What was being a teen like in the late 60s - early 70s?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Elysium

believe
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 29, 2009
Messages
6,889
Reaction score
896
Location
In my computer....most of the time and Pennsylvani
Okay, I was born in the 90s so I'm obviously not an expert of 60s-70s.

I'm trying to get information from everywhere I can, but I was wondering if there is anyone on this forum who was born in the late 60s- early 70s, if so what was it like being a teenager back then?

How did you dress? What music did you listen to? What did you do for fun?

I'm writing a YA contemporary with a duo narrative where the male POV lives in the early 70s and the female POV lives in the present day.

Any and all thoughts are really appreciated.

Thanks. :)
 

eyeblink

Barbara says hi
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 14, 2007
Messages
6,358
Reaction score
892
Location
Aldershot, UK
I'm a little unclear on what you're asking here - Born in the early 70s or a teenager in the early 70s (and therefore born in the late 50s).

I was born in 1964, so I was a teenage boy in the late 70s/early 80s in the UK. Strange as it may seem, I don't think teenagers are different mentally or emotionally now to then - only in surface details. Obviously the music, fashions were different.

How did I dress? When out of school uniform, pretty much the same as I do now casually - T-shirt and jeans. Those who went to nightclubs/discos might dress up a bit more, but I was never in that crowd.

Music? Punk was big in the late 70s, but there were always plenty who weren't into it. I went to a Catholic boys' school, so this may distort things a bit. Prog rock was big (Rush, Marillion, both just starting). Quite a few into heavy metal (the famed New Wave of British Heavy Metal, or NWOBHM for short). Other than that, the more musicianly chart rock music, such as Dire Straits (Love Over Gold was a big album, in fact the second one I ever bought). What was NOT cool in that school was anything that girls tended to like, so out were Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, any of the New Romantics, and most of the synth duos from the early 80s - ESPECIALLY Soft Cell, with their openly gay lead singer.

Being gay was NOT cool, and there was a lot of homophobia around. Someone in my year who was very effeminate had a very hard time. This was made worse when AIDS first become public knowledge (1981).

By the way, I bought music on vinyl then, moving on to cassettes later. CDs didn't come in until the mid 80s. I was swapping Beatles and Dylan albums with friends on tape. I'd say for anyone with a serious interest in music (rather than just listening to what was around on the radio) it's much easier to find stuff now. If there's a track I haven't heard before but would like to try out, nowadays the first place I'd look would be Youtube. Back then, short of blind buying a single or an LP, you had to wait until something turned up on the radio. In the early 80s, a big show for me was Anne Nightingale's request show on BBC Radio 1 on Sunday nights - I heard a lot of great stuff on there. The singles charts were much more essential then than they are now.

What did I do for fun? People were much less paranoid about letting kids out of the house then (even so, we all had warnings not to talk to strangers etc). I tended to be a loner outside school, but I read a lot, went to the cinema, listened to music...which I still do!

Incidentally, home video didn't start until the end of the 70s, and many households (ours included) didn't get a VCR until the mid 80s. You watched films in the cinema (which often came back a few months later, sometimes in a double bill) or you waited five years for them to turn up on TV. Certain big films' premieres on TV were far bigger events than they are now.

There were only three channels on British TV until Channel 4 started in 1982, a day I remember vividly. Back then, there tended to be BBC1 households and ITV households, as to which of the two mass-audience channels you tended to watch. (We were a BBC household.) BBC2 was a minority-audience channel. TV was a family activity, especially with drama series and comedies in the evening - it was unusual to have more than one set, unless the second one was a small portable, which we had in the kitchen. "The Young Ones" was big with older teens when it was first broadcast. As many people didn't have VCRs, you watched the programme when it was broadcast, or on a repeat, or not at all. Back then, in Britain it was an assumption that British TV was superior to American TV which with a few notable exceptions (such as M*A*S*H) was thought rather trashy, and there was more of it on main channels in prime time than there is now. (Nowadays of course, it's a common assumption that the best US television leaves British TV for dust - which is a bit unfair on the best British TV.)

Also, TV was more censored then than now. There was a 9pm "watershed" after which programmes might not be suitable for children. Sex and nudity tended not to be problematic, but strong swearing was out, and that was a taboo that didn't start to be broken in scripted drama until 1979/1980, and films almost always had strong language cut. (Channel 4, which started in 1982, was a pioneer in leaving films and TV shows uncut. I'm not counting certain notorious examples of swearing on live TV such as the Sex Pistols on the Today show in 1976.)

In my later teens, there were boys who had girlfriends and were almost certainly sexually active. In my last year at that school (1982-83, when I was eighteen), the head girl of the local Catholic convent school was pregnant.

This is obviously a UK perspective (I'm sure fashions and trends were different in the USA and elsewhere) but I hope it's of use.
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 42

Google "what happened in 1976" or a date of your choice.
 

cbenoi1

Banned
Joined
Dec 30, 2008
Messages
5,038
Reaction score
977
Location
Canada
> what was it like being a teenager back then?

Born in 63, so I'm off a couple.

> How did you dress?

Jeans and T-shirt. On colder days, a pullover flipped inside out and brown corduroy pants with larger-than-usual leg endings (a few years later I saw the introduction of elephant pants - circa 74).

> What music did you listen to?

Rock, mostly. Beatles, Rolling Stones, CCR, Boston, The Doors, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin. And in the late-70s I migrated to Genesis and the likes.

> What did you do for fun?

I had my Mustang bike with playing cards - tied with clothespins to the frame - strumming the wheels. My friends and I made a tree house in the woods behind our house during summer. Then at 13, two things changed my life. Someone gave me a HeathKit catalog. And I became an addict to the Six Million Dollar Man TV show.

Hope this helps.

-cb
 

Julie Worth

What? I have a title?
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
5,198
Reaction score
915
Location
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know all those images of Woodstock and Vietnam War protests and Martin Luther King and water cannons and dogs? All that was true. And then the 70's came along and people took their clothes off and ran through the streets. It was definitely an upward progression until disco ruined everything.
 

Amadan

Banned
Joined
Apr 27, 2010
Messages
8,649
Reaction score
1,623
Mentally/emotionally, there wasn't much difference between teenagers then and now. The Wonder Years, previously mentioned, got the look and feel pretty well. So will a lot of sitcoms and dramas from the seventies.

The single greatest difference in teen culture has probably been the advent of the Internet and widespread availability of cell phones. You couldn't text your friends then, you couldn't see what everyone was up to by checking their Facebook pages. If you weren't in physical proximity or both near a landline, you were out of communication. If someone lived far away, you didn't have a lot of daily contact with them. (Long distance calls were still pretty expensive.) You didn't make friends and chat daily with people in other countries you'd never met personally.

This also means that regional differences were greater then. Today, a meme that starts in New York will spread around the world in hours, and kids in Sweden, the US, and Brazil will all get the joke. Back then, it was very unlikely that kids in the UK and kids in the US were watching the same shows, reading the same books, or listening to the same music. (If they were, there was a significant time lag.)

As mentioned above, very few people, especially teens, were okay with gays. Even those who didn't actively dislike gays would not want to be identified as gay, ever. High school GLBT groups? Not a chance.

The Soviet Union was still the Evil Empire. Many people believed there was a real threat of global nuclear war in their lifetime, hence the popularity of movies about nuclear war in the 70s and 80s. Teenagers knew the adults could very well blow up the world before they got a chance to grow up. If they were around in the 60s, they remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a slightly different tone, I think than today, where many people are pessimistic about the future but few believe that the human race will literally be exterminated.

Going back to the Internet, I don't think you can overestimate the influence of pornography. Porn was around back then, but it was found in seedy X-rated theaters, "adult" bookstores (also, back then "adult" had not yet become synonymous with "sexually explicit") and magazines your dad kept hidden in the attic. Most teenagers did not have easy frequent access to sexually explicit images, certainly not the volume and variety that exists today. Teens today are rather blase about sex acts and images that would have shocked most adults in the 70s. Back then, Playboy was considered pretty risque; today, people barely even consider it porn.

That's not to say it was an age of innocence and teenagers didn't know about or have sex. Of course they did. Birth control and abortion was a lot harder for teens to get, though, and a much bigger deal.

Kids (not just teenagers) were allowed to wander around by themselves unsupervised in a way that would be considered child neglect today.
 

DeleyanLee

Writing Anarchist
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 6, 2007
Messages
31,660
Reaction score
11,407
Location
lost among the words
Born in 1960.

In junior high, the dress code was good pants (not jeans or t-shirts) until 1976, or dress/skirts for girls. Skirts had to hang at least down most of your thigh. No sleeveless shirts or cleavage permitted. Middrifts became really popular toward the end of the 70's, and those were quickly banned from schools as well. When I was a junior in high school, we were finally allowed to wear NICE jeans to school. The only t-shirts allowed at school were school and sports teams my junior year. In my senior year, it loosened up to include all t-shirts as long as they were "tasteful".

When me and most of our friends got home, we were required to change out of our "good school clothes" until jeans were allowed. Shopping for "school clothes" was a big deal because it was a separate wardrobe.

Sandals were allowed, but not flip-flops. Tennis shoes were nothing like the athletic shoes that are so ubitious today. They were lightweight and a little floppy and brands like Nike and Adidas catered to the heavy-duty sports players and weren't generally known back then. Payless and such self-shop shoe stores were just coming into the Midwest/Detroit area when I was in high school and weren't trusted by a lot of the older folk. They were used to either paying cheap at Kresge's, Kmart or Woolworth and getting shoes that'll last a season or two or going to Hersey's or another shoe store, getting waited on by a salesman and paying for a good shoe that would last 5-10 years.

Oh, and remember that shoes had laces or buckles unless they were a slip-on. No velcro until later in the 1980's. Velcro didn't become extremely common until much later in the 1980's and into the 1990's for shoes.

The family TV was HUGE back then, but the actual screen wasn't that large really. We got our first color TV in 1974 and had it until after I graduated in 1978. It didn't get replaced until 1980 or so. It had a 20" or so screen, but what I remember was that the speakers were on either side of the screen (I remember mesh on both sides). It was a big piece of furniture, not something you moved around easily. No stereo option. No remote. You turned the dial to change the channel and the numbers lit up so you could see the channel in the dark.

Living in Detroit, we were unusual in having five TV channels to choose from. ABC (7), NBC (2), CBS (4), PBS-Detroit (50) and PBS-Windsor (62). The PBS stations were on UFC, so you had to set the big selector there and hand-tune in the smaller one and try to bring in the PBS channels.

I remember getting the first Pong game and hooking it up to the TV and sitting on the floor to play it with my sisters. We hooked it up to the color TV (the game was white on green), so that came out sometime in 74-75. That was BIG excitement in the neighborhood that we had that and all the neighbor kids would come to play before suppertime.

As a teen, there were very few restrictions on me as long as I told my mother where I was going. The neighborhood I lived in was one where all mothers watched and corrected all children. Mothers were constantly talking to each other and everyone knew everyone's business and that was just life. I had to get several blocks away before no one could ID me by name, parent or pet.

Fun was varied things. I was into Star Trek fandom, so I wrote fanfic and had about 10 penpals from around the world who I wrote to. When the mail came in in the morning, there was usually at least one letter for me. I'd respond back and mail it out in the afternoon mail and there could be more mail then. I spent a lot of time biking down to the post office (roughly 1-2 miles away), the library or the Kmart (especially in the summer--one of the few places in town with air-conditioning). I hung with friends and we talked records, books. I had an old manual typewriter and wrote my first book before I graduated high school and had piled up a stack of rejection letters. I had a job walking a couple of neighbors' dogs, and checked in on the elderly neighbors regularly to make certain they were all right. I baby-sat, did craft projects, went to dances and was basically a teen.

The soundtrack of my teen years was disco (Donna Summer, Bee Gees, etc), Barry Manilow, the Carpenters and Motown (hey--I lived in Detroit!). We were the "easy listening" side of music.

In the early 1980's, we got cable and with cable came MTV. When it first started it was mostly Duran Duran (I seriously came to hate that group from over-exposure). VH1 was the "New Age" station and played a lot of instrumental music with the visuals being sweeping pastoral landscapes. Very boring. But they were both just music and a little talking. My ex loved to have MTV on if he was up. I loved to shut it off whenever I had the chance. MTV liked the harder rock that I hadn't grown up with and didn't like much then. VH1 started playing easy listening videos (once the artists caught up and started making them) and things evened out in the video-watching department.

The first home computers came out about the time I graduated. The TRS-80 ran off a cassette player. Didn't even have a disk-drive. When I got my first Apple ][+ in 1981, it had a single disk-drive so I had to boot it up, then switch out the disk to run a program. Green and white monitor, like the Pong game. It was really something to have. Games were text-based, but they were fun. I remember the "Wizardry" series and "Plundered Hearts" very fondly. Then the "bad graphics" games came out and that was great fun. When we got the ][GS, the games were good enough to be worth hooking up to the TV to play.

We didn't get Internet access until the 1990's--and then it was expensive and a PITA, so most people I know didn't bother with it. Wasn't really worth it for me until about 1994.

Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?
 

shadowwalker

empty-nester!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
5,601
Reaction score
598
Location
SE Minnesota
Born in '55 - and memory ain't what it used to be ;) And we were also small rural town, so...

Sandals, not shoes. Bell bottoms. Bright colors and lots of them. Paisley. Long straight hair for girls (parted in the middle even if it made you look like crap). Boys' hair (at least in our neck of the woods) was just a regular boys cut allowed to grow out. (I remember my dad having to go visit the principle because he was giving my brother crap about his long hair - Dad didn't like it either but no principle was going to bug his son! LOL)

Music was Beatles and Monkees. The Rolling Stones were 'dangerous' bad boys.

Pot was around, but always had been. Anybody doing hard drugs was considered the 'dregs' and nobody wanted to be part of *that* crowd. The "F" word was also only used by 'trash' types. My graduating class (1973) was the first one to have any pregnancies, and they quickly got married and moved away.

We had four TV stations available (antenna) - 2 CBS, 1 ABC and 1 NBC.

There were no non-whites living in the area. Had to go to the cities (70 miles away). Any passing through were a huge curiosity. We had a few bigots, of course, but it was mostly that we rarely saw any blacks, Hispanics, etc in person. It wasn't unusual for people to stop them in the store and just ask all kinds of questions about where they were from, about their family, etc. Of course, in those days, like now, small town folk typically ask strangers those things, but there was more genuine curiosity about non-whites than just being "Minnesota nice".

Kids took the bus to school. You had to get a note from your parents and have the school's permission as well before you could drive to school. And if you lived within a mile, you couldn't get bus service so had to walk or have parents drive you. I think I was a junior when girls were finally allowed to wear slacks to school instead of skirts or dresses - but absolutely no jeans or t-shirts, for boys or girls.

Seems like we had a lot more classes than nowadays, too. I know I was amazed that my son only had about half the classes I took daily. But kids didn't have jobs like today either. A few worked after school (I did) but very few hours. Only the farm kids really had jobs. And homework! Lots of homework, which meant kids couldn't work that much, and sports programs worked around that as well (no getting up at 5 AM for hockey practice).

Kids could go pretty much where they wanted without fear, and pretty much at any time of day or night (up to curfew, anyway).

Guess that's about it for my rambling ;)
 

Don Allen

Seeking a Sanctuary of Intelligence
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 5, 2007
Messages
3,573
Reaction score
845
Location
Gilman, Illinois
Southside of Chicago teen: Lots of racial tension, white kids fighting with black kids if black kids crossed the mythical Chicago southside Mason Dixon line, (Vincennes Ave).

At 14 and 15 my friends and I were playing poker, stealing hubcaps, and generally terrorizing the neighborhood. Our goal each week was coming up with enough money to pay someone a fee for making a RUN for us so we had booze for the weekend.

Had long hair and wore tight jeans and button down shirts most of the time.

I was into Deep Purple, Edger Winter, Lucifers Friend, Black Sabbath, original Ozzie fan, (still can't figure out why he ain't dead) Thought the Beatles were pussy's for the longest time.

Hung with a hard drinking fast paced crowd that stole cars, passed girls around at parties, and fought gang turf battles, (No shit) 105th Street Gents,,, but compared to todays street gangs we were wimps.

Pot was our thing along with the new underground radio stations popping up on FM radio.

Got so fucked up at the Infamous Chicago Aerosmith Concert that when the stadium caught on fire my friends and I actual thought it was part of the show. Famous quote:
"Man, how the fuck they get the fire up there"

Worst fight was pulling into a McDonalds in my friends 1966 396 El Camino at the same time a rival gang was coming out. They pulled him through the window of his car and beat him to a pulp, while chasing me through the parking lot. ( every man for himself, right?)

One of our friends showed up a minute later in his 68 Camero and tried to run down the guys beating up our friend. The crowd scattered
enough for my friend to jump back in the El Camino at which time he shot it in first gear and spun at least three donuts in the parking lot shooting gravel, asphalt and smoke at everyone within fifty feet.... Good times....
 

Elysium

believe
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 29, 2009
Messages
6,889
Reaction score
896
Location
In my computer....most of the time and Pennsylvani
WOW!

Thanks everyone.

Lots of great information here.

Hehe, seems like everyone loved the Beatles. (I guess I can't say I'm a huge fan because they were way before my time, but they were a really great band.)

It was fun reading everyone's outtakes on growing up in the 60-80s. Like I said, I'm a 90s girl and so any information is helpful. I guess I'm not sure what time I want to this story to be set in, but with all of this great info, I'll be able to build off of something.

And it's interesting that some of you mentioned what it was like for people who were gay back then. My MC's step-brother is gay and I didn't really didn't know how to go about incorporating that into the story.

So, again thanks! :D
 

Jumpy2

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 31, 2009
Messages
175
Reaction score
26
Born in the 80s so I dont have personal experience but I'm reading "Forever" by Judy Blume right now and that took place in the 70s. I suggest picking up some books written in the 70s and getting a feel of the era from those.
 

Elysium

believe
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 29, 2009
Messages
6,889
Reaction score
896
Location
In my computer....most of the time and Pennsylvani
Born in the 80s so I dont have personal experience but I'm reading "Forever" by Judy Blume right now and that took place in the 70s. I suggest picking up some books written in the 70s and getting a feel of the era from those.

Yeah, I was thinking about doing that. I've seen Forever at the bookstore, never thought to pick it up. So I'll get it next time in the bookstore. Thanks for the rec. :)
 

DeleyanLee

Writing Anarchist
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 6, 2007
Messages
31,660
Reaction score
11,407
Location
lost among the words
"Forever" by Judy Blume was banned at my school library for many years, FWIW. Definitely worth picking up. ;)
 

Chasing the Horizon

Blowing in the Wind
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
4,288
Reaction score
561
Location
Pennsylvania
I can share a few anecdotes from my parents if it might be helpful. I've always loved listening to them tell stories about their childhoods and teenage years and contrasting it with my own. My mother was born in 1954 and my father in 1950. They both grew up in small fairly conservative Maryland towns.

With no internet, video games, etc. they both spent much less time sitting around the house by themselves, though my mother spent a lot of time reading. With no cell phones or IM you spent most of your social time actually out with your friends at the local hang-outs.

One thing that's always struck me is how many things simply weren't talked about openly back then. The world wasn't a safer or more innocent place, but it felt that way because you never heard about most of the tough issues we discuss today. Being GLBT, rape, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, these were all things you just didn't hear about outside whispers and rumors. But they did talk about nuclear war. A lot. The schools had drills where everyone would get hide under their desks. Stupid, certainly, but true. And yet, because they'd never known a world without the threat of nuclear war, the kids and teens really didn't worry about it much.

Rural kids brought their fathers' guns to school for show and tell when my father was in elementary school. This was considered totally acceptable. All the boys carried pocket knives and some carried hunting knives, but no-one was ever shot or stabbed. Fist fights in the school parking lot were considered an acceptable way of settling differences for the boys.

Gender roles were strictly adhered to. In 1965 I'm not sure most people, even intelligent ones like my parents, understood the deeply-rooted sexism all around them. It was just the way it was. Blatant racism was also the order of the day, though my experience has been so similar to my parents' with this that I hesitate to say much has changed.

Despite the lack of readily-available pornography and reticence to discuss sex, from my parents accounts I think their generation had at least as much if not more teenage sex than mine. AIDS did not yet exist and there was no discussion of the other potential sexually transmitted diseases, other than pregnancy. If a girl's family had money and she ended up pregnant in the early 70s, they would drive to New York City for a 'vacation' (abortion). That was the nearest real abortion clinic.

Hard drugs didn't really exist in small-town America in the late 60s and early 70s (or if they did my parents never encountered them until the mid-late 70s). There was lots of pot, though, and teenage drinking was much more rampant than it is today. It was a wink-wink-nudge-nudge thing with the police. Drinking and driving wasn't recognized as wrong the way it is today.

Don't forget that there was no such thing as a 'non-smoking' area. People smoked on airplanes, in theaters, everywhere.

Also, there were a lot of things we take forgranted today that didn't exist back then. For example, the good sanitary supplies us girls use today. My mom has some real horror stories about that one. And many of the OTC medications we use for minor ailments didn't exist.

If you have any specific questions, post and I'll ask my mom. :)
 

Synonym

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 12, 2009
Messages
24,038
Reaction score
4,491
Location
Kansahoma
Everyone seems to have covered the high points here. If you have a specific question, don't hesitate to PM me. I graduated from high school in 1974, if that helps and live in the mid-west.
 

LindaJM

Reviser at large...
Registered
Joined
Jan 28, 2010
Messages
16
Reaction score
1
Location
Happy Camp, California
Website
www.lindajomartin.com
I was born in 1952 and graduated from high school in 1970 in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was in the group of teens at my school considered hippies. I'd be happy to critique your novel, when finished, if you feel I might have a helpful perspective. I have a novel first draft finished that covers the years from about '65 through '80... so maybe we could trade critiques. If interested, PM me and I'll get the novel revised and ready for a first reader.

I enjoyed reading through the comments here. The one thing I'd have to disagree with is about the availability of birth control. It went on the market when I was about fifteen. I remember this clearly because my mother found out birth control pills simulate pregnancy and help teenage girls recover from acne. She took both my sister and I to the dermatologist to get birth control pill prescriptions in '67. Within a year or two, all my friends had them because Planned Parenthood in Oakland was giving them away free without telling parents. We had to sit through a contraception lecture to qualify. There were no abortions at the time - that was legalized a few years later.
 

Tuuli

Research Addict
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Dec 29, 2008
Messages
423
Reaction score
29
Yay, this isn't me!!!!!! I wasn't a teen until the 80's.
 

Pomegranate

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jul 11, 2006
Messages
328
Reaction score
81
I graduated HS in 1980. Homosexuality was still pretty much in the closet but that was just starting to change.

My group (all drama/theater nerds) contained several friends that we knew were gay but no one ever talked about it. They either didn't date or dated hetero partners. In Senior year one of them came out. He was pretty anxious about it, expecting us to reject him, but our reaction was pretty much "yeah?, whatever." IIRC, his family was divided on the issue, with his mom supporting him and his dad rejecting him.

I'm pretty sure that before the late 70's, sexual preference was assumed to be hetero and anything outside that was ignored.
 
Last edited:

shadowwalker

empty-nester!
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 8, 2010
Messages
5,601
Reaction score
598
Location
SE Minnesota
Homosexuality was only talked about in churches - and you can guess the message there. But then, we didn't even have sex ed in school until my junior year (1972), and that was a one-time guest lecturer. Parents had to sign a consent form and there was a huge uproar from the community about it. I'd say maybe 10-20% of the students who were "old enough" to participate were allowed to by their parents (I was one of them LOL). And then the lecturer had to tone down what she said. Otherwise, we had a one day session in health class about the reproductive system - separate for boy and girls.
 

Glenakin

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
541
Reaction score
42
Location
Birmingham, United Kingdom
Website
glenakinsays.blogspot.com
wow ... this is so freaking awesome! You lot who were born back then and remember it, I think you had it best. I mean, the best music. We've got Justin Bieber ... yeah, sad, I know.

But wow! Man. This is great stuff im reading here
 

backslashbaby

~~~~*~~~~
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2009
Messages
12,635
Reaction score
1,603
Location
NC
I graduated HS in 1980. Homosexuality was still pretty much in the closet but that was just starting to change.

My group (all drama/theater nerds) contained several friends that we knew were gay but no one ever talked about it. They either didn't date or dated hetero partners. In Senior year one of them came out. He was pretty anxious about it, expecting us to reject him, but our reaction was pretty much "yeah?, whatever." IIRC, his family was divided on the issue, with his mom supporting him and his dad rejecting him.

I'm pretty sure that before the late 70's, sexual preference was assumed to be hetero and anything outside that was ignored.

My mom and dad (in the late 50's, early 60's) knew people they thought might be gay. You just didn't ever discuss it. There was a lesbian who worked at the shop where he took his car, too. She could get away with being seen with her girlfriend because she was just so obviously and matter-of-factly gay, he said. And my parents were brought up pretty traditionally for the 50's. It was a small enough town that folks tried not to get into other people's business, if that makes any sense.
 

johnnysannie

Banned
Joined
Feb 22, 2005
Messages
3,857
Reaction score
435
Location
Tir Na Og
Website
leeannsontheimermurphywriterauthor.blogspot.com
Okay, I was born in the 90s so I'm obviously not an expert of 60s-70s.

I'm trying to get information from everywhere I can, but I was wondering if there is anyone on this forum who was born in the late 60s- early 70s, if so what was it like being a teenager back then?

How did you dress? What music did you listen to? What did you do for fun?

I'm writing a YA contemporary with a duo narrative where the male POV lives in the early 70s and the female POV lives in the present day.

Any and all thoughts are really appreciated.

Thanks. :)

Loved my bell bottom blue jeans and I used to embroider on the "bells" myself, all kinds of colorful things, flowers, sombreros, peace signs. I liked T-shirts and jeans, wore the occasional dress. I had a few "granny" or "maxi" full length peasant style dresses. Peasant style blouses were cool. Big earrings, either large hoops or long dangles, long hair, and I personally liked headbands although the school would not allow me to wear them.
My shoes were mostly Converse or Keds.

For music I liked rock and pop; listened to Casey Kasem's countdown every weekend without fail.

For fun, we drove around, drove fast when and where we could, had parties that sometimes included the use of alcoholic beverages, smoked a little grass on occasion, went "parking" with our significant other, went to rock concerts, played frisbee, went to drive-ins for cokes or burgers or both, played cards (which I have found is amazingly popular again with teens at least where I live), danced, listened to music, went to dances, went to sports games but more to see/be seen than watch the game (for me, anyway), went cruising, shot baskets....

Girls had slumber parties, big gab fests with lots of hair curling and gossip.

Pizza was getting really popular.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.