UPDATE:Commentor Annie Rose takes us down her own memory lane:
If this lovely lady wants to play dress up and fantasize about the ’50s, fine, but I hope she is being completely authentic.
No ability to get her own credit card. No money of her own. No ability to go to college except for those looking to get an MRS degree. Limited professional opportunities-teacher, secretary, nurse. No birth control. No ability to get a loan. Having to ask her husband to give her money to buy groceries.
No air conditioning. No permanent press clothes so everything has to be ironed. I hope she squeezes into a painful girdle every day and lassos her girls into the torture chamber of a bra from that era. I remember watching my mom and aunts have to do this.
I hope she forgoes the improvements in feminine hygiene and straps on her brick every month to her sanitary belt. My mom told me it was not glamorous standing in heels in the hot summer ironing your husband’s dress shirts and starching them.
I hope she’s ironing dozens of hankies that men used instead of Kleenex. I learned to iron at the age of five by ironing my dad’s hankies.
In 1974 women could finally apply for a credit card without their dad or husband having to co-sign for them. My mom, who worked as a temp legal secretary, was lectured by a male boss in 1975 for daring to wear a pantsuit to the office. He expected his “girls” to wear heels and a skirt.
My parents were happy to pay for my older brother to go to college in the 70’s, even though he had terrible grades. I had excellent grades all through school but was told that I would be “allowed” to go to college only as long as I kept my grades mostly A’s. A complete double standard.
Speaking of girls, my grad school professor in 1983 New Orleans chastised me for not being like the other “Southern girls”. My crime? He said I “axed” too many questions. He expected the female students to remain completely quiet and subservient. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed seeing the lovely shade of raspberry creep up past his Col. Sanders blonde goatee to the top of his prematurely balding pate when I replied, “So you prefer your southrin’ GIRLS to be ignorant and silent. Got it. Well I’m an Okie and as long as I’m paying for my education here, I will AXE a question any damn time I please.” Even though he was in his 30’s and it was 1983, he felt just fine treating us like it was 1950.
I had two good friends have their teaching contracts not renewed in the late ’80s because they were visibly pregnant and our single childless female superintendent hated women in their childbearing years because they took time off for sick kids. Husbands seldom did this as it was considered women’s work to care for the kids and women’s jobs were presumed to be less important. I had to hide my pregnancy for months under baggy sweaters while awaiting early tenure, just so I wouldn’t lose my job.
In the ’80s, a young bank male manager actually insisted that my husband had to come in to resolve an issue with our joint bank account, rather than myself, because he was “the man” and I was not to be trusted as the woman with financial issues.
In 2004, a school administrator called my husband so they could speak “man to man” about my request to have our child evaluated over special ed concerns. He wanted my husband to “talk some sense into the little lady”. My husband gave him an earful. Our child did end up being diagnosed eventually and this jerk school admin apologized to me for being wrong. I love the retro cars and gadgets, but I love living in this time and having the freedom to be myself and modern conveniences. Women who glamorize the 50’s have never talked to women who lived through it or they would never wish to turn the clock back.
How about a deal:
We guys will invest in wingtips, sport coats, ties, and hats if you gals will wear dresses, heels, and hose. Viva la difference, and all that. (betcha’ the trannies would sign on, too 😉 )
Hell, I’d even burn my t-shirts (well, some of ’em)
MASA (Make America Stylish Again)
JWM
ghostsniperSeptember 19, 2020, 5:38 PM
“…heels, and hose.”
=============
I like the way the line runs up the back of the stockings.
I’ve always liked those kind of high heels (Mary Jane’s) too. You know, I…
No no no no, don’t take ’em off, don’t take… Leave ’em on, leave ’em on.
Yeah, that’s it, a little more to the right, a little more….
KlausSeptember 19, 2020, 6:53 PM
Everybody wants some…. I want some too!
Gordon ScottSeptember 19, 2020, 6:59 PM
She’s right about those 70-year old fridges. About 15 years ago I was part of a project to recycle old fridges that had been replaced with new, efficient ones. We would use Sawzalls to cut open the backs and sides. This was so we could pull out the old CFC-laden foam insulation. Sometimes it came out in nice, pristine slabs. Mostly it came out in chunks, using ice chippers. The foam would be bagged up and shipped to some place in California. There it would be disposed in a way that the CFCs were captured and not released to kill ozone. The carcasses were loaded on trucks to go to metal scrappers. All this was done after other guys had drained the evil gases from the compressor.
It cost far more energy to recycle the metal than the metal was worth.
We liberated a whole lot of CFCs dealing with the foam.
There were lots of very old fridges that ran just fine until we wrecked them. Now and then we would get these real antiques that had a compressor on top, and which used butane as the refrigerant. Those sat outside for a week to be sure the gas was gone.
Everyone who got the big refund to buy a new fridge had the new one fail within ten years.
TerrySeptember 19, 2020, 7:43 PM
Cannot find a place to comment on image captioned Fire Sale, in right column.
Oh my golly, what a well groomed lady indeed ! The rifles are special also. But she takes the gold. American Patriot girls win in every way. Outstanding eye candy- Smile of the week for me . . .
Very nice post Gerard.
Casey KlahnSeptember 19, 2020, 10:24 PM
1958. Little baby Casey came into the world.
Of course, I remember the designs and the curios. The porcelain cats, the star clocks, and the avocado color. I enjoy nostalgia as much as the next guy. We bought a 1965 Fireball trailer and it makes you smile when you go inside. I get her vibes in that video.
FF: Kennedy shot. The Vietnam War. Elvis and Rock & Roll. The Sixties with the hippies and the psychedelic culture. Nixon. Bell bottoms Seventies and it all started unravelling. The meh 80s, when I started manhood and served in Reagan’s military ( after having served in Carter’s). College. Unemployment and hard, unrelenting work. The Nineties; got my shit together enough to get married and wasted my life away as a rock climber. Finally made it back to my childhood talents as an artist.
The New Millennium. Computers. Bush, Clinton, Obama. The USA is becoming the behemoth and the Machiavellian nightmare we used to read about in literature and gloss over. I used to avoid SciFi and now I’m actually living it. Had my kids, enjoying life in rural nowheresville.
20o1-20. Muslim wars. Fucking Marx sticks to my shoe like a goddamned piece of shit. Ruth Bader Marxist, Democratic cuck congress. Seattle ran by Ethiopian stooge Marxist plants. Antifa. Trump tries to save us from the insanity of the Left. Leftists want my speech and my freedom, starting with my guns.
OK. I’m ready for the 50s. Bring it on. (Takes a valium and drifts backwards in time).
ghostsniperSeptember 20, 2020, 4:47 AM
Terry sed: “Oh my golly, what a well groomed lady indeed !”
=======
There’s nothing “suppressing” about that pik!
mmackSeptember 20, 2020, 5:49 AM
Contrast the lady obsessed with the 1950s with the unholy screecher a few posts down gents and ask “Who would you rather come home to? Who would you rather kiss and hug?”
I’d humor a 1950s obsession. 😉
ghostsniperSeptember 20, 2020, 7:36 AM
1955 is MY year.
15FixerSeptember 20, 2020, 8:34 AM
There are characters in the book “Victoria” that deliberately live a retro lifestyle, as a way to keep ideals and principles alive with their children.
Having grown up in the forties & fifties, brings back a lot of great memories.
Bruce WayneSeptember 20, 2020, 10:13 AM
I do my part. All of the cars I drive are from 1931 to 1959. Theres lots of us on the jalopyjournal.com
MIKE GUENTHERSeptember 20, 2020, 12:14 PM
Like Casey Klahn, I served during the Carter administration. What a mess that was. My first vote was for Reagan, having experienced his leadership as governor of California before I was old enough to vote.
I always liked the 50’s cars. We had a 57 Buick up til the late 60’s.
CallmelennieSeptember 20, 2020, 2:36 PM
Me too, GS … Im from the tribe of ’55. What was your tribal anthem? Ours was “Baba O’Reilly” … and maybe “Bitch” by The Stones. Damn, that one always got the girls up and shaking their pert little behinds
CallmelennieSeptember 20, 2020, 2:48 PM
In other commentary, no Fifties closet would be complete without a mink stole. So, get on it, you crazy kids. Should only cost 10K nowadays
My mother didnt buy a mink stole, but she won one as a door prize at some function. Let me tell you, mink feels amazing. When I was a kid, I used to sneak into the parents closet and rub my face in that fur
Auntie AnalogueSeptember 20, 2020, 3:08 PM
My dear Callmelennie, maybe the lady in the video can’t afford a mink stole, but maybe she might scrape together enough of 1958’s then-brand-new Lincoln Memorial pennies for her to afford a mink face mask . . . for when she steps out her door into 2020.
ghostsniperSeptember 20, 2020, 6:34 PM
@Lennie, I graduated HS in 1972 and the number 1 song that year was Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”.
From the Beatles to Zappa I was doing it all in the rock world – the heavier the better.
pbirdSeptember 20, 2020, 7:17 PM
I remember the 50s. It didn’t look like that to me.
PA CatSeptember 21, 2020, 12:43 AM
What I remember of the Fifties was: 1) Eisenhower in the White House. I was allowed to stay up late the night of the 1952 election while the adults in the family savored the results. Some of you may remember the first-ever TV political ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3SOrYf1_ng&ab_channel=Inter-Path%C3%A9History
2) Howard Johnson’s restaurants, with their iconic orange/turquoise color scheme and 28 flavors of ice cream. My family often headed to the local HoJo’s on Saturday nights, and we looked forward to it.
3) The fad for pink and charcoal grey as a color combination in everything from restaurants to linoleum to cars. My parents drove a 1954 Plymouth in that color scheme for several years, and it seemed that half the Plymouths on the road in the mid-50s were pink and grey.
4) People dressing up for travel rather than boarding planes or trains looking like Antifa rejects. Air travel in particular was an occasion that called for wearing one’s Sunday best, and the airlines treated their customers to real food– as in this Pan Am ad from 1958: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKqQgNZylLw&ab_channel=lgwguy
Annie RoseSeptember 22, 2020, 6:56 AM
If this lovey lady wants to play dress up and fantasize about the 50’s, fine, but I hope she is being completely authentic.
No ability to get her own credit card. No money of her own. No ability to go to college except for those looking to get a MRS degree. Limited professional opportunities-teacher, secretary, nurse. No birth control. No ability to get a loan. Having to ask her husband to give her money to buy groceries.
No air conditioning. No permanent press clothes so everything has to be ironed. I hope she squeezes into a painful girdle every day and lassos her girls into the torture chamber of a bra from that era. I remember watching my mom and aunts have to do this.
I hope she forgoes the improvements in feminine hygiene and straps on her brick every month to her sanitary belt. My mom told me it was not glamorous standing in heels in the hot summer ironing your husband’s dress shirts and starching them.
I hope she’s ironing dozens of hankies that men used instead of Kleenex. I learned to iron at the age of five by ironing my dad’s hankies.
In 1974 women could finally apply for a credit card without their dad or husband having to co-sign for them. My mom, who worked as a temp legal secretary, was lectured by a male boss in 1975 for daring to wear a pantsuit to the office. He expected his “girls” to wear heels and a skirt.
My parents were happy to pay for my older brother to go to college in the 70’s, even though he had terrible grades. I had excellent grades all through school but was told that I would be “allowed” to go to college only as long as I kept my grades mostly A’s. A complete double standard.
Speaking of girls, my grad school professor in 1983 New Orleans chastised me for not being like the other “Southern girls”. My crime? He said I “axed” too many questions. He expected the female students to remain completely quiet and subservient. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed seeing the lovely shade of raspberry creep up past his Col. Sanders blonde goatee to the top of his prematurely balding pate when I replied, “So you prefer your southrin’ GIRLS to be ignorant and silent. Got it. Well I’m an Okie and as long as I’m paying for my education here, I will AXE a question any damn time I please.” Even though he was in his 30’s and it was 1983, he felt just fine treating us like it was 1950.
I had two good friends have their teaching contracts not renewed in the late ’80s because they were visibly pregnant and our single childless female superintendent hated women in their childbearing years because they took time off for sick kids. Husbands seldom did this as it was considered women’s work to care for the kids and women’s jobs were presumed to be less important. I had to hide my pregnancy for months under baggy sweaters while awaiting early tenure, just so I wouldn’t lose my job.
In the ’80s, a young bank male manager actually insisted that my husband had to come in to resolve an issue with our joint bank account, rather than myself, because he was “the man” and I was not to be trusted as the woman with financial issues.
In 2004, a school administrator called my husband so they could speak “man to man” about my request to have our child evaluated over special ed concerns. He wanted my husband to “talk some sense into the little lady”. My husband gave him an earful. Our child did end up being diagnosed eventually and this jerk school admin apologized to me for being wrong. I love the retro cars and gadgets, but I love living in this time and having the freedom to be myself and modern conveniences. Women who glamorize the 50’s have never talked to women who lived through it or they would never wish to turn the clock back.
ghostsniperSeptember 22, 2020, 7:48 AM
Oh dear. Karen arrives.
Anybody else wanna contribute to the “Oh woe is me.”, category?
ghostsniperSeptember 22, 2020, 7:50 AM
Many people gravitate to the good things in life but some prefer to grovel in the gutter, and blame everyone and everything for all of life’s bumps. What a tortured existence, that clearly spills over onto everything they encounter.
OneGuySeptember 22, 2020, 7:53 AM
I was born in 1943. We had a wooden ice box in the back porch. It was insulated with cork. Every other day our ice man came with a block of ice on his shoulder and put it into the ice box
Donald SensingSeptember 22, 2020, 8:11 AM
“No ability to go to college except for those looking to get an MRS degree.”
My mother graduated from Vanderbilt in 1950 with a major in mathematics and a minor in physics. But what did she know?
Uncle MikeySeptember 22, 2020, 8:34 AM
Annie Rose has yet to consider the first question that matters: compared to what? A perfect life doesn’t exist, and I’d wear a fucking girdle to avoid the advent of social media. Fix your lens woman
Bill HenrySeptember 22, 2020, 9:04 AM
My grandmother built B25 mitchell bombers during ww2.. she said she was so glad when the boys came home so she could go back to normal… she never complained…
Chad BiglySeptember 22, 2020, 9:56 AM
Annie Rose: not seeing the problem here. I n fact, I’d go one better and say we should repeal the 19th Amendment. Giving you dames the right to vote was the 2nd biggest mistake this country ever made.
BunnySeptember 22, 2020, 10:03 AM
It just goes to show you, it’s always something. The 50’s may not have been idyllic, but they’re remembered as happy by many. I was a child of the 50’s. My mother went to college in the 60’s with my father’s support, financial and otherwise. I went to college on scholarship in 1970 with the approval of both my parents. As a young married in the 70’s and 80’s, I never encountered any of the difficulties that Annie R. enumerated. Not saying they didn’t happen to somebody somewhere, just not my experience. My 40’s and 50’s mom always told me the happiest times of her life were caring for her husband and children. I believed her and followed suit and found that it was true for me as well. To me, hell is working in an office. “Careers” and technology aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, although I do enjoy air conditioning. Chacun a son gout.
BunnySeptember 22, 2020, 10:10 AM
For shame, Chad Bigly. You do a disservice to sensible women.
Teri PittmanSeptember 22, 2020, 10:12 AM
My first husband’s mom was a manager at Safeway during the war. She had to quit when the war ended. Her husband went to work as a machinist in the shipyards. She stayed home and raised two kids. She did housework and got together with her friends during the day. They had enough money to pay cash for anything and owned their own home. So not everyone thought the 50s lifestyle sucked.
AnonymousSeptember 22, 2020, 10:16 AM
Oh, and I was raised by a single mom during the 50s. She didn’t have any of the problems you mention, except the occasional sexist behavior from bosses. You haven’t gotten rid of that. You’ve just made it less likely for women to be hired when they give off that vibe they are looking for a reason to sue.
I’m sure you are a fan of the poured into yoga pants, blue haired look. How dare anyone want to dress up!
BunnySeptember 22, 2020, 10:20 AM
Is Annie Rose trolling us as Elizabeth Watren? Okie, pregnancy, tenure…?
captfleeSeptember 22, 2020, 10:53 AM
Annie Rose;
Axe? You had a yat professor? Or are we talkin’ diversity here? Julane, Goyola, Holy Cross? Southern, Xavier, Dillard? As a long time denizen of the City that Forgot to Care I am genuinely interested.
Your valid points are certainly salient, and you will get no argument from me on those, but no birth control? Wasn’t BC as close as the nearest filling station bathroom? And while the beneficiaries of the various color and gender revolutions of the 60s and 70s certainly have a great deal more freedoms accorded them (though one would be hard pressed to credit that, based on the ceaseless agitation from certain quarters} than was the case in 1955, might not the mean or median citizen of 2020 be leading a less pleasant life into the bargain? It’s not unlike air conditioning and the South: at best a mixed blessing; no AC and there’d be a damned sight fewer carpetbaggers, so perhaps a smaller number of jobs in thrall to the multicult, but not much chance of NC and GA falling to the communists 3 Nov.
Change is not always progress.
ghostsniperSeptember 22, 2020, 10:57 AM
You can go back and time and pick a place, any place, the world was more difficult than now. Sorta. But first you have to define difficult. Is life without a credit card difficult today? For some, probably. For me? No. I paid mine off in 2006 and haven’t had any since. Don’t miss em. Don’t miss the monthly bills too. Is not going to college considered difficult? My profession requires 6 years of college and that just costs too much money and time. So I found another way. Difficult? Yes and no.
No birth control? srsly? Since when?
Life in the 50’s seems intolerable to some but millions of people managed just fine. They looked back at life in the 20’s and 30’s and were glad they didn’t live then. Go back further, lets say the 14th century. Do you think life was tough then? Did women have credit cards in the 1400’s? How’d they do birth control when Columbus sailed the ocean blue? Oh that’s right. Personal integrity. Something there seems to be very little of any more. And that’s difficult.
Lance de BoyleSeptember 22, 2020, 11:45 AM
My wife, Lucretia de Widebottom, was too large for a monthly brick. We had to outfit her with a coupla cinder blocks.
ArasandaSeptember 22, 2020, 2:37 PM
Oh boy. I see others have been fisking Annie Rose’s fake Fifties screed.
Let me add a few more points to things she was oh-so-wrong about.
“No ability to get her own credit card.”
Actress Tina Louise had her photo in the newspaper in July 1959 using her Diners’ Club card to charge lunch at a steak joint in Greenwich Village. The photo caption said, “Credit card firms report an increasing number of women members, and the Diners’ Club has formed a women’s division.”
“No money of her own.”
Sorry, also wrong. Women could and did earn their own money going back for centuries … probably millennia if anyone wants to dig. Here in the U.S., reformations in laws concerning married women’s property rights were passed state by state in the mid-1800s. The laws addressed both retention of wealth that women brought into marriage, and wealth that they earned during marriage. Women, both married and single, opened accounts at U.S. banks in the 1800s. I know of a savings bank that started in the mid-1800s which explicitly stated in its charter that the money in the accounts of married female depositors could not be claimed by their husbands or their husbands’ creditors. In essence, the bank was treating the married female depositor just like every other depositors — the person whose name was on the account was the ONLY person who had access to that money.
“No ability to get a loan.”
This same bank was issuing mortgages to women before the Civil War. Making business loans to women well before 1900.
That’s three claims right there that are flat-out wrong.
I’m not going to fisk her entire comment, because that would require an article in and of itself.
It’s unfortunate that a grievance mentality and churning out factual errors like a Model-T factory seem to go hand in hand, but Annie Rose’s comment is a shining example of how NOT to do history.
VanderleunSeptember 22, 2020, 3:09 PM
Well, in fairness, sometimes — most times — people are just looking out of their own window and remembering the view they had at the time. Most of life is a reported series of moments of lived experience worth remembering.
Formal history — the history one cites to buttress one’s arguments — is the amalgamating of those scrapbook clips those half-seen in a flash of neurons moments around central themes and, at times, adding in data observed later with shabby equipment always deteriorating… Maybe that gives the “true history of everyday life” since the history of great human beings as individuals is currently in shadow but that doesn’t mean it is not also altered and weighted to reflect the currently approved truth.
AnonymousSeptember 23, 2020, 12:08 AM
Problem is “Annie” didn’t “live” through the fifties, she swallowed leftist talking points so she could bitch her way through the 60s, 70s, 80s…..leaving in her wide wake (TOOOT……TOOOOOOOOOT) the flotsam of castrated males.
GracieSeptember 23, 2020, 6:00 AM
“Annie Rose’s” remarks sound an awful lot like a Liz Warren screed, including the almost word for word assertion of “visibly pregnant” teachers being denied contracts. I call BS on her objections.
Annie RoseSeptember 23, 2020, 7:54 AM
Sorry to rain on your old white male fantasies, boys. Reality for the women of the 50’s wasn’t a fantasy world. Sure women could get a credit card or a loan-if their dad or husband co-signed for them. I’m a child of the 60’s. My information was shared wisdom from older female relatives and friends who guided me in how to establish credit and financially prepare to care for myself and future kids. In 1974 women were finally allowed to apply for a credit card on their own with no male co-signer. 1974. If you had no credit and you could not take out a loan as a woman and your husband died or divorced you in the 50’s, you were in serious trouble. Not so glamorous. Uncle Mikey, I double dog dare you to squeeze yourself into a 50’s style girdle and Merry Widow waist cincher bustier and wear it for 8 hours without complaint.
BunnySeptember 23, 2020, 9:36 AM
Okay, Annie, I’ll grant you all that, but I easily got my first credit card from J.C. Penney in 1974 prior to the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in October. Women did not iron and do housework in heels and pearls, except on television and in advertising. At least, I can’t recall my mother ever doing that. Why would she? My father’s dress shirts went to One Hour Martinizing and came back clean and starched in a cardboard box. The rest of the laundry was “sprinkled” and went into the Frigidaire until she got around to ironing it (when As the World Turns came on television). My mother never had to ask for grocery money that I know of. I think it was usual for the husband’s paycheck to be deposited in a joint account and the wife to pay the bills and manage the expenses. As for the girdle, that was for dress up only. Flats and housedresses, shorts and capri pants were everyday and casual attire. There is still nothing women can do that is more important than caring for the kids and they are uniquely suited for it, especially when the children are young. At least they were, until men became able to breastfeed.
ghostsniperSeptember 23, 2020, 12:15 PM
Not only is she narrow minded and prone to passing rumors but she is also tends to see life through a jagged edge, believing life is inherently unfair.
Up through the 70’s most people didn’t use credit cards and in my coming of age decade I never knew a woman that wore a girdle. (Doesn’t a woman “choose” to wear a girdle to enhance her appearance, a deceptive ploy?) I worked in several gas stations and fast food joints and the people that used credit cards did so for company expenses, the average Joe paid for stuff with cash.
Anyway, the 50’s were harder in some ways than the 60’s which were harder in some ways than the 70’s and the 40’s were harder than the 50’s and 60’s added together. My wife and I busted suds by hand the old fashioned way up until 1988 when we moved into our first NEW crib the had a dishwasher. We thought we were “uptown” when we got that DW. Now, 20 years after becoming empty nesters, we are going back to scrubbing dishes by hand because since there’s just the 2 of us it takes a week to fill up the DW with stuff so it’s just easier to wash our meager stuff by hand. Maybe my wife will start wearing heels and I’ll start wearing starched shirts. In any case Annie Rose (nice name BTW, our grand daughter is Abigail Rose (Abby Rose for short)) will continue to wake up on the bitter side of the rack and attack everyone else with her scorn and ignorance. So be it. You can change a closed mind. I’m done here.
ghostsniperSeptember 23, 2020, 12:17 PM
Can’t, not can.
Annie RoseSeptember 23, 2020, 2:55 PM
No bitterness in my life, just a resilient survivor in the real world like everyone else. Happily married for over 38 years to a wonderful guy and we’ve been in love for 42 years. I make him homemade meals, cakes, and pies., give him back rubs and foot massages. He isn’t afraid to mop, vacuum, do laundry, or cook a meal, when needed. I have no problem lifting a shovel or turning a wrench, or shoveling deep snow. We spoil each other. We have each others’ backs and can honestly call each other out when we step out of line. We have raised two great kids together. You can believe I’m just a Karen and a bitter cat lady, if that rings your chime. And yes, we do have a very spoiled cat, Frodo. Liawatha Fauxcahontas is an embarrassment to all decent Oklahomans and a fraud, not my hero. She gives all women a bad name and reinforces negative stereotypes of women.
ArasandaSeptember 23, 2020, 3:09 PM
Annie Rose has adjusted her “facts” when those earlier “facts” were shown to be unfactual.
Initial claim: “No ability to get her own credit card.” (a blanket statement about all women in the 1950s)
(Claim debunked in my comment on 9/22 @ 2:37 PM)
Adjusted claim: “Sure women could get a credit card or a loan-if their dad or husband co-signed for them.”
Re: Loans: Wrong again. Women got loans/mortgages without the co-signature of a father or husband, well before the 1970s and 1980s.
Dollar Bank in Pittsburgh issued a mortgage to Rose Irwin in February 1857. Irwin was not married and her father was deceased. No male relative co-signed the mortgage.
As I have studied the profiles of women like Irwin who were issued mortgages in the latter half of the 19th century, I have noticed that they tended to be either (A) upper-middle-class women who were left property by their affluent fathers (not industrial tycoons, but wealthy professionals like doctors, lawyers and successful merchants), as investment vehicles which the women could use to earn and grow wealth after the father’s death, regardless of whether the women ever married, or (B) upper-middle-class widows who controlled RE assets (in addition to the family residence) after their husband’s death.
The reason for this preference is pretty simple. Real estate investment and trading were a respectable way for an upper-class woman of unspectacular means to earn money and sustain a comfortable lifestyle without embroiling herself in business ownership or labor.
Re: Credit cards: Remedial info for anyone who knows it already, but the purpose of a co-signature on a credit card application is to minimize risk of default with lower-income (typically but not always younger) applicants. Perhaps Annie Rose can explain why a bank or lending institution should be forced to issue a credit card to someone earning no income (1950s housewife, for example), and also be prohibited from asking for a co-signature from a person earning an income (husband, for example). Women who earned their own incomes were obviously not in the same situation as housewives who earned no incomes.
When the Equal Opportunity Credit Act was passed in 1975, it was intended to remediate the problems chiefly of formerly married women establishing or accessing credit, esp. in cases following divorce from or death of the male spouse. (Prior to the act, lenders reporting to credit bureaus on accounts used by both husband and wife listed the information in the husband’s name only. A divorced or widowed woman had no credit history and was therefore turned down if she applied for a credit card or loan in her own name. After the act, creditors listed information on joint accounts in both names, thus establishing a credit history for both wife and husband.)
In October 1976, (one year after most, but not all, provisions of the EOCA were in effect), credit card companies reported the following information on applications and accounts held by females:
Master Charge (37 million card holders total) – In 1973, 26.5% of all card holders were women. By the end of 1975, 34.7% of their card holders were women.
American Express (7.5 million card holders) – From September 1975 to June 1976, 18% of all new members were women with accounts in their own name. In that same period one year earlier, the figure was 16%.
Diners’ Club – Executive VP Joseph Garcia reported that the EOCA had not resulted in a significant increase in female card holders. “Our type of person is pretty well established. Our market is generally women executives with an income over $10,000.”
Commercial Credit Corp. – President I.W. Martin said “the impact [of the EOCA] is going to come on married women.” He added that he believed single women always had fewer problems establishing credit in their own names.
************************
See, the problems of accessing capital and credit were about a very specific group of women. And the window of time in which those problems occurred, with regard to credit cards, was a pretty short one: 25 years. (Credit cards were invented around 1950/1951 by Diners’ Club. In 1975 the EOCA was passed.)
And as I have demonstrated, there was not a blanket prohibition against mortgage lending to single or widowed women, nor was there a universal requirement for male relatives to co-sign residential mortgage loans.
But you would never know any of this from Annie Rose’s screeds. In her miserable little world, women were under the male boot all the time in virtually every way possible.
ghostsniperSeptember 23, 2020, 6:28 PM
“Happily married for over 38 years…”
======
That’s wonderful.
For us, it will be 37 years in Feb.
My wife does almost NO cooking of any kind, would punch my ass in the face if I asked for any kind of rub, but she does keep the house looking like a model home continuously and all 10 of her thumbs are the brightest shade of green you have ever seen. Our 4 cats live the life of Riley in their own bedroom with bathroom and their own private screened in porch.
100 years from now, if they survive, people will look back at this time and wonder how could people live this way, with so many obstacles and hardships. “They literally had to put used dishes in a dishwasher and install detergent, that they had to go to a store and buy, and then push a button to turn it on.” According to Zager and Evans, in the year 2120 people will never get hungry (and therefore never get obese) because of a shot that was given to them when they were born, so the idea of a dishwasher will be foreign to them.
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
Green Pants Interior by Klahn
Who Am I? by Carl Sandburg
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith — Plus a few simple easy to follow rules for guys
Men saw the stars at the edge of the sea
They thought great thoughts about liberty
Poets wrote down words that did fit
Writers wrote books
Thinkers thought about it
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
Many’s the road I have walked upon
Many’s the hour between dusk and dawn
Many’s the time
Many’s the mile
I see it all now
Through the eyes of a child
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
Lost dreams and found dreams
In America
In America
In America
And close your eyes
Leave it all for a while
Leave the world
And your worries behind
You will build on whatever is real
And wake up each day
To a new waking dream
Take it where you find it
Can’t leave it alone
You will find a purpose
To carry it on
Mainly when you find it
Your heart will be strong
About it
[Chorus]
Change, change come over
Change come over
Talkin’ about a change
Change, change
Change come over, now
Change, change, change come over
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I’m gonna walk down the street
Until I see
My shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
I see my light
See my light
See my shining light
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
How about a deal:
We guys will invest in wingtips, sport coats, ties, and hats if you gals will wear dresses, heels, and hose. Viva la difference, and all that. (betcha’ the trannies would sign on, too 😉 )
Hell, I’d even burn my t-shirts (well, some of ’em)
MASA (Make America Stylish Again)
JWM
“…heels, and hose.”
=============
I like the way the line runs up the back of the stockings.
I’ve always liked those kind of high heels (Mary Jane’s) too. You know, I…
No no no no, don’t take ’em off, don’t take… Leave ’em on, leave ’em on.
Yeah, that’s it, a little more to the right, a little more….
Everybody wants some…. I want some too!
She’s right about those 70-year old fridges. About 15 years ago I was part of a project to recycle old fridges that had been replaced with new, efficient ones. We would use Sawzalls to cut open the backs and sides. This was so we could pull out the old CFC-laden foam insulation. Sometimes it came out in nice, pristine slabs. Mostly it came out in chunks, using ice chippers. The foam would be bagged up and shipped to some place in California. There it would be disposed in a way that the CFCs were captured and not released to kill ozone. The carcasses were loaded on trucks to go to metal scrappers. All this was done after other guys had drained the evil gases from the compressor.
It cost far more energy to recycle the metal than the metal was worth.
We liberated a whole lot of CFCs dealing with the foam.
There were lots of very old fridges that ran just fine until we wrecked them. Now and then we would get these real antiques that had a compressor on top, and which used butane as the refrigerant. Those sat outside for a week to be sure the gas was gone.
Everyone who got the big refund to buy a new fridge had the new one fail within ten years.
Cannot find a place to comment on image captioned Fire Sale, in right column.
Oh my golly, what a well groomed lady indeed ! The rifles are special also. But she takes the gold. American Patriot girls win in every way. Outstanding eye candy- Smile of the week for me . . .
Very nice post Gerard.
1958. Little baby Casey came into the world.
Of course, I remember the designs and the curios. The porcelain cats, the star clocks, and the avocado color. I enjoy nostalgia as much as the next guy. We bought a 1965 Fireball trailer and it makes you smile when you go inside. I get her vibes in that video.
FF: Kennedy shot. The Vietnam War. Elvis and Rock & Roll. The Sixties with the hippies and the psychedelic culture. Nixon. Bell bottoms Seventies and it all started unravelling. The meh 80s, when I started manhood and served in Reagan’s military ( after having served in Carter’s). College. Unemployment and hard, unrelenting work. The Nineties; got my shit together enough to get married and wasted my life away as a rock climber. Finally made it back to my childhood talents as an artist.
The New Millennium. Computers. Bush, Clinton, Obama. The USA is becoming the behemoth and the Machiavellian nightmare we used to read about in literature and gloss over. I used to avoid SciFi and now I’m actually living it. Had my kids, enjoying life in rural nowheresville.
20o1-20. Muslim wars. Fucking Marx sticks to my shoe like a goddamned piece of shit. Ruth Bader Marxist, Democratic cuck congress. Seattle ran by Ethiopian stooge Marxist plants. Antifa. Trump tries to save us from the insanity of the Left. Leftists want my speech and my freedom, starting with my guns.
OK. I’m ready for the 50s. Bring it on. (Takes a valium and drifts backwards in time).
Terry sed: “Oh my golly, what a well groomed lady indeed !”
=======
There’s nothing “suppressing” about that pik!
Contrast the lady obsessed with the 1950s with the unholy screecher a few posts down gents and ask “Who would you rather come home to? Who would you rather kiss and hug?”
I’d humor a 1950s obsession. 😉
1955 is MY year.
There are characters in the book “Victoria” that deliberately live a retro lifestyle, as a way to keep ideals and principles alive with their children.
Having grown up in the forties & fifties, brings back a lot of great memories.
I do my part. All of the cars I drive are from 1931 to 1959. Theres lots of us on the jalopyjournal.com
Like Casey Klahn, I served during the Carter administration. What a mess that was. My first vote was for Reagan, having experienced his leadership as governor of California before I was old enough to vote.
I always liked the 50’s cars. We had a 57 Buick up til the late 60’s.
Me too, GS … Im from the tribe of ’55. What was your tribal anthem? Ours was “Baba O’Reilly” … and maybe “Bitch” by The Stones. Damn, that one always got the girls up and shaking their pert little behinds
In other commentary, no Fifties closet would be complete without a mink stole. So, get on it, you crazy kids. Should only cost 10K nowadays
My mother didnt buy a mink stole, but she won one as a door prize at some function. Let me tell you, mink feels amazing. When I was a kid, I used to sneak into the parents closet and rub my face in that fur
My dear Callmelennie, maybe the lady in the video can’t afford a mink stole, but maybe she might scrape together enough of 1958’s then-brand-new Lincoln Memorial pennies for her to afford a mink face mask . . . for when she steps out her door into 2020.
@Lennie, I graduated HS in 1972 and the number 1 song that year was Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”.
From the Beatles to Zappa I was doing it all in the rock world – the heavier the better.
I remember the 50s. It didn’t look like that to me.
What I remember of the Fifties was: 1) Eisenhower in the White House. I was allowed to stay up late the night of the 1952 election while the adults in the family savored the results. Some of you may remember the first-ever TV political ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3SOrYf1_ng&ab_channel=Inter-Path%C3%A9History
2) Howard Johnson’s restaurants, with their iconic orange/turquoise color scheme and 28 flavors of ice cream. My family often headed to the local HoJo’s on Saturday nights, and we looked forward to it.
3) The fad for pink and charcoal grey as a color combination in everything from restaurants to linoleum to cars. My parents drove a 1954 Plymouth in that color scheme for several years, and it seemed that half the Plymouths on the road in the mid-50s were pink and grey.
4) People dressing up for travel rather than boarding planes or trains looking like Antifa rejects. Air travel in particular was an occasion that called for wearing one’s Sunday best, and the airlines treated their customers to real food– as in this Pan Am ad from 1958:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKqQgNZylLw&ab_channel=lgwguy
If this lovey lady wants to play dress up and fantasize about the 50’s, fine, but I hope she is being completely authentic.
No ability to get her own credit card. No money of her own. No ability to go to college except for those looking to get a MRS degree. Limited professional opportunities-teacher, secretary, nurse. No birth control. No ability to get a loan. Having to ask her husband to give her money to buy groceries.
No air conditioning. No permanent press clothes so everything has to be ironed. I hope she squeezes into a painful girdle every day and lassos her girls into the torture chamber of a bra from that era. I remember watching my mom and aunts have to do this.
I hope she forgoes the improvements in feminine hygiene and straps on her brick every month to her sanitary belt. My mom told me it was not glamorous standing in heels in the hot summer ironing your husband’s dress shirts and starching them.
I hope she’s ironing dozens of hankies that men used instead of Kleenex. I learned to iron at the age of five by ironing my dad’s hankies.
In 1974 women could finally apply for a credit card without their dad or husband having to co-sign for them. My mom, who worked as a temp legal secretary, was lectured by a male boss in 1975 for daring to wear a pantsuit to the office. He expected his “girls” to wear heels and a skirt.
My parents were happy to pay for my older brother to go to college in the 70’s, even though he had terrible grades. I had excellent grades all through school but was told that I would be “allowed” to go to college only as long as I kept my grades mostly A’s. A complete double standard.
Speaking of girls, my grad school professor in 1983 New Orleans chastised me for not being like the other “Southern girls”. My crime? He said I “axed” too many questions. He expected the female students to remain completely quiet and subservient. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed seeing the lovely shade of raspberry creep up past his Col. Sanders blonde goatee to the top of his prematurely balding pate when I replied, “So you prefer your southrin’ GIRLS to be ignorant and silent. Got it. Well I’m an Okie and as long as I’m paying for my education here, I will AXE a question any damn time I please.” Even though he was in his 30’s and it was 1983, he felt just fine treating us like it was 1950.
I had two good friends have their teaching contracts not renewed in the late ’80s because they were visibly pregnant and our single childless female superintendent hated women in their childbearing years because they took time off for sick kids. Husbands seldom did this as it was considered women’s work to care for the kids and women’s jobs were presumed to be less important. I had to hide my pregnancy for months under baggy sweaters while awaiting early tenure, just so I wouldn’t lose my job.
In the ’80s, a young bank male manager actually insisted that my husband had to come in to resolve an issue with our joint bank account, rather than myself, because he was “the man” and I was not to be trusted as the woman with financial issues.
In 2004, a school administrator called my husband so they could speak “man to man” about my request to have our child evaluated over special ed concerns. He wanted my husband to “talk some sense into the little lady”. My husband gave him an earful. Our child did end up being diagnosed eventually and this jerk school admin apologized to me for being wrong. I love the retro cars and gadgets, but I love living in this time and having the freedom to be myself and modern conveniences. Women who glamorize the 50’s have never talked to women who lived through it or they would never wish to turn the clock back.
Oh dear. Karen arrives.
Anybody else wanna contribute to the “Oh woe is me.”, category?
Many people gravitate to the good things in life but some prefer to grovel in the gutter, and blame everyone and everything for all of life’s bumps. What a tortured existence, that clearly spills over onto everything they encounter.
I was born in 1943. We had a wooden ice box in the back porch. It was insulated with cork. Every other day our ice man came with a block of ice on his shoulder and put it into the ice box
“No ability to go to college except for those looking to get an MRS degree.”
My mother graduated from Vanderbilt in 1950 with a major in mathematics and a minor in physics. But what did she know?
Annie Rose has yet to consider the first question that matters: compared to what? A perfect life doesn’t exist, and I’d wear a fucking girdle to avoid the advent of social media. Fix your lens woman
My grandmother built B25 mitchell bombers during ww2.. she said she was so glad when the boys came home so she could go back to normal… she never complained…
Annie Rose: not seeing the problem here. I n fact, I’d go one better and say we should repeal the 19th Amendment. Giving you dames the right to vote was the 2nd biggest mistake this country ever made.
It just goes to show you, it’s always something. The 50’s may not have been idyllic, but they’re remembered as happy by many. I was a child of the 50’s. My mother went to college in the 60’s with my father’s support, financial and otherwise. I went to college on scholarship in 1970 with the approval of both my parents. As a young married in the 70’s and 80’s, I never encountered any of the difficulties that Annie R. enumerated. Not saying they didn’t happen to somebody somewhere, just not my experience. My 40’s and 50’s mom always told me the happiest times of her life were caring for her husband and children. I believed her and followed suit and found that it was true for me as well. To me, hell is working in an office. “Careers” and technology aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, although I do enjoy air conditioning. Chacun a son gout.
For shame, Chad Bigly. You do a disservice to sensible women.
My first husband’s mom was a manager at Safeway during the war. She had to quit when the war ended. Her husband went to work as a machinist in the shipyards. She stayed home and raised two kids. She did housework and got together with her friends during the day. They had enough money to pay cash for anything and owned their own home. So not everyone thought the 50s lifestyle sucked.
Oh, and I was raised by a single mom during the 50s. She didn’t have any of the problems you mention, except the occasional sexist behavior from bosses. You haven’t gotten rid of that. You’ve just made it less likely for women to be hired when they give off that vibe they are looking for a reason to sue.
I’m sure you are a fan of the poured into yoga pants, blue haired look. How dare anyone want to dress up!
Is Annie Rose trolling us as Elizabeth Watren? Okie, pregnancy, tenure…?
Annie Rose;
Axe? You had a yat professor? Or are we talkin’ diversity here? Julane, Goyola, Holy Cross? Southern, Xavier, Dillard? As a long time denizen of the City that Forgot to Care I am genuinely interested.
Your valid points are certainly salient, and you will get no argument from me on those, but no birth control? Wasn’t BC as close as the nearest filling station bathroom? And while the beneficiaries of the various color and gender revolutions of the 60s and 70s certainly have a great deal more freedoms accorded them (though one would be hard pressed to credit that, based on the ceaseless agitation from certain quarters} than was the case in 1955, might not the mean or median citizen of 2020 be leading a less pleasant life into the bargain? It’s not unlike air conditioning and the South: at best a mixed blessing; no AC and there’d be a damned sight fewer carpetbaggers, so perhaps a smaller number of jobs in thrall to the multicult, but not much chance of NC and GA falling to the communists 3 Nov.
Change is not always progress.
You can go back and time and pick a place, any place, the world was more difficult than now. Sorta. But first you have to define difficult. Is life without a credit card difficult today? For some, probably. For me? No. I paid mine off in 2006 and haven’t had any since. Don’t miss em. Don’t miss the monthly bills too. Is not going to college considered difficult? My profession requires 6 years of college and that just costs too much money and time. So I found another way. Difficult? Yes and no.
No birth control? srsly? Since when?
Life in the 50’s seems intolerable to some but millions of people managed just fine. They looked back at life in the 20’s and 30’s and were glad they didn’t live then. Go back further, lets say the 14th century. Do you think life was tough then? Did women have credit cards in the 1400’s? How’d they do birth control when Columbus sailed the ocean blue? Oh that’s right. Personal integrity. Something there seems to be very little of any more. And that’s difficult.
My wife, Lucretia de Widebottom, was too large for a monthly brick. We had to outfit her with a coupla cinder blocks.
Oh boy. I see others have been fisking Annie Rose’s fake Fifties screed.
Let me add a few more points to things she was oh-so-wrong about.
“No ability to get her own credit card.”
Actress Tina Louise had her photo in the newspaper in July 1959 using her Diners’ Club card to charge lunch at a steak joint in Greenwich Village. The photo caption said, “Credit card firms report an increasing number of women members, and the Diners’ Club has formed a women’s division.”
“No money of her own.”
Sorry, also wrong. Women could and did earn their own money going back for centuries … probably millennia if anyone wants to dig. Here in the U.S., reformations in laws concerning married women’s property rights were passed state by state in the mid-1800s. The laws addressed both retention of wealth that women brought into marriage, and wealth that they earned during marriage. Women, both married and single, opened accounts at U.S. banks in the 1800s. I know of a savings bank that started in the mid-1800s which explicitly stated in its charter that the money in the accounts of married female depositors could not be claimed by their husbands or their husbands’ creditors. In essence, the bank was treating the married female depositor just like every other depositors — the person whose name was on the account was the ONLY person who had access to that money.
“No ability to get a loan.”
This same bank was issuing mortgages to women before the Civil War. Making business loans to women well before 1900.
That’s three claims right there that are flat-out wrong.
I’m not going to fisk her entire comment, because that would require an article in and of itself.
It’s unfortunate that a grievance mentality and churning out factual errors like a Model-T factory seem to go hand in hand, but Annie Rose’s comment is a shining example of how NOT to do history.
Well, in fairness, sometimes — most times — people are just looking out of their own window and remembering the view they had at the time. Most of life is a reported series of moments of lived experience worth remembering.
Formal history — the history one cites to buttress one’s arguments — is the amalgamating of those scrapbook clips those half-seen in a flash of neurons moments around central themes and, at times, adding in data observed later with shabby equipment always deteriorating… Maybe that gives the “true history of everyday life” since the history of great human beings as individuals is currently in shadow but that doesn’t mean it is not also altered and weighted to reflect the currently approved truth.
Problem is “Annie” didn’t “live” through the fifties, she swallowed leftist talking points so she could bitch her way through the 60s, 70s, 80s…..leaving in her wide wake (TOOOT……TOOOOOOOOOT) the flotsam of castrated males.
“Annie Rose’s” remarks sound an awful lot like a Liz Warren screed, including the almost word for word assertion of “visibly pregnant” teachers being denied contracts. I call BS on her objections.
Sorry to rain on your old white male fantasies, boys. Reality for the women of the 50’s wasn’t a fantasy world. Sure women could get a credit card or a loan-if their dad or husband co-signed for them. I’m a child of the 60’s. My information was shared wisdom from older female relatives and friends who guided me in how to establish credit and financially prepare to care for myself and future kids. In 1974 women were finally allowed to apply for a credit card on their own with no male co-signer. 1974. If you had no credit and you could not take out a loan as a woman and your husband died or divorced you in the 50’s, you were in serious trouble. Not so glamorous. Uncle Mikey, I double dog dare you to squeeze yourself into a 50’s style girdle and Merry Widow waist cincher bustier and wear it for 8 hours without complaint.
Okay, Annie, I’ll grant you all that, but I easily got my first credit card from J.C. Penney in 1974 prior to the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in October. Women did not iron and do housework in heels and pearls, except on television and in advertising. At least, I can’t recall my mother ever doing that. Why would she? My father’s dress shirts went to One Hour Martinizing and came back clean and starched in a cardboard box. The rest of the laundry was “sprinkled” and went into the Frigidaire until she got around to ironing it (when As the World Turns came on television). My mother never had to ask for grocery money that I know of. I think it was usual for the husband’s paycheck to be deposited in a joint account and the wife to pay the bills and manage the expenses. As for the girdle, that was for dress up only. Flats and housedresses, shorts and capri pants were everyday and casual attire. There is still nothing women can do that is more important than caring for the kids and they are uniquely suited for it, especially when the children are young. At least they were, until men became able to breastfeed.
Not only is she narrow minded and prone to passing rumors but she is also tends to see life through a jagged edge, believing life is inherently unfair.
Up through the 70’s most people didn’t use credit cards and in my coming of age decade I never knew a woman that wore a girdle. (Doesn’t a woman “choose” to wear a girdle to enhance her appearance, a deceptive ploy?) I worked in several gas stations and fast food joints and the people that used credit cards did so for company expenses, the average Joe paid for stuff with cash.
Anyway, the 50’s were harder in some ways than the 60’s which were harder in some ways than the 70’s and the 40’s were harder than the 50’s and 60’s added together. My wife and I busted suds by hand the old fashioned way up until 1988 when we moved into our first NEW crib the had a dishwasher. We thought we were “uptown” when we got that DW. Now, 20 years after becoming empty nesters, we are going back to scrubbing dishes by hand because since there’s just the 2 of us it takes a week to fill up the DW with stuff so it’s just easier to wash our meager stuff by hand. Maybe my wife will start wearing heels and I’ll start wearing starched shirts. In any case Annie Rose (nice name BTW, our grand daughter is Abigail Rose (Abby Rose for short)) will continue to wake up on the bitter side of the rack and attack everyone else with her scorn and ignorance. So be it. You can change a closed mind. I’m done here.
Can’t, not can.
No bitterness in my life, just a resilient survivor in the real world like everyone else. Happily married for over 38 years to a wonderful guy and we’ve been in love for 42 years. I make him homemade meals, cakes, and pies., give him back rubs and foot massages. He isn’t afraid to mop, vacuum, do laundry, or cook a meal, when needed. I have no problem lifting a shovel or turning a wrench, or shoveling deep snow. We spoil each other. We have each others’ backs and can honestly call each other out when we step out of line. We have raised two great kids together. You can believe I’m just a Karen and a bitter cat lady, if that rings your chime. And yes, we do have a very spoiled cat, Frodo. Liawatha Fauxcahontas is an embarrassment to all decent Oklahomans and a fraud, not my hero. She gives all women a bad name and reinforces negative stereotypes of women.
Annie Rose has adjusted her “facts” when those earlier “facts” were shown to be unfactual.
Initial claim: “No ability to get her own credit card.” (a blanket statement about all women in the 1950s)
(Claim debunked in my comment on 9/22 @ 2:37 PM)
Adjusted claim: “Sure women could get a credit card or a loan-if their dad or husband co-signed for them.”
Re: Loans: Wrong again. Women got loans/mortgages without the co-signature of a father or husband, well before the 1970s and 1980s.
Dollar Bank in Pittsburgh issued a mortgage to Rose Irwin in February 1857. Irwin was not married and her father was deceased. No male relative co-signed the mortgage.
https://dollar.bank/Company/About/The-Dollar-Bank-Story
As I have studied the profiles of women like Irwin who were issued mortgages in the latter half of the 19th century, I have noticed that they tended to be either (A) upper-middle-class women who were left property by their affluent fathers (not industrial tycoons, but wealthy professionals like doctors, lawyers and successful merchants), as investment vehicles which the women could use to earn and grow wealth after the father’s death, regardless of whether the women ever married, or (B) upper-middle-class widows who controlled RE assets (in addition to the family residence) after their husband’s death.
The reason for this preference is pretty simple. Real estate investment and trading were a respectable way for an upper-class woman of unspectacular means to earn money and sustain a comfortable lifestyle without embroiling herself in business ownership or labor.
Re: Credit cards: Remedial info for anyone who knows it already, but the purpose of a co-signature on a credit card application is to minimize risk of default with lower-income (typically but not always younger) applicants. Perhaps Annie Rose can explain why a bank or lending institution should be forced to issue a credit card to someone earning no income (1950s housewife, for example), and also be prohibited from asking for a co-signature from a person earning an income (husband, for example). Women who earned their own incomes were obviously not in the same situation as housewives who earned no incomes.
When the Equal Opportunity Credit Act was passed in 1975, it was intended to remediate the problems chiefly of formerly married women establishing or accessing credit, esp. in cases following divorce from or death of the male spouse. (Prior to the act, lenders reporting to credit bureaus on accounts used by both husband and wife listed the information in the husband’s name only. A divorced or widowed woman had no credit history and was therefore turned down if she applied for a credit card or loan in her own name. After the act, creditors listed information on joint accounts in both names, thus establishing a credit history for both wife and husband.)
In October 1976, (one year after most, but not all, provisions of the EOCA were in effect), credit card companies reported the following information on applications and accounts held by females:
Master Charge (37 million card holders total) – In 1973, 26.5% of all card holders were women. By the end of 1975, 34.7% of their card holders were women.
American Express (7.5 million card holders) – From September 1975 to June 1976, 18% of all new members were women with accounts in their own name. In that same period one year earlier, the figure was 16%.
Diners’ Club – Executive VP Joseph Garcia reported that the EOCA had not resulted in a significant increase in female card holders. “Our type of person is pretty well established. Our market is generally women executives with an income over $10,000.”
Commercial Credit Corp. – President I.W. Martin said “the impact [of the EOCA] is going to come on married women.” He added that he believed single women always had fewer problems establishing credit in their own names.
************************
See, the problems of accessing capital and credit were about a very specific group of women. And the window of time in which those problems occurred, with regard to credit cards, was a pretty short one: 25 years. (Credit cards were invented around 1950/1951 by Diners’ Club. In 1975 the EOCA was passed.)
And as I have demonstrated, there was not a blanket prohibition against mortgage lending to single or widowed women, nor was there a universal requirement for male relatives to co-sign residential mortgage loans.
But you would never know any of this from Annie Rose’s screeds. In her miserable little world, women were under the male boot all the time in virtually every way possible.
“Happily married for over 38 years…”
======
That’s wonderful.
For us, it will be 37 years in Feb.
My wife does almost NO cooking of any kind, would punch my ass in the face if I asked for any kind of rub, but she does keep the house looking like a model home continuously and all 10 of her thumbs are the brightest shade of green you have ever seen. Our 4 cats live the life of Riley in their own bedroom with bathroom and their own private screened in porch.
100 years from now, if they survive, people will look back at this time and wonder how could people live this way, with so many obstacles and hardships. “They literally had to put used dishes in a dishwasher and install detergent, that they had to go to a store and buy, and then push a button to turn it on.” According to Zager and Evans, in the year 2120 people will never get hungry (and therefore never get obese) because of a shot that was given to them when they were born, so the idea of a dishwasher will be foreign to them.