07/17/2025
A little heads-up: there’s some strong language and heavy history in this post. If you’re not familiar with Lisa Lee Curtis, just know this—she’s sharp, brutally honest, and she hits hard. There are references to domestic violence, marital r**e (which wasn’t considered a crime in the U.S. until the late 1980s or early ’90s for some states), and milestones like when women were finally allowed to take out a business loan without needing a male co-signer.
There are no simpler times….
It's one thing to see people whose brains are more addled than mine longing for the day that they felt young and free. Like, I don't even get too mad at people in their 90s sugarcoating a time where their bodies weren't betraying them on the regular.
I'd listen to my mom speak of her own adventures back in the day, and you just knew by the spark in her eye that she could FEEL that excitement, the joy she felt when out with her girlfriends, running off with young men she was in love with, etc. Going to movies, dancing in nightclubs. Being young.
But those stories were always peppered with everything that harmed us, that kept women as lesser citizens. That entitled men to use us as pu nching bags and as f*ckmaids as there were VERY few things that would be prosecutable, especially back then.
I mean set aside that my father wouldn't ALLOW my mother to work when he wasn't out to sea. That he didn't ALLOW her to ride a bicycle. That he didn't ALLOW her to play softball at his company picnic.
"It always looked so fun, but your pa thought that women looked stupid doing it. So I never did.
My mother spoke of her r**es like she was speaking about the weather. My mother didn't need to speak of her beatings as I saw many of them firsthand.
I'd hear about the time she was brave enough to call the police and, when they showed up, they asked "the man" whether he had done these things as my mother bled in the background. "The man" said no.
Good enough.
So it drives me absolutely bonkers when I see people in the comments that should fu***ng know better. I mean never mind that these women are not "natural" either, that their "grace and elegance" included toxic makeup (especially when needed to cover bruises), girdles, chain-smoking, and prescription "diet pills" - my mom had told me she missed when those were legal as her house "was NEVER so clean..."
In the 1950s, women could work, but were often paid a pittance because "Well, doesn't your husband work? We need to pay the men in the office more." Women were instead told to keep their eye on the prize; the prize being a wedding ring. Sadly, his hasn't changed as much as it should have by now. They still get away with this s**t.
In the 1950s, women weren't broadly allowed to sign their own contracts for anything nor were they allowed to make their own wills. Why would a little lady need that?
Women were frequently passed over for spots in higher education programs and the women who were accepted were often harassed because they had "taken a man's spot." Anything a woman was 'allowed to do' was, in their mind, at the expense of men.
It wasn't until 1965 that women could legally obtain contraceptive.
Oh wait, that was only if she was married. It wouldn't be until 1972 where a woman could obtain them without being legally bound to a man.
In 1971, women made up only three percent of the United States congressional representatives. That number is still only 11% of the seats in Congress, and 21% of the state legislative seats.
Title IX, the civil rights law that was to ensure, among other things, that girls were entitled to and had access to athletic opportunities.
1974 saw both housing discrimination and credit discrimination against women are outlawed by Congress. Enforced? Eh...but it was illegal.
But women wouldn't legally be able to get a business loan without a male cosigner until 1988 - and to add insult to this, that cosigner could even be her teenage son.
No, I am not kidding, as during the committee hearings for HR 5050, a woman detailed how she was finally allowed a business loan as an unmarried person with the help of her 17-year-old son as a co-signer.
Nineteen eighty-fu***ng-eight.
Marital r**e wasn't even a thing that was CONSIDERED as criminal until the 1970s as it was 100% legal to r**e your spouse in the United States and most other countries.
The 70s saw the beginning of any traction being made on women's rights to control who does what to their bodies, but it wouldn't be until 1993 that marital r**e became a crime in all 50 states of the US.
This is A VERY incomplete list, one that only includes a pittance of the things that women were eventually "allowed to do." This isn't even touching on a MYRIAD of civil rights s**t, racial and otherwise, but I'm keeping it as simple as this fu***ng meme.
This is the kind of s**t that floods into my brain every time I see one of these idiotic memes longing for a simpler time.
Simple for who?
Ladies, if you like these clothes, go fu***ng buy them. It's allowed.
You can even use your very own credit card to do it.
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