How to live more like the 1960s – some suggestions (US version):
Warning: The reasons some of these things are less common now than in the 1960s is because they are now seen as dangerous, offensive or unfashionable. Proceed with caution!
- Smoke tobacco. So cool! Second-hand smoke – what’s that?
- Do not smoke marijuana – it was not that common yet.
- Litter.
- Don’t use a seat belt. Or a bicycle helmet.
- Do not worry about diet and exercise – unless you are trying to lose weight.
- Go to church on Sundays.
- Practise corporal punishment.
- Get married and have 2.47 children – and 0.76 outside marriage (based on US figures for 1965).
- Live in a nuclear family.
- Be a housewife.
- Work, whether inside the home or outside, to help your family, not for self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment did not even take off as a word till the 1980s.
- Avoid things not in common use in the 1960s: computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens, video games, streaming video, GPS, CDs, DVDs, high fructose corn syrup, self-checkout lines, bank cards, nutrition labels, etc.
- Try things that have since fallen out of use (if you can still find them): typewriters, slide rules, drive-in movie theatres, pay phones, Polaroid cameras, printed maps and encyclopedias, phonographs, hi-fi sets, music on AM radio, etc.
- Drive a car from the 1960s.
- Try fashions, makeup, hairstyles, dances, etc from the 1960s: miniskirts, Afros, the Twist, and so on.
- Only consume music, television, film, books, magazines, etc, originally created before 1970.
- Do not watch “Star Trek” – it did not catch on till the 1970s.
- Read the newspaper.
- Read magazines!
- Watch the evening news on television.
- Watch network television (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS), not cable television.
- Watch television with your family after dinner.
- Watch Saturday morning cartoons on television.
- Make and watch home movies.
- Listen to Top-40 radio.
- Follow the space programme.
- Use a telephone with a dial (pictured above).
- Use a vending machine.
- Pay in cash.
- Use pencil and paper – to remember things, to make quick calculations.
- Write a letter!
- Pay bills by mail.
- Wear a watch.
- Wear a hat.
- Wear a girdle.
- Dress well when you go out.
- Eat a TV dinner.
- Drink Mexican Coke from a bottle (it still uses real sugar).
- Drink Tang.
- Eat French fries made from lard (even Popeyes has stop doing that).
- Go for a Sunday drive.
- Go on a road trip. Stay at Holiday Inns.
- Play a board game, Twister, jacks, etc.
- Play outside till the street lights come on.
- Use he when you mean he or she.
- Use 1960s slang, like groovy, far-out, foxy, let’s split, what a gas, etc.
- Use 1960s racial categories: Negro, coloured, Oriental, Asiatic, etc.
- Avoid the word White, as in White American, White Southerner, white suburbs, etc.
- Follow upper-middle-class Wasp norms.
- Look down on Negroes, Indians, Jews, Orientals, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, homosexuals, lesbians, transvestites, etc.
- Straighten your hair.
- Assume women are inferior to men.
- Hold open doors for women.
- Do not live openly as homosexual, lesbian, transvestite, etc.
Extra credit:
- Protest, especially against war – or for or against racial inequality.
- Join a commune.
- Become a hippie.
- Become an astronaut.
- Try LSD.
- Lighten your skin.
– Abagond, 2024.