We have come a long way BABY!

I was viewing some items on youtube, and came across the video sessions of the Mary Kassian: True Woman '08 Conference, "You've Come A Long Way, Baby!". To me they sprinkled some truth, and then twisted to make it sound good. She mentions she grew up during the time she speaks about. I grew up then as well, and I noticed she doesn't bring up the 'not so great' portions of that era.




I am WOMAN hear me ROAR!

Mary Kassian stated she remembers singing the song, "I am Woman", and I will admit I remembering singing it myself. I guess to say it made me feel a bit empowered at the time would say I swallowed the entire women's movement hook, line and sinker right? I must have gone over to the radical, extreme feminist's view of viewing the world!

Ahem. Wrong!

I was a child back then, and when all this was going on? WELL let me give you a couple of giggles about that:


I wanted to play baseball on the leagues with the boys. I wanted it so bad I could TASTE it! I couldn't because girls don't play baseball. Well they were NOT allowed to play baseball on leagues anyway. You could cheer the boys on, and maybe sell candy! That made me MAD! YEP I wanted to ROAR!

I played in the neighborhood, and was better than some of those boys that were on the baseball teams. I was born GIRL, and that was the only reason I couldn't play baseball with the leagues. My folks were always asking me to TAKE off the baseball cap, and leave my mitt at home. I needed to be 'ladylike'. I hated that TERM!

HEAR ME ROAR AGAIN all to due to being labeled 'GIRL'!

Mom decided one summer she would talk me into short hair! As I look back at the time I knew it was more due to HAIR wars! I had long, thick hair back then. It took FOREVER to get a comb and brush through it, and that was due to activities I liked to participate in. YES baseball was one of them! I'm sure my short hair made my mother's life a bit less stressful!

During that summer after my paper route and chores were done I spent my time at the community POOL! At the time LONG hair caused all kinds of issues with pool maintenance.

Guess what I was thinking?

Remember these ugly things?

WOO HOO no more SWIM CAPS! Heck my hair was shorter than most of the BOYS! Come to find out it didn't matter.

I was GIRL, and GIRLS wore swim caps regardless!

I guess it was just GIRL's hair that caused the issues with the pools? NOPE it was LONG hair they said, but boys with hair down the middle of their back could swim with no caps!



Short hair girls?


Remember you are GIRL, and its just the way it is!

I didn't feel that the MEN were the ones cramping my style, because the ladies went along with it! 
 
I thought the world was nuts!

To me being this 'NEW WOMAN' meant baseball and no swim caps for short hair!

No more speeches about how to be more 'ladylike' as they tried in vain to attempt to erase those 'tomboy' characteristics I had. YES I hated dresses that I was forced to wear at times, and WOW this new woman's movement made it seem like it was okay to be ME!  FINALLY!

I will wear my dress to church and other formal occasions, but LET ME HAVE MY PANTS on the playground!  FREEDOM!!

YOU Have Come a Long Way, BABY!

I have to admit my own daughter doesn't have to wear those stinky swim caps and SHE can play baseball if she wanted to! Those silly things to me represented the Woman's movement at the time. WE have COME a long way BABY!

I hated being told I couldn't do things because I was a GIRL! lol Then to be told parents don't have to worry as much about girls, because she will find a strong MAN to take care of them? Oh YES! That just sent me over the TOP, and Dad at the time just couldn't understand my resentment!

I wanted to be able to depend on ME, and not some MAN if it came down to it! Why are they short changing me? Girls are able! Why don't you think GIRLS are able?! I remember people telling me I was being to sensitive, and I would understand better than I got old enough. When I learned to be a lady. The thought just made my skin crawl, because here is tomboy me wanting to be an adult and not told I had to be Ms. Suzy Homemaker.

Boys were NOT my top priority in that time of life can you tell?

I didn't have anything against MEN! I just didn't want to feel belittled due to gender!  If you are capable, and wanted to do something - WHY would gender hold you back?  It seemed as dumb as no baseball, and YES to ugly swim caps.

Dad did tell me before he passed away, "If there is one person on this earth that can make it - it would be you HANNAH!"  

We have COME a long way BABY! 

One of Dad's final speeches to me before he passed made me feel so empowered, and he even admitted that he could NOW understand how I was feeling back then!

It was okay and acceptable to depend on men back then, and I didn't have an issue with that!  

My issue was they made me feel I had no choice in the matter, and there was no way women could do it without a man!  Why would anyone want to feel good like that?

I knew I could, but that didn't mean I wanted TO! LOL! Heck I liked boys...ALOT!  I didn't want to be told you HAVE to for reasons that made no sense at all.  I mean these are the adults that couldn't tell my WHY no baseball and swim caps made sense!

True Women's Conference quotes:

The ad at the bottom states, “Back then, education taught men to run the world and woman to run the home.” It depicts miserable, bored women sitting at old-fashioned desks learning about home economics. The blackboard proclaims that there will be a laundry quiz on Tuesday and that their homework consists of several cooking and cleaning assignments.

The full-color, happy, modern, Virginia Slims woman on the adjoining page knows that running a house is a low-class, demeaning job for someone with a university education. She wants to get out of the house and do something really important, like run the world. “You've come a long way, baby.”

YES they use advertisements to get across how AWFUL women plights were at the True Women's Conference. I didn't grow up in the 1920's (pictures she was referring to), but some of the sentiments of being pigeon holed I could relate to. I would giggle at the 'quiz on laundry' as much as I would the 'run the world' extremes.

The ads were talking about being pigeon holed, and not running the world. 

YES the world was changing, and I'm sure there were some women that felt like the advertisement stated.

To me it was more about choices, and AGAIN not being pigeon holed due to gender.

I didn't want to slam men, and I didn't want to BE one either! I wanted it to be okay to be a girl and play baseball! It would be okay NOT to wear a swim cap when my hair was cut short AS A GIRL!

THAT back then WAS way to much to ask of society!   Thank goodness we have come a LONG way BABY!

I wanted it to be okay to acknowledge I wasn't less of a 'girl' when I did those things, and not be looked upon as if I had broken some moral 'role' or honorable 'duty'. That was wasn't being silly when I pointed out these RULES didn't make SENSE!  

These STANDS could be questioned, and it COULD BE OKAY to do so!  Why did it HAVE to be accepted? They didn't LIKE those questions either I found!

Differences between male and female were accepted and seldom questioned, and for both man and woman, the sense of duty and responsibility to family was far greater than the quest for personal fulfillment. Though they may not have been able to identify the source of their values, individuals had a sense of what it meant to be a man or a woman and the appropriate outworking of gender roles and relationships.

YES I was one of those that 'seldom questioned' I guess, and I will say if you asked people back then about their source it would have come from their faith. It was Christian values. I mean HELLO that 'enlightenment' wasn't just recent!

I didn't understand this statement personally.  She said they treasured Christianity, but then said they couldn't identify the source?

There were things that were NOT questioned due to culture, and it was AWFUL if you did question! You just need to ACCEPT!  Remember the baseball and swim caps again.

We were all LEAVE TO BEAVER FAMILIES!

The speed and magnitude with which all this has been deconstructed is absolutely phenomenal. It's mind-boggling. Consider the image, the cultural image, of women back in the 1950s, represented by the popular TV sitcom, Leave It to Beaver. The Cleaver family exemplified the idealized, suburban family.

In the series, there are four things that are presented as requisites for happiness for both man and woman. They are marriage, children, education—both of the Cleavers, man and woman, they both had a college education, and they met at college—and hard work. In typical late-1950s fashion, June worked hard at home all day taking care of the house and serving the community while her husband, Ward, worked hard outside of the house to financially support the family.

June was there with fresh-baked cookies and a tall, cold glass of milk when her children, Wally and Beaver, got home from school. When Ward came in the door after work calling out, “I'm home,” June, wearing a pretty dress, greeted him with a smile and a kiss, a clean house, and a hot meal on the table for supper.

In the show, adults who didn't follow this marriage were depicted as troubled or missing out. Life for women was very different 50 years ago, very, very different. Almost everyone got married. The average age for getting married was 20 years old for girls and 22 years old for men.

Life for alot of people were troubled and missing out then! EVEN back in the 1950's. You know what they did about it for the most part? They didn't talk about it. That was taboo!

You would think that people being abused, molested, raped, abandoned, etc just wasn't HAPPENING! If it was - it wasn't happening all that often. It was happening, and denial was used to combat it.  

Lets get REAL here!


We didn't deal with them properly, and they spiraled out of control!  That wasn't feminism!

Here is a list that she made to show how things WERE in the Leave to Beaver Time's compared to now.

•Once married, a woman could normally count on her husband to financially support her and the children.

1950's

What she doesn't mention is what happened to a women that couldn't count on her husband. She doesn't speak of the women and children that DID starve and went homeless, and that wasn't a small number! You just didn't acknowledge those things! It was NOT a Leave it to Beaver thing to do!

Keep in mind the 1950's was a prosperous time, but at the same time they too invested in their lives to worry about those in poverty.   They were pretty much forgotten about until sometime in the 1960's.  Even back in the good old days there was this 'me me me' attitude she doesn't mention.


Why no mention of that part of the great times?  I thought we were the MARK of selfishness!

•The divorce rate was very low.

YEP! The culture was different when it came to divorce!

Families like my grandparents that were treasured over their 65+ years of marriage, but again no mention of the fact my grandfather beat the snot out of my grandmother and mother at the time. No mention of HOW could they allow him in church leadership either.

Child abuse and domestic violence were NOT dealt with back then, and you were told to suck up and deal with it!

BUT HEY - Lets just concentrate on the fact the divorce rate was low then. That's all that is important right?

Butter Box Maturity Home

•Chastity and virginity were virtues.
•Sex outside of marriage was considered shameful.
•Having a child outside of wedlock was also considered shameful. Now, one American child is born outside of wedlock every 25 seconds, and tonight, more than 40 percent of children will go to sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live.

Yes they were treasured, but women did get pregnant.   The girls were shipped off to Maturity Houses, and their babies were given away.

Here is a quote from an article of the attitude:

Mothers and fathers went to what now seem ridiculous lengths to conceal their daughters' shame, "disappearing" them before they sent them away to deliver their babies. For a 21st-century reader, accounts of a girl scurrying upstairs to hide in her room each time the doorbell rings, or of a mother insisting that as soon as she pulled the car out of the garage her daughter duck down below sight, come as a shock; some of us don't even remember when an unwed pregnancy could provoke a genuine scandal. A month or so before her due date, the girl was put on a bus or escorted by a parent to a necessarily distant maternity home, where she waited out her last weeks feeling abandoned, as she in fact had been.

YEP - alot better way of dealing with it right?

•Scarcely anyone lived common-law because it carried the stigma of living in sin. So few couples lived common-law at that time that statistics for this phenomena wasn't even recorded. They didn't even keep statistics.

You don't keep stats on things you don't acknowledge is happening! I'm sure the number was smaller, but we don't know HOW small due to denial.

We don't talk about that do though we?

•Only 30 percent of women were employed outside the home in 1960. Very rarely was there a woman who had under school-age children who went out and worked outside of the home.

Times and the Economy did change.  If you see the ad to the side you can see what type of employment you were offered.  They made it so that it would be HARD for you to have a job as well, and make a decent living.  You get pregnant, and you had to leave.

•There was not the birth-control pill.
•Abortion was illegal.
•Pornography and rape and homosexuality, sexual perversion, sexual addiction, sexually transmitted diseases were uncommon and rarely encountered.

Between the end of World War II and the legalization of abortion nationwide in 1973, 1.5 million babies were given up for adoption in the United States. This turbulent era for young women, whose sexual independence preceded their access to birth control (and their exposure to sex education), produced "an explosion in premarital pregnancy and in the numbers of babies surrendered for adoption." Unmarried girls in the 1950's and 60's may have felt increasingly liberated to have intercourse (Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl" was published in 1962, identifying a revolution that was well on its way) but the babies they bore were still considered illegitimate, and pregnancy outside of marriage was still a disgrace. A girl who found herself "in trouble" had virtually no means of resisting the forces that conspired either to push her into a speedy marriage or to hustle her out of town to have her baby far from the sight of all who would condemn her. "In one of the strictest forms of banishment," Fessler writes, "high schools and most colleges required a pregnant girl to withdraw immediately." And this was only an institutionalized form of the rejection she encountered wherever she turned, insisting she withdraw from all social interaction. I'm not going to deal with the pill or abortion here! The third sentence? She means it was rarely acknowledged. In other words - denial was the tool of the day! SURE it was uncommon and rarely encountered - it was hidden away so people didn't see it!

If you think back to that time?  President Kennedy was fooling around, and it was hidden.  Movie Stars secrets were kept from the public.  There were all kinds of secrets, and to say perversions were 'less than' back then?  I hardly think so.

•Men regarded it as their responsibility to protect and provide and care for their families.

That hasn't changed. There are LOADS of responsible and loving men and fathers! The men back in the Leave to Beaver Times that didn't? You notice she won't even go there to speak about them.

What happened to the children if the wife took off? In most cases the children were carted off to family, because in the 'good ole days' men were not capable of dealing with children in such a domestic manner. If he could afford live in care it was possible they stayed. Men were looked upon with pigeon holed roles as well.

1950's meeting

YES there are exceptions of course, but if she wants to show HOW IT WAS back then...SHOW IT ALL! We were alive back then as well! I never did buy into the extremes she spoke about, and I know alot of us that didn't. You would think that we were the UNHEARD of silent majority! Hardly!

I wanted the barriers of 'because you are a girl' to stop, and they aren't as present as they were back then.

Mary Kassian herself has held some positions to this day due to those attitudes changing! June Cleaver would NOT have done some of things she is doing now! It would have been outside the mold for that image! I mean "Professor at a Baptist Seminary'? Who would make sure the house was clean, and Beaver got his snack when he got home?


There are alot of factors that caused the downfall of society, and its so strange to me when people claim feminism was the first KEY to it! Was it better in the past when people just didn't acknowledge things? THAT makes it better?

We see people in Christian bubbles doing that all the time now! Domestic violence and sexual abuse doesn't happen in the bubble! Damn the feminist's that say it does!

Why do conferences like the True Women's Conference seem to think we forgot how it was 'back then'? SURE there was some nice times, but the picture wasn't as rosy as she paints! We just don't buy into the whole 'most of us were leave to beaver home!" Mary Kassian because alot of us it didn't apply to.


We were ignored, shunned, and it was 'pretended' that things were NOT that bad! I'm not talking baseball and swim caps here! There are bigger issues that were not dealt with, and sadly still aren't within the christian bubble.

True Women need to deal with those so that the whole world can benefit! THAT would be a conference worth signing up for, and attending! ENOUGH of the feminist's ruined everything when you can't acknowledge how it really WAS back in the 'good ole days'!

I can acknowledge that we have come A LONG WAY BABY with out fluff, and memory lapses. I'm NOT going to sit here and tell you TIMES are so much better now, but I'm not going to tell you TIMES were better in the past either.

You want to be a True Woman, and live in the Let It To Beaver Times again? I don't have a problem with that at all, but how about we acknowledge reality at the same time for alot of people?

Men and Women ignore the happenings, and didn't deal with them. I guess it was easier for them or something, but it certainly didn't make it better. I have no problems wanting society to pull together, and grab some additional morals and integrity. You can't do that by stretching the truth about the past.

YES we have come a long way Baby, because some of it needed to change!

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