Old LIFE Magazines

One of George's customers lent us a whole stack of old LIFE magazines from the early 70's. I really enjoy paging through old magazines, so I was especially delighted to receive a whole stack of older LIFE magazines. It's so entertaining to look through the old advertisements and read about the topics that were relevant in that day.

Most of the old magazines I've looked through are from the 1950's and 60's, before our country experienced the major culture and values shift of the early 70's. Not having personally lived through the middle of this change I was really curious to see what stories Life carried at this time. Let's just say it was very educational. Some articles were well before their time. I wondered what the authors, if still living would think about our lives today. A handful of articles made me weep with sorrow, others caused me to think about how much our world has changed in the last 35 years.

Here's some interesting finds from this stack of Life magazines:

Crime:

Apparently crime took a major turn for the worse in the late 60's through the early 70's, especially in large urban areas. I'm just accustomed to thinking high crime rates are "normal". Sad. My mom recalls living in the city as a child -- people seldom locked their houses (even at night) or their cars.

I've thought crime was always a big problem in larger cities, simply because there are just so many people. (I also know crime exists even in small, close knit communities.) What I didn't realize was that although crime has always been present, prior to this time period it wasn't the gigantic problem it is today. There were countless articles and letters to the editors of Life about the dramatically rising crime rates. From what I read, the citizens appeared to be outraged by this, and of course very angry at what was happening to their communities. I wonder what they think about our crime rates today.

Feminists

Because I was born into the hey-day of the feminist era, you might think I have had a lot of experience with feminists. Not so. The women in our little rural farming community were so busy; they didn't seem very interested in taking on even more work.

After reading countless LIFE articles that dealt with the early 70's Feminist movement, lets just say I was shocked. Oh my goodness, was I ever shocked, enlightened and educated. Because I never had much personal exposure with feminists, I never fully understood how anti-men, anti-marriage and anti-children this movement was. I naively assumed feminists were just bored homemakers that wanted change. I wept over one article about whole groups of women that abandoned their children and husbands because they felt their family was holding them back. These women admitted to loving their families but they just knew there was more out there for them. Something more important out there for you besides your family. Really.

The women that stayed with their families drew up complicated domestic work contracts to make sure their husbands did just as much housework as they did. Too funny -- how did they work this -- like the Weight Watchers Points system? Do you get 2 points for changing a diaper -- 3 if it's a messy one and 10 points for mowing the lawn? Do both parties have accomplish 100 points worth of work each and everyday? It reminds me of a little kid trying to make absolutely certain that his sibling doesn't get even an ounce more cake than he gets.

Seriously, this topic was one of the most eye-opening for me out of all the topics covered in LIFE. No doubt we will all have to live with the effects of this movement for some time to come, but I'm really glad to see so many women of my generation shy away from developing such a hateful attitude toward men, families, homemakers and children. And, I am especially happy they do this with absolutely no apology.

Smoking

Although the ads in early 1970's stop short of telling you smoking is healthy, like the 1940's, 50's and 60's magazines, they do all they can to imply you will look darn good if you take up smoking. Most ads show a ruggedly handsome older man with a very pretty young woman. Some pictured a housewife smoking up the breakfast table after her family is gone for the day. Mmmm, what a way to start your day.

Cars

I get a real kick out of the car ads. Remember when power steering was considered a luxury? The early 70's was the death of the muscle car era. Sniff, sniff. I'm all for good gas mileage ... blah, blah, blah. But I'll readily admit, that a 1973 Gremlin does nothing for me. Puting a racing stripe on the side does not make a lame car look cool. Now, here is a cool car. The early 70's issues only contained ads for lame, gas saving cars. Not one cool car in the whole lot of them. This is a big contrast to the 1950's and 60's magazines which contained almost all cool cars.



Drugs

Not the kind you are thinking. These are prescription drugs. There were a couple of articles written about the sorry state of this country where so many citizens are taking a basketful of prescription drugs. This was written in the early 70's. Lord have mercy -- what the writers must think of our pill popping ways 35 years later! Not only do have a pill for every conceivable ailment, we even have pills for all the side effects of those pills and so on and so on.

Hippies

Where are the hippies? Like feminists, hippies weren't popular in my neck of the woods. It's difficult to adopt the Hippy lifestyle when you have to get up early to do chores and spend all day working in the fields. Funny how hard work keeps people out of mischief. Anyway, I was really surprised there wasn't more coverage of the Hippy movement in these issues.

Race Issues

It seems like every other magazine today has an article about race and ethnic relations. I can't believe this wasn't a bigger deal in the early 70's. Did people just not talk about it back then? Or maybe they didn't in LIFE magazine?

International Cruises

There were are considerable number of advertisements for cruises to the Orient, and the Mediterranean at a cost of what I'm sure would be more than a year's take home pay for the average guy. I was surprised to see so many ads for budget price cars in the same magazine with ads for expensive cruises. What advertising major, came up with that idea?

Reading through old magazines is a great way to take a peek into our past and see what the popular issues of the day were and how they compare to the issues today. Sometimes I wonder what a reader 20 years from now will think about reading the publications of today.

What are some of your memories from the early 70's or before?

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