WIFE BOSS FROM 1950 TO 2016

Did Fifties women even listen?

Everyone’s got advice on what they don’t know about.

They connect dots, paint pictures, and still can’t make you can’t see it.

Anytime you reach into recent history, you’re showing stuff with easy proofs, references, sources. Real easy, like millions of pictures, documents, oral histories.

Especially with women’s history, a one-time niche field that grew to show women and men actually do share the same planet.

Stories about women in the last century flooded the market from bursting archives. People were interested, and embarrassed that they weren’t more interested earlier.

This is what makes social history so contagious.

Fifties women got advice from fifties men, and believed it.

What they did or didn’t believe then passed by into those turbulent Sixties you hear so much about.

Or did it?

1. Don’t Talk

If fifties women wanted to keep their man, the advice was keep quiet. Sssshhhhhh.

Turns out the men wanted to talk as much as the women needed to talk, but it wasn’t manly to admit it.

The men wanted to listen. It took time to get the right men and women together so they could share talking and listening. Like another generation of time.

Unfortunately when the right people for talking and listening got together in the ’60’s, loud music played. They couldn’t talk, or listen, but the vibes felt right.

2. Bad cooking will drive your man to seedy saloons

From pan fried spam to canned Chinese food to scrap heap Spanish rice, bad cooking might drive your man and kids to seedy saloons, but only after they eat everything on the plate in front of them.

The Fifties seedy saloon is today’s organic brew pub.

Even good cooking might drive husband, and wife, to that seedy saloon. And it has. We call it ‘a date.’

Enough miso soup, broiled tofu, and cilantro smoothies might do the same driving.

3. Be the Hot Steak, Not the Cheap Pork

If you only have two choices, the cheap pork metaphor isn’t good for anyone.

The fifties women could accuse the men of being cheap pork since pork didn’t become ‘the other white meat’ for decades.

What does it mean for women to be the hot steak when we all know it’s the sizzle that sells?

Fragrance, my friends.

Hamburger essence wouldn’t cut it. Got to be steak.

Today that steak better be grass fed organic beef.

Maybe some chicken, pastured chicken.

4. But don’t be a Sexual Vampire or a Frigid Franny

Are these medical conditions? Terms?

Remember, this was advice given before the modern vampire era, before Brad and Tom in Interview With The Vampire, before Dark Shadows and Buffy.

Today it’s more complicated with gender stuff.

5. Pink Panties are a must

Why are pink panties a must for fifties man? So he doesn’t have to buy his own.

You know a man had to write this, had to give this advice.

And I know you’re thinking the guy, this fifties guy, is very modest.

They always come off thoughtful and concerned on Fifties TV.

They’re wearing pinkies.

6. Let him have a little fun now and then

Now and then sounds like serial adultery, which brings the question, “Why get married in the first place?”

In the Fifties it was a little fun now and then that turned into the swinging 60’s and 70’s. That’s right, it was the parents, not the hippies, who unleashed the freak. Austin Powers?

How many women in revenge style marriages have a little fun now and then themselves?

If they follow Rule #1, no one will ever know.

7. Your Husband is The Boss Of You

This is the sort of pressure that sends men into a tailspin.

It wasn’t the rigged sugar research, or high fat food, or smoking Camel straights that broke men in the Fifties. It was the myth of being the Wife Boss.

Let’s be honest, the only Wife Boss are men married to bullied women.

From 2016 looking back, the bullied women of the Fifties were raised by bullied women of The Depression. You’ve seen those pictures.

As a relationship exercise I’ll list the American Presidents from the Fifties forward and see which of them is the Wife Boss.

Eisenhower: Yes

He was the World Boss in WWII, President in 1952. He was the boss of everything and made it look easy.

Kennedy: Yes

He married a young Jackie to seal the Wife Boss deal. Besides, he learned Wife Bossing at his daddy’s knee.

Johnson: Yes

He’s from Texas. In true Wife Boss style he made sure everyone in his family had is initials, LBJ.

Nixon: Yes

As VP under Ike, the table was set. Mrs. Nixon sat front and center to a master Wife Boss, or Bossed Wife. She knew the role.

Ford: No

Nobody bossed Betty Ford, even herself.

Today we thank her for the Betty Ford Clinic.

Carter: No

Remember his mom, Miss Lillian? Remember his dad? Me neither.

Mrs. Carter learned how to stand her ground from a woman with balance.

Reagan: No

Mrs. Reagan played many roles in the Reagan White House, confidant, advisor, friend, but never Bossed Wife.

Bush: No

Mrs. Bush seemed like an advanced version of Miss Lillian, a woman who knows the rules and doesn’t mind breaking them.

She was coming off eight years as second fiddle to Mrs. Reagan and ready to take over.

Clinton: No

Mrs. Clinton is the Democratic Party nominee for the Presidency of the United States of America.

Anyone with modest Wife Boss skills would put a stop to his wife’s ambitious career.

Mrs. Clinton met President Clinton on even ground, even if he didn’t know it.

Bush: Yes

With so much going on with kids and in-laws like former President Bush, life bullied Mrs. Bush.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bullied everyone and still do.

Obama: No

The Best First Lady award goes to Mrs. Obama.

Watching her for eight years has been a treat. We saw her in a different context than most when her brother coached at Oregon State.

Her enthusiasm and sharp mind made her the most fun in public appearances, and experienced wife watchers know a Home Boss when they see one.

Who doesn’t look forward to seeing their kids grow out of the White House shadow.