# What would you do if you had to live in 1950s America? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 1, 2014, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053 "2014-04-01T05:40:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/141 "2014-04-03T20:19:58Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > and therefore there was no need for tranquilizers and “mother’s little helpers” during the 50’s … oh, wait… I’m sure we’re all glad that indulgence in chemical escape has become so rare in the intervening years. > [@](#): > > Even a lot of the “privileged” women were effing unhappy during the 1950’s. There’s never been any big shortage of unhappiness, at any time. Do you have evidence it was abnormally high in the suburbs in the 50s? > [@](#): > > Just because someone’s situation sucks less than someone else’s doesn’t mean there is no suck. But it may mean that the suck should be viewed in proper perspective. If I heard Paris Hilton rant about how dreadful her life would be as, say, the wife of a doctor, I’d probably not be extraordinarily sympathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/142 "2014-04-03T20:46:47Z")
Campaign for more nudity! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/143 "2014-04-03T20:54:35Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > I’m sure we’re all glad that indulgence in chemical escape has become so rare in the intervening years. In the 1950’s it was a lot more common to medicate women who didn’t find happiness in their appointed roles as wives and mothers rather than actually treating them as individuals who might have goals and aspirations beyond just the fruit of their wombs. > [@](#): > > But it may mean that the suck should be viewed in proper perspective. If I heard Paris Hilton rant about how dreadful her life would be as, say, the wife of a doctor, I’d probably not be extraordinarily sympathetic. I would, because doctors can be absolute dicks and, as another example, all the money in the world won’t make it OK for a rich husband to beat the crap out of his pampered wife. Sorry, I don’t buy the “you have it better than these other folks, be happy in your relatively smaller level of suck” as a valid position. I would be miserable in the 1950’s. I would be miserable just going back to what was normal in the 1970’s. If you don’t like my opinion on the OP’s scenario too bad. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/144 "2014-04-03T20:57:26Z")
I gotta tell you **Broomstick** , I’m not too sure why you’re being asked to defend your position. Your answer to the question: “I wouldn’t want to go and I would find life intolerable” is as fine an answer as “I’ll make myself rich so I can boink Jackie Kennedy in 1966.” Just because others would make the trade-off doesn’t mean it’s right for everybody, **Xema**. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/145 "2014-04-03T21:03:31Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > But it may mean that the suck should be viewed in proper perspective. If I heard Paris Hilton rant about how dreadful her life would be as, say, the wife of a doctor, I’d probably not be extraordinarily sympathetic. Well, sure. Barring unusual circumstances, her life would probably be pretty good. But then again, maybe her life would really, genuinely suck. It’s hard to look at someone else and decide how happy they should be. And if someone was from the 50s, complaining about their life in the 50s and all you could see was how much better things were than previously, maybe you wouldn’t feel too sympathetic. But that calls to mind two things for me: 1. People seem to equate money and happiness for other people, ignoring everything else that might be making their lives difficult, and 2. There’s a huge difference, psychologically, between having things be as good as you’ve ever seen them and having things be worse than you’ve ever seen them. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/146 "2014-04-03T21:18:32Z")
It doesn’t help that I’m rather butch for a woman, a complete tomboy. I would NOT fit into the “proper” role of a woman at that time. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/147 "2014-04-03T22:39:08Z")
> [@bump](#): > > I imagine I’d live in NYC- it was probably the only place at the time that you could get a lot of interesting foods and beverages. [James Lileks begs to differ!](http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html) ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/148 "2014-04-03T23:02:40Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > There’s never been any big shortage of unhappiness, at any time. Do you have evidence it was abnormally high in the suburbs in the 50s? The 1960s. I’m going to try to start a poll related to this. I’ll link to it if I am successful. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/149 "2014-04-03T23:08:31Z")
> [@Earth001](#): > > …in one week you will be forced through a time vortex to live in a standard suburban American town circa 1952. … Do you face any special challenges from 50s culture and/or technology? This male’s ponytail is not going to go over well. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/150 "2014-04-03T23:22:16Z")
Ugh. I started in the 50s. Not sometime I would like to go back to. But needs must, apparantly, so as everybody else, I would pack a laptop with lots of stock info and sports results. Then buy land. Lots and lots of land. I would be long gone by the time it would pay off, but the kids I’d sire from my many hot concubines would enjoy owning the land under most of Las Vegas, for example. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/151 "2014-04-03T23:34:33Z")
I would locate my paternal and maternal grandparents and convince them of who I was (via inside family knowledge). Then they would start out as my base of power and influence. Plus my paternal grandfather had a serious security clearance so he could be my in to start influencing national policy, etc. I think that “writing” popular songs and books (not to mention inventing board games and other such things) is much more dependable than sports betting, unless we have some guidelines about how much butterfly effect there is going to be. Even stocks aren’t really a sure bet… how many coin flips have to go a different way for IBM to fail and (some other computer company) to succeed? ---
**Author:** ![j666](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9de0a6/32.png) [@j666](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/j666)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/152 "2014-04-03T23:36:55Z")
Okay, I [created a poll](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=720043). It’s not public. Let’s see who feels how about this. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/153 "2014-04-03T23:39:17Z")
> [@Xema](#): > > IOW, you’d have it better in essentially every measurable way than 99.3% of all the women who’d ever lived. And worse than 100% of the women’s lives I’ve ever lived\*. So I don’t get what you don’t get. \*Reincarnation not included. Some restrictions may apply. Without warranty of any kind, expressed or implied. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/154 "2014-04-04T00:00:59Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#): > > … so I’m guessing I’ll wind up as TV producer/director. Not a bad gig in the 1950’s – lots of opportunities to make money and do creative work. The '50s so-called Golden Age of TV was anything but. Go to YouTube and build yourself a couple of nights of '50s TV fare and force yourself to watch it for hours. Sid Caesar is nothing if not overrated crapola. You’d go nuts watching I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best, and December Bride, never mind having to write that crap. > [@chappachula](#): > > Why not? > Take, for example, the current changes in gay rights. It’s nice, but not earth-shaking the way that other changes profoundly affected all of society (e.g. the elimination of Jim Crow laws , the acceptance of women in the workforce.) I doubt a married gay couple would agree with you. “All of society” was the Westboro Baptist Church in the '50s. If “ROB” not only forces me back to the '50s, whether I want to go or not, but insists I use capital letters when I refer to him, I’ll find him or his parents and bump them off so he couldn’t send me back in the first place — after I kill my Grade 5 teacher. ---
**Author:** ![jabiru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbce88/32.png) [@jabiru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jabiru)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/155 "2014-04-04T00:57:35Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > You could buy them, but you’d be really disappointed when they arrived. Noooo! Please don’t tell me I was lied to? By American comics?!? Surely not. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/156 "2014-04-04T01:08:30Z")
> [@jabiru](#): > > Noooo! Please don’t tell me I was lied to? By American comics?!? Surely not. Another dream crushed by the Straight Dope Message Board. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/157 "2014-04-04T02:23:02Z")
> [@jabiru](#): > > Well I, for one, would be delighted. I’d at last be able to buy all those cool things they advertised on the back of comics which I could never buy as a child in Australia (x-ray glasses, supersonic eavesdropping devices etc) Hell, you can still buy X-ray glasses, or at least now it’s a mobile-phone app. It ran as an ad for a while on the main Straight Dope page. ---
**Author:** ![Roundabout](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dec6dc/32.png) [@Roundabout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roundabout)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/158 "2014-04-04T04:39:20Z")
Naturally I’d use my knowledge of the future to make a hefty profit. With that money, I’d fund every upcoming civil/women’s rights activists of the era, and give warnings to those who would’ve faced assassination in the current timeline. Having the resources available, I’d also try to become a filmmaker and break down the barriers of the production code era early on. ---
**Author:** ![ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisUsernameIsForbidden)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/159 "2014-04-04T05:06:07Z")
An engineer could do well with a small computer. ---
**Author:** ![nevadaexile](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb8c5e/32.png) [@nevadaexile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nevadaexile)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2014, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053/160 "2014-04-04T05:31:11Z")
One thing that people forget in their time travel theories seems to be that medical issues which people either take for granted or are no longer major problems could be life or death back in the 1950s. If you had a treatable (by modern standards) cancer, such as prostate or certain types of melanoma, you’d probably die. If you had hepatitis, you’d probably die from it or liver cancer,or cirrhosis. If you were allergic to penicillin, well too bad as they didn’t have a wide range of antibiotics then, so you might die.if you take a daily medication to survive currently, you’d better hope that you are also a chemist because guess what? Yep…death. In fact, living in the 1950s would likely shorten many people’s lifespans as smoking was common, as was asbestos, the Clean Air Act wasn’t in place and unless you owned a farm, there’s a good chance that you’d eat adulterated food sold by business people trying to cut corners. The more that I think about the past, the more than I’m glad that I live in the present. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-you-do-if-you-had-to-live-in-1950s-america/685053.md?page=9)