Clichés past their sell-by date

Back to the cliches . What was even more damaging to your respectability than being a poor thing who got pregnant in the 60s was to be one of those girls who "sleep around" maybe a "slag"
So much for free love and flower power. In our neck of the woods net curtains twitched and you had to keep up with the Joneses.

sodapop I too worked in a place like this. There was just one lady aged about 75 who had her own room at the end of a psychiatric geriatric ward.
I asked because there seemed nothing wrong with her and she even went shopping. She had been unmarried, pregnant and put away by her father.
I was so shocked. I was 19 at the time.

Thus it ever was sunseeker . Girls were sluts or hussies whilst men were just sowing their wild oats. When I first started working in a large psychiatric hospital there were a number of women who had been in patients for many years and were 'diagnosed' as being moral defectives as they had a baby out of wedlock. They were never able to function well outside the hospital environment as they had become institutionalised. So very sad.

I never understood why, if an unmarried girl was pregnant she was "no better than she ought to be", yet the boy was "a bit of a lad".

How about "sell-by date"?

Best contraception is holding a 6 penny piece between your knees !

We "had to get married", but according to my MIL, my BIL and his wife didn`t, but only "more by good luck than good management"! We lasted just over 53 years, by the way.

petra
or

Can I still be regarded as living in sin after 40 years.
Not much sin going on at the moment

My cousin, back in the 1960s, became pregnant by her long time fiance. Even though a wedding had already been planned long before her pregnancy was announced, my mother with more than a hint of smugness announced that she would "either have to get married or live over the brush like a gypsy". The couple were married, a bit sooner than originally planned, and more than 50 years later, are still together.

Some of those old fashioned idioms are, quite rightly, in bin where they belong.

I was always told to keep both legs in one stocking ?

Jalima1108 I didn't notice the irony until after I posted. However, I wasn't objecting to clichés, however irritating they may be, but to the implied judgment.

What will the neighbours say............ said my mother.

My Mum had a dreadful expression I didn't realise the meaning of until I was a teenager: if I had done something to avoid expense, she would rub her nose and say"they haven't all gone back then" which I later realised was a derogatory comments about Jews. A friend's father used to say " they should all go back to nig-nog land whenever he saw a black person.
I really don't mean to cause offence to anyone on here by quoting these, but it is the sort of expression and thinking which we don't need, though thankfully I hope less heard nowadays.

"There was a smell of cordite in the church."

She's "in a condition". At least the German equivalent "guten Umstands" sounds a bit positive.

Past its sell-by date is indeed a tiresome cliché and I apologise for my laziness.
Oh, I thought you were being ironic absent!

I think it's worse Eloethan - or more overt anyway.

I agree with you absent. I think there is still that double standard regarding the behaviour of men and women although it often manifests itself in different ways.

I like to thing things have changed but when I hear of male university students singing the most vile songs about women and handing out leaflets describing them as "mingers”, “trollops” and “slags”, I wonder if they have.

janeainsworth Past its sell-by date is indeed a tiresome cliché and I apologise for my laziness. My objection to "she got herself pregnant" is that it is invariably used in judgement and the she in question is invariably at fault, according to whoever is using this outdated expression.

My mother used to say that there should be at least two years between babies or it meant the man 'couldn't control himself'! I made quite sure my two were no more than eighteen months apart.

Followers are not encouraged.
I was not Victorian parlour maid but worked in a cake shop in the 70s and my fiancee was waiting across the road for me to finish work in 5 minutes when the manager told me off with this gem. I was expected to tell him to wait around the corner !

okimherenow
Quote 'Glad to see sex where it belongs open and available'etc etc.
I can hardly believe that through out the centuries there was never an option ie should we or shouldn't we sleep together before marriage more down to choice or as in some cases 'what will the neighbours think' if the result is a pregnancy prior to marriage.

Grammaretto I think your FIL is of such an age that many inhibitions have gone, you won't change him my lovely mum used to say all sorts of things that I wouldn't want to or dream of saying today. The racial stuff was very difficult as her GC found it offensive and it was difficult to explain she had grown up in the 1920's when people had different ideas, commenting on other people and their appearance embarrassing at the very least.

You used to be asked 'Are you courting?' Never hear it now.

Sarah I agree my FiL is not my responsibility but when he uses phrases he knows we find offensive and embarrassing, I think he should be aware and it is my job to make him aware.
Racial and class stereotypes are his speciality but he also talks about fat, ugly women.
And he's no oil painting!!