When I view episodes of That Girl, I sometimes remember watching it as a pre-teen and thinking that the styles - clothes, hair, etc. - were more like early 1960s, even though the show ran from 1966 to 1971.
Maybe this was somewhat true - styles on television in the 1960s didn't always keep up with what was on the street currently - maybe partly because of advertisers' conservatism, and also because styles changed really fast then.
And maybe my perception was a little bit off because I was watching episodes that originally aired in 1966 and 1967, as re-runs, in 1970, 71, 72, and 73....
I am led to contemplate how the 1960s almost was sort of two decades rather than one.
Early '60s: The Dick Van Dyke Show; straight, knee-length skirts; hair that went down to your shoulders and then flipped up; ladies' clubs having luncheons and teas.
Late '60s: Vietnam War; Vietnam War protests; Woodstock; bell-bottom slacks; long straight hair parted in the middle; sit-ins; walk-outs...
It's been written in many contexts that the beginning of the 1960s was an era of optimism in America.
I think that's partly because adults then had lived through the Depression in the 1930s and the Second World War in the 1940s. The relief people would feel after all that hardship and horror could make you feel optimistic about the future, I think. Like - the bad stuff was over.
My parents both lived through the Depression, as children. The thing my dad said about it was, "All through the Depression, our father always had a job."
(They lived in Akron, Ohio, so Grandpa worked at Firestone.)
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