What We Really Miss About the 1950s

I found Stephanie Coontz piece "What We Really Miss About the 1950s" to be very interesting. Before reading Coontz's essay I thought I was going to be reading about how great of a decade the fifties were, but I was wrong. Although Coontz did talk about the cultural myths and the nostalgia that so many of us have when we think about the fifties; I felt like her focus was on presenting her audience with another side of the fifties.

I guess I belong with the group that had this nostalgia about the fifties, but as I read the essay that changed. One of the things that I found very interesting in Coontz's essay was when she talked about how the media affected that generation. Ive seen a ton of I Love Lucy episodes and have just died laughing at the silly things that Lucy does. But I had never thought about how this show impacted its viewers back in the fifties. After reading this essay I can definitely see how this show reinforced how foolish it was for a woman to want a career or to do something behind her husbands back.

I thought it was very appropriate that Coontz compared these shows to life manuals.