Examples Norms in 1950’s?

Question by Madeleine: Examples Norms in 1950’s?
I need to find examples of norms in the 1950’s which are different today. In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, the art history class at the college is just women. Is that a norm, that men and women were separated in colleges? Any other examples of norms would be great! 🙂

Best answer:

Answer by sugar spice and everything nice
homosexuality was seen as in the closet
women right were limited
gender roles were a bit stricter than they were today
men taught menly subjects
women were taught womenly sujects
women adopted hourglass body shape
depression and smoking the war had just finished five years before 1950
families having loads of children. lets not forget how many people died in the war
poverty was commen and the economy was corrupt- which is why my teacher said the young people of this generation need to finish what we started

slowly everything started changing but that how much i found from my 1950’s book

Answer by GeorgieGuy
Hi Madeleine,
If a girl “got pregnant” she either disappeared for a few months and returned home alone or “had to” get married. Today single moms are common and not considered a source of shame on the girl and her family. There were much more stringent gender norms with boys being expected to be strong, silent, unemotional, and assertive while girls were assumed to be weak, gossipy, emotionally volatile, and passive. Girls were expected to wait by the telephone to be called for a date and guys were expected to pay for everything.

Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people were vilified and denied. Brutal forms of exclusion and bullying of GLBT’s were routinely practiced and encouraged by those in charge of our institutions. Women stayed home and did “women’s work” while men were expected to be the sole financial support of the family. Women were expected to play the role of the less intelligent member of the heterosexual pair. Even if she was smarter then the guy women were expected to “play dumb” and let the guy THINK he was both smarter and more accomplished in every way.

People were expected to socialize exclusively with others like themselves in race, religion, social class, and other defining characteristics. It was assumed that African-Americans weren’t as intelligent, ambitious, or capable as Caucasians. Latinos, Asian-Americans, non-Christians, were expected to self-segregate in housing, employment, and social intercourse. If they didn’t do so they were forced into segregated circumstances by laws and social exclusion. Even after the Jewish Holocaust was common knowledge, many Americans continued to engage in antisemitic practices such as exclusion and discrimination in housing and employment.

The media used broad, demeaning stereotypes in depicting minorities and they were vastly underrepresented in the casting of movies. Upward mobility was primarily for the dominant group.. white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males. Low-wage jobs were reserved for minorities and the lower class. College dorms were gender segregated. It was assumed that everyone was heterosexual. Drug use was uncommon although legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco were widely abused.

There was a notable quality of conformity and “sameness” among our population with non-conformists being relegated to a out caste position and looked down upon. Sexuality was denied or minimized in media and popular music. We experienced very damaging “witch hunts” in the form of political and police violations of civil rights and “guilt-by-association” congressional investigations of alleged communists. People were pressured to turn in their friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers to help root out communists who were thought to have infiltrated our society. There were routine lynchings and brutal repression of African-Americans in the south with more subtle but none-the-less damaging forms of discrimination in northern cities. Yep.. those were the good old days that some Americans yearn to return to. Regards.

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