Societal changes over decades prove both negative, positive

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m fascinated by the past.

Perhaps it’s because I believe I should have been born in the 1940s, or maybe I enjoy getting caught up in the nostalgia. But no matter which way you look at it, I love learning about the way the world used to work and how society used to function.

The other weekend, I was sitting down with my parents and we were talking about their years in school. Somehow it got brought up that their instructors used to be able to smoke in the teachers’ lounge. My parents said whenever one of the teachers would exit the lounge, a giant cloud of cigarette smoke would follow them. For whatever reason, this struck a chord with me. I started thinking about all of the significant social standards that have changed drastically over the years.

Obviously, smoking is a big one. Even when we were growing up, smoking in restaurants was completely acceptable in certain sections of the building. I distinctly remember servers asking my parents, “Smoking or nonsmoking?”

Rewind even 30 years before this, and it was completely fine to smoke in almost any public setting — movie theaters, hotels, bars, bowling alleys and offices.

Fast forward to 2013, smoking in all of the aforementioned places is illegal. To push this point even further, smoking has even been banned from college campuses, such as our own.

The way smoking is advertised has changed as well. In the 1950s, smoking was promoted for women as a way to look chic and sophisticated. It was also advertised as a way for women to lose weight.

Today, that type of advertising is not allowed. Overall, I would say the changes regarding smoking in public places have been positive ones.

Another positive social change has been our advancements toward racial and gender equality. This point is easily demonstrated by the extreme discrimination against African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

African Americans were not allowed to drink from the same water fountain, sit in the same section on the public bus or attend the same school as white people. Thankfully, that terrible time period of segregation is over.

Don’t get me wrong, our country is anything but perfect when it comes to racial equality, but when you take a look at the past, the improvements are large.

The same goes for gender equality. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920. Most women did not have jobs out of the house in the 1950s, and if they did, they were certainly not equal to the positions men held. Women were paid less. Their role in the family setting was caregiver, and the man’s role was breadwinner.

Once again, all of that has changed. Women have the same rights, abilities and opportunities as men. However, not all of the changes have been positive ones.

The phrase “chivalry is dead” may be a personal opinion and might depend on the person you are talking about, but it is true some things that used to be standard for men to do, are essentially extinct.

These things include opening doors for women or standing up as they entered or exited the room. Maybe I’m just cheesy, but I would have liked to live in a time when these simple gestures were considered a standard.

Another negative societal change is child obesity. One of the reasons for this is families eat out more than they used to. My mother told me once that the first time she ate in a restaurant was when she was in fifth grade. She and my father also told me it was an extremely rare case where they were able to drink soda, or even have a piece of chewing gum.

It may not be completely necessary to point out every single technological improvement that has been made over the years, simply because most of us are familiar with the devices, and there have been almost too many to name.

Just look at it this way, most of the scenarios in scary movies from the past would not be even remotely possible today because of the advanced technology we possess. Instead of having to stop at a phone booth or needing to dash home to make a call, we simply pull our cell phones out of our pockets.

Rather than leafing through an encyclopedia, we just go to Google.

In the end, some changes have been good, others, not so good. It’s funny to think that an entire society of people can change their norms in just a matter of 50 years, but we are living proof of this fact.