TIME: "Top 10 Things We Miss About the 'Mad Men' Era"

[JamesG]

Top 10 Things We Miss About the "Mad Men" Era
Friday - July 23, 2010


"Mad Men", the popular show about advertising executives in the 1960s, returns to television this weekend. TIME takes a look at the things we miss about that swinging decade:






Enjoyable Air Travel






Believe it or not, there was a time in the history of air travel when you did not have to sit in an emergency-exit row in order to have room for your legs.



Following the 1958 passage of the Federal Aviation Act, which established an air-traffic-control system, commercial jet services were introduced in 1959. Not quite the 747 of the 1970s, the Boeing 707 nevertheless ushered in the jet age — and a forgotten era of cramp-free flight.

Granted, such travel was mostly for the wealthy, as the Federal Government regulated fares, keeping prices high. But those who could afford it enjoyed a whole different world of comfort and pampering that has since gone the way of the dodo, at least in the U.S.





Among the big draws for potential airline customers were very attractive stewardesses — no offense to the flight attendants of present-day America. Looks were a major factor in '60s hiring practices. And stewardess is what they — most of them were women — were called back then.

They provided just about anything you could need — pillows, coffee, blankets, magazines, food — all free of charge. One advertisement even promised that "working girls" could make customers "feel like a leading man."

Right up Don Draper's alley.













Curvy Women






"Mad Men" kicks off in the age of Marilyn, and the show's resident sex symbol is Joan, the curvaceous office manager who would scoff at the thought of wearing a minimizer bra.


Back then, big busts and corresponding hips were in, and while small waists were part of the deal, size 2 wasn't something to strive for. Fashion flattered the hourglass figure, not the straight and narrow.

Women looked more like females — you know, the gender capable of producing and nursing another human being — than like adolescent boys.



Alas, this is the early '60s. Soon Twiggy will come along and ruin everything.












Well-Dressed Men






Walk down the street these days, and what do you see? Guys in mesh basketball shorts, dudes in flip-flops and bros in untucked shirts. In other words, men that don't give a damn about how they look.


One of the great things about the '60s (or, at least, one of the great things about the '60s as portrayed in "Mad Men") is that it was the last era in which people regularly took pains to dress well.

Soon enough, hippie casual, disco-era garb and wide lapels would come to dominate fashion. Yet, for a few final years, men regularly wore fedoras, ties, slacks, button-down shirts and shined shoes. Because they not only cared about looking good for themselves, but also cared about looking good for others.



You don't have to see those unclipped toenails, Mr. I Love My Sandals; we do.













Real Cocktails






At the end of the last century, Carrie Bradshaw, the heroine of the HBO series "Sex and the City", helped make Cosmopolitans the biggest TV spin-off craze since the "Miami Vice" getup.



But just a few decades ago, real cocktails existed where liquors anchored the beverage and fruit was just a garnish, not a cornerstone. Manhattans and martinis occupied cocktail glasses, and nearly everything else worth drinking came in a lowball, a glass with a heavy base that felt good in your hand.

Many drinks were deceptively simple: a vodka (or gin) gimlet is only four parts vodka and one part lime juice. It's no coincidence that the first drink reputed to be called a cocktail is an old-fashioned, a mixture in which sugar, bitters, an orange slice and a cherry compliment a jigger (where did that term go?) of whiskey.



According to some retro enthusiasts (in Britain at least), light ales were a ladies drink in the '60s, while men stuck to either lagers or darker beers.

Thank goodness some things have changed over time.













Drinks at Work






In a magical time not that long ago, people got things done. Publishers published, ad agencies made ads and newspapers put all of their news on actual paper.

And when they were done with this hard work (and sometimes in the middle of it) people took time for a drink. Whether it was the three-martini lunch, roving drink carts or, if you really arrived, an entire bar in your office, alcohol fueled creativity.



On screen at least, office booze never caused problems that couldn't be resolved before the credits.

Happy hour, originally a Navy term for the time aboard ship when sailors blew off steam watching boxing and wrestling matches, made its way into the civilian lexicon as a euphemism for Prohibition-era drinking sessions.



Around 1960, happy hours became marketing events for bars and restaurants, enticing professionals for after-work drinks.

That is, if they needed another round after a long day of work breaks.













Beatniks






Though the Beat Generation came alive in the 1950s with works like 'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg, the 1960s saw the movement flourish with beatniks eschewing "square" society in everything they did — dress, manners, vocabulary and poetry.



Beat poets wanted to free their work from academic strictures and often read their pieces to jazz and a chorus of finger snapping in areas such as New York City's Greenwich Village and San Francisco's North Beach — beatnik strongholds.

While Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were the fathers of the Beatniks, writers like Gregory Corso, Philip Whalen and Gary Snyder carried the torch well into the '60s.



But don't look for any of their descendants now in lower Manhattan.













Records






Not that we don't appreciate the many benefits MP3s have brought us, but we could all use a little analog in our digitally dominated lives. So let's hear it for good old-fashioned turntables and the records they play.


Sure, vinyl can scratch and skip, but that's just part of its charm.

Records' packaging and liner notes only add to the allure. We can do without CDs and — despite fond memories of mix tapes — cassettes. But there's a reason people today have vinyl collections.



The technology for playing music in the '60s was just fine — and the music itself? Just classic.













Cars with Fins






We're sick of sedans. We're sick of minivans.

We're sick of cars so bland we can't remember what they look like five minutes after they drive by.



In the '60s, cars had style.

They came in colors — real colors like turquoise, bright red and pink, not this forest green or champagne crap we see today. And the best part about them? Why the tail fins, of course!




After General Motors started the trend in 1948, fins grew taller each year. The 1959 Cadillac Eldorado holds the record for biggest fin.

But all trends must pass, and by the '70s the futuristic, jetlike fins had largely been phased out of car models.



Well, we want them back. The bigger fins the better, we say.













Casserole






When Don Draper goes home from a long day at the office, he has one thing to look forward to: casserole.

There's just something about a casserole. All that warm gooeyness hatched in the oven, those big spoonfuls of welcome-home-honey affirmation.



While housewives in the '60s relied on the classic one-dish meals as an easy formula to get dinner on the table every night, as early as the '70s the casserole was branded with a less-sophisticated image.

Instead of remembering the delicious classics like turkey tetrazzini and the tuna noodle, today many associate casseroles with unhealthy eating, mystery meats and processed cheese.



But honestly, deep down, who doesn't love casserole?













Struggles and Causes






Sure, there's no shortage of things to grumble about in our time, from pre-emptive strikes abroad to the failings of health care, banks, the media, the elites, the yokels — you name it — at home.



But in the era of "Mad Men", many young intelligent folk staved off cynicism and seemed, at least for a moment, to give a damn.

There was a lot going on. Social and cultural mores were changing. The stark binary of a Cold War hovered always, doomsday lurked around the corner and racial equality was a struggle for the truly courageous.

Kinsey, a bearded young writer on staff at Draper's agency, goes off on a Freedom Ride down south (though his escapade turns out less heroic than he imagined).



His young bearded equivalent these days would probably be sitting at some fancy faux-cocktail bar, picking plaid lint out of his belly button.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...005880,00.html