I'm glad I got Hubby to tell me the real name of the show, as I kept saying, "B*tches with Bouffants," but it's actually WIVES WITH BEEHIVES. It's about a group of women doing the SCA thing all day long, but using the 1950s. Now, even *I* have found some problems with their actual re-creation of the fifties, even though I was born in *ahem* the last year of the decade and don't remember it well, but the ambiance and decor and manners of the fifties actually lasted well into 1965, the year I started first grade at Rummel Creek Elementary, and the general way of life wasn't over until after the psychedelic years. Older people such as my grandmother and aunts never relinquished their white gloves and cans of Aqua-Net on their bouffants for several years after THAT.
You know I love vintage music and decor and all that stuff. Of course they're glorifying the shiny bits of the fifties in this show. Many things are not thought of--for example, polio and other diseases that don't scare us as much today were out there. What I had a few years ago would have been considered fatal back then because there was not a way to fix it, and that's true of many conditions that can be repaired or treated today. I would be happy to go back to that era in SOME ways, except I wouldn't want to give up the medical advances and the cell phone (I am ambivalent about the Internet and all the computer technology that now rules, even though it has been a large part of my life's work and I do think it is mostly used for good, ha.) But my mother and my aunts were given "pep pills" so they could do all the slave labor that was expected of them in keeping a perfect home and keeping up with all the children (not to mention being skinny) . . . that means Dexedrine Spansules, folks, and you have to keep upping the dosage because your body adjusts and usually you end up with an amphetamine psychosis to rival Lenny Bruce at his worst. And let's not go into the "role of women" and how sexual harassment was just another thing to put up with and so forth. The chick with the arm tattoos would not have been accepted in polite society back then, either! One simply Did Not Have Tattoos.
(EDIT: P. S. Aha! The show was ruined by crazy reality-show producers. See the blog of one of the women involved who tells the truth about the filming at http://missdolliedeville.blogspot.com/2
But anyhow . . . the show is a hoot! The hairstyles remind me more of Rita Hayworth in the 1940s or perhaps Joan Crawford, but we'll let that go, as the real 1950s hair was fairly BORING and UGLY (to me, anyway). One of the ladies complained that she's too big for most vintage clothing she finds, but that's not going to be something she can fix entirely by working out (as she shows on the program) because people have just simply gotten bigger through better nutrition and so forth. Our ribcages are bigger. Those of us who aren't tiny-born to begin with, I mean. They don't get the shoes exactly right, according to Mama (who grew up in the fifties.) She says the woman who wore dungarees (bluejeans) and a gingham headwrap had it right as far as casual wear for teens. Just so you know.
ANYway, I really couldn't turn away. I love the midcentury modern furnishings and all the trappings. Some of the fashions I also love, but some of them I abhor (I could never wear a button-down-the-front shirtdress with a belt, even when it was my Girl Scout uniform dress--I look like a boll of cotton tied in the middle.) The shoes ruined many a foot (and the stilettos of today must be doing the same thing.) I could show them a thing or two about that era's cooking, as that's what my mother specialized in until the doctors made her learn to cook low-fat and then low-carb. It's really kitschy. I think y'all will like the show.
These ladies should be watching re-runs of "Leave it to Beaver" for June Cleaver inspiration. I think they've watched too much "Happy Days." That was a 1970s nostalgia project looking back at the fifties through rose-colored glasses, and wasn't always correct. (Many out-of-period haircuts were seen on that show. Also, greasers and motorcycle guys were not Twinkies like the Fonz. People like Mrs. Cunningham were deathly afraid of them back then.)
But the show is different, which is always good.
So when they run it again, give it a try.
You're already watching "Big Bang Theory" with my Sheldon, and re-runs of "Bewitched" when you can find them, I know. We're all caught up, then!