# Small/subtle human trends & behaviors that have slowly subsided since the 70s/80s. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 31, 2019, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516 "2019-08-31T13:06:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/61 "2019-09-01T14:39:06Z")
Regarding communal showers in school - for me it was late 60s/early 70s and unless you were on your period, you showered. The rare exception was when class ran long and the teacher realized you’d never make your next class. At our local community college, you can get a gym/pool membership. It amazes me the number of people who go into the toilet stalls to change rather than use the locker room with its benches. That made it fun when you needed to use the toilet and discovered that the floor was wet from (I hope) some woman who changed from her dripping bathing suit in there. Then again, on at least a couple of occasions, women brought they young sons in there. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/62 "2019-09-01T15:12:03Z")
I’m 60, and when I was college age, people who chose careers in medicine or law would routinely be told by peers, “Ah, you just wanna make a lot of money!” (I actually heard it a few times myself, majoring in engineering.) There seemed to be an ethos in the baby boom counterculture that lower-paying work which paid less (school teaching, social work, etc.) was a higher calling. “Following your dream” was also considered more enlightened than making big money. It was easier to feel this way amid the economic prosperity that early baby boomers graduated into. If you got pretty much any college degree before around 1965, you would be able to get a middle class job right away. Within a few years, you couldn’t expect to get a decent-paying job with a philosophy degree. So it was less common for people to be scorned for choosing a practical career to avoid taking poverty vows. Today, people studying to become physicians are generally looked at as being devoted to service rather than money-grubbers. (Admittedly, less so with aspiring lawyers.) This may be due to changes in the compensation for physicians: AIUI certain specialties (surgeons, anesthesiologists) are still paths to wealth, while general and family practice are not. (Still not poverty though). But I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone criticize a young person for thinking about income potential in choosing a career. The sixties have been over for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/63 "2019-09-01T15:42:25Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Alcohol was much more prevalent in the workplace and popular media until around the advent of MADD and drunk driving awareness. I recall that “day drinking” was much more common in the 70s. People would drink beer while cutting the grass, working on a car, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/64 "2019-09-01T15:51:47Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > Just last week I saw a man jogging without a shirt on. Back in the 1970s it was very common to see a man walking around bare chested. Today it’s a very rare occurrence. Idk. I went to SoCal a couple years ago, San Bernardino to be exact, and the fucking senior citizens (men) jogged shirtless and buff. So im thinking confirmation bias. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/65 "2019-09-01T15:57:13Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > Idk. I went to SoCal a couple years ago, San Bernardino to be exact, and the fucking senior citizens (men) jogged shirtless and buff. So im thinking confirmation bias. Yes, perhaps when it comes to jogging. But I recall men just going about their business all day without a shirt on. I don’t see that as much nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/66 "2019-09-01T15:59:54Z")
> [@Esprise\_Me](#): > > Most houses in the suburb where my parents live have those mailboxes you can’t get your hand inside, so that wouldn’t work. I’m grateful to live in an apartment with an outgoing mail slot. How do they get their mail out? ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/67 "2019-09-01T16:01:39Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > Perhaps it’s my imagination, but I swear women’s facial expressions have changed over the past 40 years. Women used to smile more. Now the “stone/cold/serious” face seems to be the norm. > [@nelliebly](#): > > About the smiling thing: I smile at almost everyone I pass on the street. I notice people who seem to be over 40 smile back much more often than younger folks, who rarely make eye contact. It was just about 40 years ago that the whole stranger-danger, kids-on-milk-cartons hysteria started. I think we scared the smiles out of 'em. I think there’s at least two things that may be involved. One is that women used to be taught that we must smile, it was rude to refuse to do so. Smiles have a lot of different meanings in humans, and this one really seems to me to be/have been the “submissive smile”, which means ‘I’m being nice, I’m not challenging you, please don’t hurt me.’ (Humans are weird: there’s also a smile which means ‘I’m in charge/I’m dominant here/I’ll attack you if I feel like it.’) – at any rate, women are I think a lot less likely to believe that we owe the general public a smile, and/or mustn’t show a ‘serious’ face to the world. The other may have to do with location, and in particular with population levels. In at least some small towns it’s still common (for people of any gender) to smile or nod or wave at pretty much everyone on the street. When there are a whole lot of people on the street, this doesn’t work, and people are a lot more likely to wear a carefully neutral expression and avoid eye contact. > [@madsircool](#): > > Community showering > [@Musicat](#): > > .Really? Where in LA or the USA was that a thing? > [@Colibri](#): > > In a thread on the subject, I’ve mentioned that when I was in college at Cornell in the early 1970s men’s swimming classes were held in the nude (only the instructor wore a suit), and suits were optional during men’s hours at the pool at the gym. From the thread, this was not unusual at the time or in earlier decades. Nudity in a single-sex context used to be pretty commonly accepted. The grade school I went to, in the 1950’s and very early 1960’s, had no doors on the toilet stalls. (They were also entirely unprepared for puberty in even twelve-year-olds; it was assumed that none of us was menstruating yet. That age has definitely shifted.) An all-girls summer camp I went to had a naked moonlight swim every summer, pre-pubertal and pubertal children separately. Nudity was optional but common IME in adult women’s locker rooms. At the University of Rochester, in the early 1970’s, the women complained that men had a time set aside for male-only use of the swimming pool during which the men could swim naked; the university’s response was to set an equal time period for women to do likewise, and quite a few of us did. During the tail end of my time in college, and for some years thereafter, I knew a lot of people in various states in the USA who went casually naked in mixed-gender groups whenever swimming anywhere you wouldn’t get arrested for it, and sometimes in communal showers such as at campgrounds etc. It seemed, for a while, to be getting a lot more common; and then, for whatever reason, just started heading in the other direction – in at least one case the same group of people started covering up around each other, when they hadn’t before. I never did figure out why. It was the same summer; we hadn’t all suddenly become significantly older and saggier. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/68 "2019-09-01T16:18:59Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I recall that “day drinking” was much more common in the 70s. People would drink beer while cutting the grass, working on a car, etc. Around here that would not be uncommon. Day Drinking during the work week, however, has surely tapered off. When I started practicing law, several judges had lunch every day at the lounge across the street from the courthouse. This was in the 80s. I was told that in the 60s and 70s it was even more widespread. ETA. As for communial showers, we were expected to shower as a group from 5th grade on. ---
**Author:** ![BrickBat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac91a4/32.png) [@BrickBat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrickBat)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/69 "2019-09-01T16:42:40Z")
I remember my mother sending me to the store to buy cigarettes for her on many occasions. I was 9 or 10; Early 70s. Just a few years older ( 12 13-ish ) my uncle would give me a few dollars, have me go down the hill to the corner store to buy him a 6-pack of Budweiser, and said get an ice cream cone and a soda for myself if I wanted. Mid 70s. In both cases, the smell and taste of beer/acohol was vile to me…Back then. The smell and taste of tobacco was and still is vile to me. Absolutely no worries of us kids indulging ourselves in gateway behavior. ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/70 "2019-09-01T16:59:44Z")
Remember when a video camera would shoot a computer screen and you’d get that rolling effect from the monitor? I noticed a few months ago while helping a friend with a video shoot that it’s not a thing anymore. He confirmed the equipment nowadays has banished that particular phenomenon. Having a drink during a business lunch seems to have gone by the wayside. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/71 "2019-09-01T17:19:57Z")
The title of the thread is _small subtle_ changes…so here’s a pretty small one: People used to put a pencil behind their ear. You would sometimes see somebody working with a clipboard, and after he stopped writing, he’d put the pencil behind his ear for a minute,till he used it again. (hey, I told you it was a pretty minor change…anybody got anything else smaller? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/72 "2019-09-01T17:41:05Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > “Not at all” apparently is increasing common, with occasional exceptions for swim days in schools that have a pool( and even then sounds like kids rinse off with their suits on, which was verboten by some teachers at my school ). Which I don’t find surprising because even in my day many kids tried to dodge it because they found it embarrassing. To the point where sometimes gym teachers would stand by the locker-room doors and check if you had wet hair as you left. That’s exactly how it was when I was in high school (early-mid 90s). There just wasn’t _time_ to shower, unless it was after swimming, and then it was just really quick to wash your hair and maybe warm up a little after getting out of the pool. Plus we rarely, if ever, broke a sweat. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/73 "2019-09-01T17:49:02Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Anybody have a phone book? Or Yellow Pages?. I get a couple of different yellow pages "delivered’ every year, but they’re third-party things that go straight into recycling (once we’ve found them under the landscaping, on the roof, in the middle of the driveway, or wherever they landed). The “white pages,” though isn’t just gone, but there’s a whole societal change since then. Can you imagine what people would say today if you suggested that every single person’s name, address, and phone number should be printed in a book and delivered to every household? Privacy advocates would get it shut down instantly, and the company that did it would probably be out of business. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/74 "2019-09-01T18:02:08Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > I recall that “day drinking” was much more common in the 70s. People would drink beer while cutting the grass, working on a car, etc. Heh, guess I’m old fashioned. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/75 "2019-09-01T18:09:52Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > At the University of Rochester, in the early 1970’s, the women complained that men had a time set aside for male-only use of the swimming pool during which the men could swim naked; the university’s response was to set an equal time period for women to do likewise, and quite a few of us did. I mentioned this in a previous thread on the subject. Some women at Cornell became annoyed that men were allowed to swim naked while they had to wear ugly one-piece tank suits. (This was about 1972.) But allowing this was complicated by the fact that the pool at the women’s gym was overlooked by big plate-glass windows on the second floor that anyone had access too. Nevertheless, my girlfriend and several of her friends decided to “liberate” the women’s pool by going in suitless. They alerted me to when they planned to do it so I went to witness the historic occasion. But at the appointed time I heard a big commotion but no one came out of the locker room. It seems one of the lifeguards saw them coming and blocked them from going in. I don’t think they got nude swimming hours while I was still at the university. > [@](#): > > During the tail end of my time in college, and for some years thereafter, I knew a lot of people in various states in the USA who went casually naked in mixed-gender groups whenever swimming anywhere you wouldn’t get arrested for it, and sometimes in communal showers such as at campgrounds etc. This was my experience in the early 1970s as well. At Cornell there was a secluded part of one of the gorges where everyone went skinny-dipping in warm weather. (We would make fun of the bug-eyed middle aged townie men who would perch at the top of the cliffs and ogle the goings-on.) On an overnight camping field trip from the University of Oregon in 1972, everyone of both sexes went in skinny-dipping in a nearby stream (although it was after dark). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/76 "2019-09-01T18:19:17Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats](#): > > I think this has a lot more to do with people hating the way their bodies look, as opposed to any notion of being naked is shameful, or prudery. But even attractive young people with good-looking bodies seem to be more reluctant to get naked even in front of others of the same sex these days. If people are more embarrassed about not having an attractive body now, that would seem to run counter to the modern promotion of the idea that no one should be ashamed of how their body looks. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/77 "2019-09-01T18:20:30Z")
> [@chappachula](#): > > The title of the thread is _small subtle_ changes…so here’s a pretty small one: > People used to put a pencil behind their ear. > > You would sometimes see somebody working with a clipboard, and after he stopped writing, > he’d put the pencil behind his ear for a minute,till he used it again. > > (hey, I told you it was a pretty minor change…anybody got anything else smaller? 🙂 Is chewing on a toothpick to look like a tough guy still a thing?🙂 ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/78 "2019-09-01T18:27:50Z")
> [@TimeWinder](#): > > I get a couple of different yellow pages "delivered’ every year, but they’re third-party things that go straight into recycling (once we’ve found them under the landscaping, on the roof, in the middle of the driveway, or wherever they landed). > > The “white pages,” though isn’t just gone, but there’s a whole societal change since then. Can you imagine what people would say today if you suggested that every single person’s name, address, and phone number should be printed in a book and delivered to every household? Privacy advocates would get it shut down instantly, and the company that did it would probably be out of business. I got white pages and yellow pages up until 2017. I figured they stopped because they weren’t making money. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/79 "2019-09-01T19:05:44Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Is chewing on a toothpick to look like a tough guy still a thing?🙂 For us it was a kitchen match… I can still taste that lingering “flammable” taste. But back then, none of us were rich enough to have lighters. And those books of paper matches were so limp they sometimes didn’t work, so this way you could always light something. Add me to the “all the boys showered together” and walked around the locker room naked. Middle and high school and college. We just didn’t care, didn’t think about it, and I don’t remember anyone making a comment about anyone else’s privates. A month ago, we had a bunch of middle schoolers come use the pool at my college. This one kid wouldn’t take his suit off. Not til he’d spent his entire time after swimming constructing an elaborate tent using two beach towels with the corners shoved into locker doors. That didn’t work, a corner would fall out and he’d start over. Finally after everyone was gone, a teacher came in to get this kid: “Iggy, everyone’s on the bus, C’mon!”… poor Iggy was still in his swim trunks, hadn’t taken a shower or gotten dressed yet. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516/80 "2019-09-01T19:56:02Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > But even attractive young people with good-looking bodies seem to be more reluctant to get naked even in front of others of the same sex these days. If people are more embarrassed about not having an attractive body now, that would seem to run counter to the modern promotion of the idea that no one should be ashamed of how their body looks. I blame social media. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-subtle-human-trends-behaviors-that-have-slowly-subsided-since-the-70s-80s/839516.md?page=5)