Young, white, and miserable: Wini Breines

Young White and Miserable by Wini Breines

Young, White, and Miserable

In Young, White, and Miserable: Growing up Female in the Fifties, Wini Breines addresses a lot of the issues that took place in that time period where young women and teenage girls are concerned. One of the most important of these issues is the fact that these women, just a few years later, became feminists - many of them radical - and changed the course of history, which is a fact that is often overlooked today. Women faced a lot of issues in the 50s and they tried to get their voices heard calmly, which often did not work well. Still, though, they kept working at it, in the hope that eventually change would occur and something would get done so that they could have the say that they wanted and the equality that they felt they were not getting in a male-dominated society.

By the late 1950's, however, the dominant voice seemed to be a far more radical one than had originally begun the discussion. There were, at that point, two types of feminists - the reform (or women's rights) feminists and the radical (or women's liberation) feminists. These groups had the same basic goals in mind in the beginning, but once they started to move farther and farther apart in their ideas of what a woman's 'place' should be in society they ended up fighting both amongst themselves and with one another. Most of the people from both of these movements started out agreeing with one another as teenagers who like the same kinds of cultural issues and ideals, but some took it farther than others. Because of this, the ideas that they had were different, and the ways that they went about it were also very different. One group wanted equality, and the other wanted a radical change in society's thinking and acting that they were willing to actually fight for. The two camps struggled with one another and the women's right feminists had trouble because society lumped them in with the women's liberation feminists.

Breines is skillful in pointing this out, because it is important that readers understand the build-up behind the problems that women faced in the 50s. Throughout history women had been considered to be a serious source of evil and temptation and they had also been believed to be intellectually inferior. Men treated them with little respect and left them out of decisions and the like. During the 1940s and 1950s, women were hungry for more power. Many of them had gone to work during the war, because there were so many men overseas that companies did not have anyone else to work in their factories. They had no choice but to employ women and they found, oftentimes, that these women were very good workers and had much to offer to the company. They were smart and they were loyal. However, when the men came back most of them went back to work in the factories, and the women had to find other pursuits. This made them interested in change. They had already proven that they could do the job just like a man, and now they wanted to have that chance to be equal again.

More and more women in the 1950s began applying for jobs that went to men, and they started speaking up and speaking out about equal rights for all people. This spilled over into the '60, but did not get its start there. The women who were growing up in the fifties and advocating all of this change were likened to the Civil Rights Movement, but surprisingly enough the women's reform movement did not include many minority women. Many of them still kept to themselves while the white women went forth and spoke up about their abilities and their needs and their wants in life. They wanted to change things for themselves, but also for their daughters. Tests that were done during that time period indicated that female children did much better in the younger grades than they did in high school. By the time that they had reached high school age they had stopped being very interested in school because they were taught that marriage and motherhood was where they were heading, not off to some college like a man. The reform feminists who were growing up in the '50s worked to change that and it has changed, but often very slowly.

Another issue that the women's rights feminists worked for throughout the 1950s and beyond was legality. In years past, women were treated as though they were completely inferior to men in every way, and that included having a mind or a right to speak for oneself on legal matters. Basically, they belonged to their husbands and were possessions, just like material things. The children had this same status. Women could not own property, have a credit card, or have anything that belonged strictly to them other than their personal possessions. Women and their desire to work for change, though, brought about the Equal Pay Act of the 1960s, where women had to be paid as much as men for doing the same job. The Civil Rights Act and other important acts relating to the way that women were treated were also passed in the 1960s or the early 1970s. If it were not for the work of the 1950s women who were dedicated to their cause and willing to try to enact change and not give up, women's rights would not have advanced nearly as far today as they have, and they continue to evolve. They had to start with a generation, and the young women of the '50s were destined to be the generation that started the changes taking place throughout society.

There were more standard feminists and more radical ones, even in the '50s. The Theory of Patriarchy was a jumping-off point for the more radical feminists. They argued that 'the man' was keeping them down, much like the African-Americans of the Civil Rights Movement. The issue was that these women believed that men were keeping them in their place and that was the only reason that they had not reached their full potential. These are the kinds of women people think of when they hear others talk about how women burned their bras and performed other acts that were unacceptable for the day and a shock to society. They idea of patriarchy, however, was one that had been brewing for over 200 years, as women years before them had also fought for some equality, but had seen very few victories. Some political and legal rights were seen, especially in Britain, but little had taken place within the United States and women were still basically oppressed. Unlike the reform feminists who worked for change, the radical feminists staged protests, made a lot of noise and commotion, and basically fought back against a male-dominated society.

What these radical feminists believed throughout the '50s and beyond, and what many of them who exist today still believe, is that men are deliberately keeping women down, and that the whole of society is geared to allow men to oppress women and stop them from being all that they are capable of. These women fought for abortion rights, rights in the workplace, and other causes that were considered to be noble, at least in the eyes of many people. These rights were not as talked about as they are today, and back in the '50s there were a lot of people - both men and women - who were uncomfortable with issues like abortion.

It was not the fact that these women fought for these kinds of rights, but the way that they fought which became a problem. They were much more aggressive than the women's rights feminists and they were also much more outspoken. Their argumentativeness was actually a problem for the women's movement and slowed it down rather than sped it up because men rebelled against women trying to tell them what to do. They were not going to take that from a gender that they still felt was inferior and they resisted the change just as violently as the radical feminists tried to fight for and push that change onto them. Some of the women who were not as radical backed off and went back to doing things the way that they used to, but many of the women who were involved in this issue decided that the most important thing for them to do was to continue to make their voices heard as loudly as they could.

Like their more subdued counterparts, the radical feminists knew what it was like to work in factories and other stores, and they wanted that ability back, as well. They had been afforded a taste of equality and the freedom that comes with that, and they did not want to be forever seen as weak things who wore poodle skirts and bobby socks and did what they were told, with no mind of their own to speak of. They did not have the same degree of patience, however, as the more subdued feminists, and they wanted change now. They wanted to choose whether they had children, whether they got married, and whether they could or could not perform a certain task instead of allowing a man or group of men (the government, for example) to choose for them. They stuck by the posters of 'Rosie the Riveter' that were around during the war and depicted a woman doing a man's job - and doing it well.

These women saw themselves as strong and capable and tough, and they were also much more in tune with their sexuality than past generations had been. They were not afraid of being women. The sexuality issue was confusing and uncomfortable for a lot of men. Men saw women as sexual objects, but they were not comfortable with the idea that they women saw themselves that same way. It made them feel as though there had been a shift in power, which was a serious concern for a gender that had been taught since virtually the beginning of time that it was the stronger gender, the one that should be in control, and the one that should ultimately be making the rules for all of society. Not all women in the 1950s pushed for change, and not all men resisted it, but there was a large societal divide when it came to some of the more serious issues that were being culturally addressed.