Essay #2

The Way I Want the World to be:
Where women are Ladies and men are Gentleman
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” When this quote refers to the past as being a separate country, it is saying the past had foreign leaders and ways, and it’s problems were dealt with different than how we would have done things. Different is not always bad. I would like to take some ideas from this said country and apply them to our society, for I am not happy with the way things are going. I would like to evaluate our values, how we date and our take on housewives and family life. I would like to take us back to the fifties, but since time travel is not yet possible, I will have to settle for highlighting my favorite ideas.
The Fifties were a time of style and all American fun. Back then women were ladies, men were gentleman, one’s honor meant something and respect was something to be valued. To be a gentleman is to have honor, and treat woman with respect and kindness, to be a lady is to act in a manor that makes one deserve such treatment. Ladies wore clothes inspired by elegant designers such as Dior, Chanel and Givenchy, and men wore clean cut suits that equally as elegant. Modesty and poise were values that both men and women strived to acquire, one held one’s self in a way that both graceful and effortless. Phrases such as “that’s what she said” would have been considered distasteful. Patriotism was everywhere, religion was the ultimate sign of anti-communism, and family values were valued just as they should be. Post World War II and the beginning of the Cold War kept everyone on their toes, but without a doubt, these universal feelings united us as a nation which is what was needed at the time. Sundays were family time and Church was at the top of the activities list, along with board games and playing outside. Meals were also home cooked and something to be shared as a family. This was ‘classic’ America.
Cinema from the fifties is now old, but still considered ‘classic’. Fifties cinema is considered classic for a reason, for it was clean cut, modest, tastefully romantic and exciting. Some examples of this are famous films such as ‘Casablanca’, ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ which are still loved today. These movie characters were role models that had flaws and troubles just like everyone else. The action was not gruesome or gory but was built up by suspense and left more to the imagination which can be as frightening as any scary movie today. I think Ingred Bergman and Judy Garland captured the the time best, and their movies will be considered ‘classic’ for a long time. The films made it seem like a wonderful time to live, I wish I could say the same about my own generation.
My generation has been reduced to nights of partying, bad choices and refusing to grow up. These ways were fun for a while but I’m worried for our parents, children and future. Someday soon we will need to leave the parties behind and run this country and I hope we are ready. I would like some of the values from the fifties to make a come back such as class, respect and honor. I think these values would provide the extra push we need to shape up and be great, if we could only except them. In a way we are the fifties, but backwards. For the most part we have just replaced fear of communists with fear of terrorists, religion with atheism, dating with hooking up, love with depression and pencil skirts with mini shirts.
Another thing that needs to change is dating and the image we try so hard to project. Boys now stay boys, girls have lost self respect and the result is our youth’s culture has been reduced to a handful of lame jokes and drunken hookups. There have been books written about the phenomenon of hooking up and is now discussed in college Sexual Education classes. Dating has officially become obsolete for our youth and has been replaced by hooking up. We have pushed out dating and turned ‘I love you’ into a pick up line. It is sad that the formalities of courting have been thrown out the window and replaced with catty talk at parties. In the fifties, anyone could talk to anyone but a date was considered something special. It was a one-on-one way to get know a potential partner and show off one’s intelligence and manors. Now parties are our crash course version of dating which consists of a few hours spent intoxicated at a party, interacting with several people then taking someone home. This is not a valid way to find a partner, but that is how is it being done. Image and priorities have also changed. In high school and college, a boy’s worth is judged not by not his smarts or abilities but by how many girls he has slept with, and girls are now picked out by the length of their skirts and ability to chug a beer. None of these things tell anything real about said person, you can not know someone’s passions or pep-peeves by their reputation or the clothing they wear. If dating is supposed to lead to marriage, and if marriage is supposed to last ‘till dead do us part’, what are we getting ourselves into?
Love and marriage is a major problem. It does not surprise me that America’s youngster have trouble with dating and relationships when, for the most part, their role models in relationships are not in the best position to be praised. According to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology in Springfield, Missouri up to 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce. These statistics combined with celebrities and the media do not give one much hope for happiness. Maybe the problem is our idea of love. We now expect love to fall in our laps with a set of instructions. In the fifties, they understood that love is something that requires work and perhaps simply did not give up as easily as our couples do now. I suppose we have started to try to cut corners and give up when things do not work out on the first try. The truth is that love is hard and you have to give as much as you take but that should not, and does not, stop us from continuing to look for love. The problem could also be the economy, pressuring us to marry for status or stability rather than love, causing people to settle. I do not think anyone should ever settle, but it does happen. When one marries, one needs to make decisions about what is important. Like deciding if one wants children and what role one wants to play in those lives.
I believe a negative social stigma has developed towards housewives. Society may not value housewives the way it used to, but I do not see anything wrong with striving to be a caring Mother and Wife. Some women want to be doctors, or lawyers or even Fire Fighter, which is fine, but that is not for everyone. Those women are passionate about making a difference. It is the same way with housewives, except with families instead of strangers and instead of saving lives, they are shaping them. Mothers staying at home used to be considered ‘normal’ whereas now act has practically vanished. I do not want to be judged for wanting this lifestyle, and I sometimes feel I am. It is not that there are not careers I would like to pursue, but those careers mean nothing to me in comparison to being a Mom and taking care of my family. Caring for a house and children is a large responsibility and do not see why our society feels the need to pass this responsibility onto to a stranger. Full-time Moms are also only necessary until the child is about five, after that they start to go to school. Along with caring for your child, there is still dirty laundry, grocery shopping,
cleaning, cooking and other things that need to be done. Having those things done during the day helps a family run smoothly, without stress and less stress means happier families. When I am married and am a Mother, I want to make my husband homemade supper every night, have time to help my kids with their homework, drive them to soccer practice and take care of them when they are sick. True is a lot of work, but it is a real job like working behind a desk or cleaning houses for a living.
I believe the fifties was the best time to be in love and start a family. Things seem as if they were simpler back then, but I suppose that is how the past always seems. Nevertheless, I still feel our values on love need to changed along with the way we raise our families. Perhaps I do not give my generation enough credit, hopefully we will do great things. Maybe things were never the way I imagined they were in the fifties and I have the decade all wrong. Or maybe I was just born in the wrong time. “The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.”