Today'sTopic: Whether movies (Easy Rider, Dr. Strangelove), music (Woodstock,Altamont), or fashion (bikinis, mini skirts), what are your thoughts onor memories of Sixties pop culture?
Well. It is such an interesting question. The pop culture happened in part because of innovations that occured at the right time. I'm thinking here of the fact that the Birth Control pill was introduced in 1960 and gave way, for the very first time, the ability to have sex safely without significant fear of pregnancy.
The Comstock law of 1873 prohibited sending obscene materials through the mails including information or equipment of birth control devices.
But on June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut (381 U.S. 479 (1965)), struck down a Connecticut law that had made the use of birth control by married couples illegal.
I mean, can you imagine? Only 42 years ago, married Connecticut couples could use birth control legally?
The bikini was introduced (a two piece, actually) in 1946, but did not take on its 'bikini' look until the 1960s. I remember these early two-piece swimsuits in the 50s - my mom had one.
In 1964, Austrian designer Rudi Gernreich introduced the topless bikini, which he termed the monokini, but it was not popular. Women who wanted to go without a top simply sunbathed without a top.
Pantyhose was born in 1959 and took a few years to catch on in a big way. In the early 60s, most women I knew were wearing seam-free stockings, but yes, they were stockings.
Pantyhose was a great free-er of women and coincided with the introduction of the miniskirt.
It is not coincidental that these major inventions all revolve around one basic theme: Liberation of the libido.
Free love, popularized by Flower Power and the Flower Children (though not a new concept, as the Oneida Communities in the 19th century had similar concepts)
and the Beatles' Why Don't We DO it In the Road, all follow what these major inventions let loose in women and men, both young and old. And we have never been the same since.
For better or worse.
Copyright © 2007 0 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
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Comments: 31
I remember falling in love. Playing high school and college football.
LSD and magic mushrooms with some pretty wicked pharmeceuticals tossed.
That's all I'm gonna say about it and I'm denying everything anyway because this isn't who you think it is...
What is this world coming to?
The leg man's darkest hour.
Anne B. Grote: Great comment.
Thus was born in the Sixties what later became the ¨lifestyle¨culture centered around hedonism, with a welter of artificial ¨wants¨created so that, in a very real sense, a booming runaway capitalism could diversify and center around the personal self, rather than the family. The Sixties´counterculture, with its emphasis on one´s personal odyssey of self-discovery, eventually played into this strategy, and was easily co-opted.
You didn´t mention the ascendancy of Playboy as a magazine empire during the Sixties, but that is another strand in getting the overall picture of how we went from big families in station wagons watching the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday Nights, to a sexualised culture where porn stars are a dime a dozen and Ecstasy tabs have replaced Mickey Mouse LSD blotter hits.
I may write more later. This was an excellent article, my dear Kathryn.