1963 - 1987

The movie Dirty Dancing was released 30 years ago, on August 21, 1987. In a previous article, titled 1987 - 2017, I discussed some social changes that happened during that 30-year interval.

In this article here, I will discuss some social changes that happened during the 24-year interval between 1963, when the story takes place, and 1987, when the movie was released. At the beginning of the movie, Baby Houseman indicates that a cultural era ended at about the end of 1963.

That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me "Baby", and it didn't occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came -- when I couldn't wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I'd never find a guy as great as my dad. That was the summer we went to Kellerman's.

At the end of the movie, Max Kellerman likewise indicates that a cultural era was ending.

It all seems to be ending. You think kids want to come with their parents and take fox-trot lessons? Trips to Europe, that's what the kids want. Twenty-two countries in three days. It feels like it's all slipping away.

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When President Kennedy was assassinated, I had just turned 11 years old. I was living in the small town of Seward, Nebraska, where my father taught at a Concordia College, which mainly prepared its college students to become Lutheran teachers and pastors. I write about those years of my life in another blog, called Seward Concordia Neighborhood.

In 1968, when I was 16 years old, my family moved to Eugene, Oregon, because my father got a job teaching at the University of Oregon. This move was a cultural shock for me. One moment I remember was seeing how on my first day at high school how my fellow students dressed. They were wearing jeans. Until then, I had never seen male students who were not wearing slacks. When I saw girls wearing jeans to high school, I was doubly-shocked. Suddenly I had entered a society where people dressed differently.

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Here is a scene in the movie.

A family vacationing together and dressing up to eat dinner together

This is a family with two daughters, who are 17 and about 19 years old. The mother is a housewife. The family is on a three-week summer vacation. They are eating dinner together, and they all are dressed up.

In 1987, when Dirty Dancing was released, that was not happening any more. Wives went to work after their children began attending elementary school, and so they could not get away from their jobs for three-week summer vacations (unless they were school teachers). Teenagers did not eat dinner with their parents. People did not dress up, even for restaurants.

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During the years 1958-1966, there was a television series called The Donna Reed Show about a model American family. The father, Dr. Alex Stone, was a doctor, and the mother, Donna (played by the actress Donna Reed), was a housewife. The daughter, Mary, grew from 14 to 22 during the series, so she turned 19 during 1963. The son, Jeff, grew up from 11 to 19 during the series, so he turned 16 years old during 1963.

The Stone family of "The Donna Reed Show"
in about 1963

The Stone family was quite similar to the Houseman family. Both fathers were doctors, and both mothers were housewives. In 1963 the Stone children were 19 and 16 years old, and the Houseman children were 19 and 17 years old.

Below is a scene from the show broadcast on April 4, 1963.

Dr. and Mrs. Stone eating dinner in the home
of their neighbors, Dr. and Mrs. Kelsey

The parents Alex and Donna (the couple on the left) have been invited to dinner in the home of their neighbors, Dave and Midge Kelsey (the couple on the right) to celebrate some achievement of Dave (who also is a doctor). Look at how dressed-up they all are.

Here are some images of the Stone family eating together.

That is what a doctor's family looked like in the early 1960s, when the Dirty Dancing story takes place. Doctors' families looked much different in 1987, when Dirty Dancing opened in the movie theaters.

In the following video, pay attention to how the Stone family dressed and also to the affection that the daughter Mary shows to her mother Donna.

The mother Donna was fulfilled by her life as a housewife. She made a happy home for her successful husband and nice children. The daughter Mary appreciated her mother and aspired to become such a housewife herself.

In addition to her school work, Mary studied music and dance. On the above video, it's the voice of Mary (the actress Shelley Fabares) singing. On the below video, Mary sings "Johnny Angel", a song she made famous. The scene shows a talent show at the high school. Mary is graduating soon and will attend college in the next school year. Donna and some other mothers are dressed up and helping the high-school seniors prepare for the talent show.

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Why did that cultural era end after 1963? Did it end because President Kennedy was assassinated and the Beatles came to the USA?

No, the era ended because the middle-class housewives -- who had provided a foundation for that culture -- left their homes to work in paying jobs. They went to work even while they still had pre-school children.

The reason why the era of "Donna Reed" families
ended in the 1960s

After the housewives went to work, they had much less time to spend on maintaining their homes, monitoring their children, volunteering for school talent shows, dressing up and grooming themselves to welcome their husbands home from work and generally relaxing in a continually pleasant mood.

Women with regular jobs were not able to get three-week vacations to spend with their families at resort hotels. They had more money to pay for such family vacations, but they no longer had the time. Therefore they paid for their children to vacation without them in Europe. In the following video, from the 1963 movie Gidget Goes to Rome, three American teenage girls are beginning their summer vacation in Europe without their parents. The girls could afford such a vacation -- and their expensive clothes -- because their mothers were working in paying jobs.

As housewives went to work in paying jobs, the divorce rate soared, beginning in the mid-1960s.

These huge changes in women's social status were actual factors -- not the assassination or the Beatles -- that moved Baby's life into a new direction and that caused her to recognize years later that one era had ended and another had begun at about the turn of 1963-1964.

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In the movie Dirty Dancing, the older sister Lisa is looking forward to getting married to a medical school and eventually becoming a doctor's housewife -- just like her own mother and just like the character Donna Stone on The Donna Reed Show.

In contrast, the younger sister is looking forward to getting a real higher education so that she can become a professional woman -- perhaps even a doctor like her own father.

As one cultural era was ending and another was beginning at the turn of 1963-1964, Lisa was settling in the first era while Baby was moving into the new era. Lisa aspired to her mother's social role, whereas Baby aspired to her father's social role.

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This contrast between the sisters Lisa and Baby is sexualized in Dirty Dancing.

Lisa thinks about having sex and takes some action to do so, but she is careful to not endanger her future married life. Lisa is about 19, and she wants to snag a marriageable boyfriend so that she can get married within the next three years. Lisa wants to have sex, but only with a man she probably will marry. Lisa is so careful about this that she ends her summer vacation without having sex.

Lisa is about 19 and will marry at about 22 years old

Baby is less concerned about her future married life -- which she probably will postpone for another decade. Therefore, Baby takes a strong initiative to have sex with a man who certainly never will become her husband or even long-term boyfriend.

If Baby postponed her marriage for a decade -- until about age 27 in 1973 -- then she married when the median marriage age for women was in the middle of a steep rise that would last for 60 years. There was less and less social pressure to marry. Women could easily postpone marriage for another year during her fertile years.

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What political changes happened during the interval from 1963 to 1987 ?

1963 - 1968 = President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat

1969 - 1976 = Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Republicans

1977 - 1980 = President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat

1981 - 1987 = President Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

During that 24-year interval, the President was a Democrat for about nine years and was a Republican for about 15 years. Politically, that interval was mostly moderate to conservative.

People watching the Dirty Dancing in 1987 were in the middle of the 12-year Republican presidency of Reagan and George W. Bush, and they were looking back at 1963, early in the 12-year Democrat presidency of Kennedy and Johnson.

I don't see much that these political developments are much relevant to thinking about the movie Dirty Dancing.

During that interval there were important developments in racial relations, but I don't that they are relevant to thinking about the movie.

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The movie Dirty Dancing is about family relations, about sexual relations and about the lives of struggling artists. Those are the important considerations in thinking about how our society changed during the 24 years between 1963 and 1987.

* Families changed.

* Sexual relations changed.

* The arts changed.

The arts include music, dance and clothing fashions. In this article here, I have addressed only the changes in clothing fashions. The changes in music and dance have been addressed in other articles of this blog.