, and just like today, your social class and other factors made a vast difference.  And the past is interesting.

These people are fetishists, selectively picking out the “glamorous” parts of the past and conflating TV with history, not reenactors.

At a lecture I attended a year or so ago, a Chinese professor at my U argued that after the era of Mao, an era during which women were strongly encouraged to work outside the home, increasingly bad work conditions and feelings of futility all around as the country opened itself to trade caused women to return full-time to the house. They get paid less than men and are expected to work harder anyway, and no longer had the same basic benefits they had under Mao. Not to glamorize the Mao regime, of course, but to point out that women’s inequality in the workforce will affect their feelings on how actually good or fun it is to stay at home.

From what I’ve heard from most of my Chinese classmates, Profs, and relatives who have frequent contacts in the mainland, he vast majority of Chinese…including women who are able to gain employment even at the most unsavory unfulfilling jobs do not have the luxury of “opting-out” of working.  The only women who have the luxury of “opting-out” of paid employment are those of the new upper/middle classes.

When I was in China during the late 1990’s, I recalled one of my female instructors remarking that she’s heard that most American women wanted to enter the workforce to have a career whereas in China, the vast majority of women wished they had the luxury of staying at home….but due to tight economic circumstances and the social emphasis on one’s self-sufficiency could not. 

The poor women who do stay home do it not because they voluntarily opted out, but because they were unable to find employment for their particular skillset.  A serious problem that does disproportionately affect women as employers do practice “under-the-table” discrimination in hiring on the basis of gender…though like the US…they will attempt to spin it as such to avoid legal and social sanctions from such practices.

As for Maoist social welfare benefits, they were available….but they tended to be meager and awarded arbitrarily based on political considerations from the experience of relatives and others who lived through the Maoist era from 1949 till the late 1970’s.

To add to my comments on the Maoist era, the only people I’ve come across from the mainland who pine for the Maoist era tended to either be workers/peasants who were somewhat privileged in that era and die-hard Maoists who tended to be part of the privileged Maoist Cadre classes who lost out after the Maoist Gang of 4 were arrested and Deng Xiaoping and his faction won the power struggle and started implementing more market-oriented economic reforms in 1979.

In fact, I’ve had the dubious honor of encountering a few descendants of those from the privileged Maoist Cadre classes who not only continued to downplay the shortcomings of the Maoist era…but even attempted to deny and whitewash the gravity of such shortcomings as “The Great Leap Forward” and “The Cultural Revolution” where millions of Chinese died from starvation due to unconscionable mismanagement/neglect and Maoist inspired persecutions and killings of those considered “capitalist roaders”, “bad family backgrounds”*, and anyone else deemed suspect by Mao and his cronies. 

They were not too happy when I pointed out that even the CCP and most mainland historians have admitted that the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were disastrous not only for its victims, but also for China. 

* My great-aunt’s family were labeled as such due to the fact she and her husband started their science academic careers before the 1949 revolution.

I’m not sure there was a big East Asian exodus to the UK in the 50’s, because I’m not sure how many would have had the connections to get there.  But there were massive numbers of immigrants from South Asia and the Caribbean.  Sure, it probably wasn’t paradise, but at least there were no famines or civil wars.

Not to the UK due to state imposed restrictions on emigration, war, immigration restrictions due to racism and fears of the “Yellow peril”, poverty, and the fact many did not want to emigrate to nations where the cultural climate was going to be dramatically different….not realizing that dramatic cultural changes also happen within every given society. 

There was the close equivalent of many Chinese from the ROC(Taiwan) and the Mainland emigrating to Hong Kong which was ruled by the UK.  Even then, immigration was severely restricted to both prevent the region from being flooded with refugees as well as possible communist saboteurs from the mainland…especially in the aftermath of the 1967 labor riots and terroristic bombings instigated by pro-Maoist groups in Hong Kong.