FORGOTTEN Etiquette Rules Every 1950's Woman Had To Follow
Forgotten Women's Ways
1,626 views
Modern life has almost no rulebook left: we text instead of writing, wear whatever we like, and order our own dinner without thinking twice. But step into polite society in 1955, and you'd find a world governed by a printed code seven hundred pages long. A wife told her husband what she wanted to eat and he relayed it to the waiter, because the staff did not address her. Her menu often had no prices printed on it. She could not enter a bar alone, could not say the word "pregnant" in company, and answered dinner invitations by writing about herself in the third person. Every rule was written down, sold in bookstores for five dollars, and enforced without a word.
In this video, we count down the twenty unspoken etiquette rules every 1950s American housewife had to follow, told through Betty, a Savannah bride handed Amy Vanderbilt's brand-new etiquette book at her 1952 engagement party with a two-word inscription: "Study it." Discover the ladies' menu with no prices, the CBS ban that kept Lucille Ball from saying "pregnant" on the biggest show in America, the taverns that legally refused unescorted women until 1970, the white gloves required for a Tuesday at the grocery store, cigarettes set on the formal dinner table like silverware, the hostess rule against ever apologizing for the food, and the one master rule that never appeared in print at all.
Resources
Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home by Emily Post, Funk & Wagnalls (1922, with revised mid-century editions): Project Gutenberg
Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Gracious Living by Amy Vanderbilt, Doubleday (1952): Internet Archive
Learning How to Behave: A Historical Study of American Etiquette Books by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Macmillan (1946): Internet Archive
"Lucy Is Enceinte," I Love Lucy, CBS (December 1952), and the network's avoidance of the word "pregnant": Britannica, I Love Lucy
Seidenberg v. McSorley's Old Ale House, 317 F. Supp. 593 (S.D.N.Y. 1970), the case that ended the last famous men-only bar: Justia
4 Comments
FORGOTTEN Etiquette Rules Every 1950's Woman Had To Follow
Forgotten Women's Ways
1,626 views
Modern life has almost no rulebook left: we text instead of writing, wear whatever we like, and order our own dinner without thinking twice. But step into polite society in 1955, and you'd find a world governed by a printed code seven hundred pages long. A wife told her husband what she wanted to eat and he relayed it to the waiter, because the staff did not address her. Her menu often had no prices printed on it. She could not enter a bar alone, could not say the word "pregnant" in company, and answered dinner invitations by writing about herself in the third person. Every rule was written down, sold in bookstores for five dollars, and enforced without a word.
In this video, we count down the twenty unspoken etiquette rules every 1950s American housewife had to follow, told through Betty, a Savannah bride handed Amy Vanderbilt's brand-new etiquette book at her 1952 engagement party with a two-word inscription: "Study it." Discover the ladies' menu with no prices, the CBS ban that kept Lucille Ball from saying "pregnant" on the biggest show in America, the taverns that legally refused unescorted women until 1970, the white gloves required for a Tuesday at the grocery store, cigarettes set on the formal dinner table like silverware, the hostess rule against ever apologizing for the food, and the one master rule that never appeared in print at all.
Resources
Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home by Emily Post, Funk & Wagnalls (1922, with revised mid-century editions): Project Gutenberg
Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Gracious Living by Amy Vanderbilt, Doubleday (1952): Internet Archive
Learning How to Behave: A Historical Study of American Etiquette Books by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Macmillan (1946): Internet Archive
"Lucy Is Enceinte," I Love Lucy, CBS (December 1952), and the network's avoidance of the word "pregnant": Britannica, I Love Lucy
Seidenberg v. McSorley's Old Ale House, 317 F. Supp. 593 (S.D.N.Y. 1970), the case that ended the last famous men-only bar: Justia
It's the equivalent of helping her off with her coat or pulling her chair out for her.
It's not that she can't do those things. It was the gentleman's effort to make her evening as effortless as possible.