Women Coming of Age in the 50s and 60s

The author of this brief response took a look at four chapters from a particular book. What follows in this report is a direct and measured response to those chapters. The readings themselves had a good variety and variance to them. They all involve very personal subjects but all center on the coming of age of teenage girls during the first generation after World War II ended. However, they are not monolithic or too much alike in nature. It is important that literature explore the human condition and what drives people to act and behave as they do. Of course, nobody lives or behaves in a vacuum. Despite what some people might suggest, what a given person does can affect the behaviors and reactions of others and/or the same thing can happen in reverse.

The first reading and topic is one that tends to be explosive and controversial. Indeed, that would be sex and how teenagers handle the same. The treatise starts off by recounting what tended to happen when Baby Boomers were traveling through puberty. There is no understating the progression that is stated on the very first page, that being the shift from the post-war mindset and worldview of the parents of Baby Boomers and the sexual revolution that came in the 1960’s. The “mixed messages” that are referred to on that same first page are easy to fathom and expect given that quick and visceral shift. The use of specific examples like the movie Cleopatra and the book Lady Chatterley’s Lover drive home the point of what was considered tawdry and scandalous just a half century ago (Douglas). The second reading is actually another chapter in the Douglas text. Just as with the prior reading snippet and much of the Douglas text at large, there is a reference to a generational “standard” of womanhood as defined by that era and coming of age for the same. Indeed, the chapter starts with the litmus test of having women from that era, ostensibly or proven, listen to Will You Love Me Tomorrow by The Shirelles. The point made by the author is that any “true” Baby Boomer woman will know that song by heart. The author then points to other songs with that pattern and aesthetic. However, Douglas is wise to point out that the Shirelles should stand alone because of when they broke through, the fact that the group was four black women and what they were singing about. It is wise to point out that women and men were held to a different standard. The provocative (at least by that day’s standard) movements and gyrations of Elvis stood in stark contrast to what women of the same era did. Beyond that, women that broke out of that mold were roundly criticized and pilloried for doing so (Douglas).

Even if the breaking of that mold roiled some people, it was simply a reflection of the hormonal state, both then and now, that women undergo as they progress from prepubescence to adulthood. That is really what Douglas was trying to say in this second chapter example (Douglas). It does make sense that this shift stepped on some toes. Indeed, the second chapter from the Douglas text talks about the clean and polished images of June Cleaver, Donna Reed and Harriett Nelson. Even if many women of that day were of that archetype (or wanted to be), there were many others that did not want to be constrained or pigeonholed into that way of life. The emergence of the Shirelles and the other female acts that followed in their footsteps was just an eventuality that came to pass. It was an eventuality that was inevitable some level. It was just a matter of when, how and who (Douglas).