If you traveled back in time 100 years, normal life consisted of many activities most people would find indefensible these days.
Blowing smoke
Back in the day, casually blowing cigarette smoke in an infant’s face or smoking while waiting in crowded hospital rooms was totally normal. Smoking indoors was thought of as harmless relaxation, and both parents and doctors smoked without fear of the health hazards of second-hand smoke. Nowadays, if you were to smoke next to children or light up in a hospital, you’d be publicly shamed, fined, and berated by angry onlookers.
Public shaming
Publishing details about someone’s private health crisis, mental state, or personal difficulties was practically standard fare for the local press’s sensationalist reporting. This helped to sell more papers and stir up chatter. Now, publicly sharing private information about someone or ridiculing someone else’s trauma is seen as a cruel and devious act that gets newspapers blacklisted.
Off-duty firing
Firing female workers as soon as they married or got pregnant was written into official HR policy at many large companies and public schools. Employers believed it was acceptable to refuse work to a woman whose sole duties should now be in the home. Today, firing someone for getting married or pregnant would result in huge lawsuits and major public backlash.
Backyard zoo
Ordering exotic pets (baby caimans, monkeys, lion cubs, etc.) through mail order catalogs to raise in your suburban backyard was once thought of as quirky and harmless family entertainment. Some people kept dangerous predators and delicate wildlife confined to tiny cage areas in their home.
There was no access to veterinary care or safety precautions. Current animal cruelty laws tend to view the practice of keeping wild animals as pets in a domestic setting as outright abuse that should be met with heavy prosecution.
Unfiltered pitch
Advertising hard alcohol, cigarettes, or lethal household chemicals to children using whimsical cartoon mascots and catchy tunes was how major corporations did business. Businesses purposefully created advertising campaigns that targeted children in order to establish lifelong consumers of toxic products. This type of marketing will now result in instant federal investigations, class-action lawsuits, and boycotts.
Personal touch
100 years ago, kissing female colleagues, waitresses, or acquaintances without asking or grabbing their waist unexpectedly was considered harmless flirting and simply being a gentleman. In fact, there were men who just assumed that women would be flattered by it.
Now, unwelcome physical contact of any kind without clear permission is considered sexual harassment at work and grounds for immediate HR disaster.
Painful discipline
Administering strong hits to students’ hands or buttocks with a wooden rod for talking, chewing gum, being disruptive or making minor mistakes was standard educational practice.
Schools expected teachers to physically abuse their students into obedience, and parents would often praise the teachers who did. Schools now consider physically assaulting students a crime that could get teachers fired, lose their teaching license, and be sent to jail.
Colorful language
Publicly using offensive racist, religious, or ethnically charged slurs as humor in casual dinner conversation or mainstream newspaper comics was considered acceptable in polite society. However, using derogatory language in any setting nowadays means instant firing, social banishment, and even a public apology circuit.
Doctor’s orders
Doctors recommended particular brands of cigarettes for pregnant women to curb appetite or calm nerves. Some doctors even published articles in medical journals advising pregnant women to smoke with assurances that cigarettes would not harm the baby. Today, any doctor who recommended this known carcinogen to a pregnant patient would quickly lose their license and face massive malpractice suits.
Unasked photos
Publishing candid photographs of strangers taken up-close without consent in public places and then featuring those images in magazines was considered golden age iconography of street photography. Now shamelessly photographing and sharing people’s private lives online without consent will get you ripped apart on the internet, sued for privacy infringement, and publicly shamed.
Prank calls
Lying to an emergency dispatcher or calling random landlines to leave graphic, harassing messages was considered harmless prankish behavior of boys. Teenagers fully expected to get away with it, with no real retaliation from law enforcement.
However, now it’s considered a major criminal offense that can get a person heavily fined and even imprisoned for wasting someone else’s emergency response resources or harassing strangers in their own homes.
Casual mockery
It was completely socially acceptable to joke about someone having a physical handicap, mental illness or any sort of facial deformity for humor’s sake. Comedy shows regularly poked fun at vulnerable individuals to boost theater attendance and radio ratings.
Laughing at someone’s disability or making light of someone’s medical condition is frowned upon as insensitive bullying these days.
Stolen content
Copying a local musician’s song, painter’s picture, or writer’s short story and releasing it as your own was common practice for up-and-coming artists. Many vintage recording companies and publishers stole from artists, taking all profit and leaving the original writer with no credit.
Intellectual property theft is highly monitored on the internet now and will be called out instantly with demands of proper credit and compensation.
Toxic beauty
Applying mercury-filled skin-whitening lotion or lead-based facial powder for a trendy look was just another part of a woman’s everyday beauty regimen. Women were literally damaging their internal organs and skin every day just to keep up with crazy unsafe beauty trends that weren’t regulated.
Not only are these products harmful, but promoting them to customers today leads directly to swift government action, product confiscations, and a huge public outcry.
Backyard bonfire
Throwing household paint, motor oil and plastic trash in the backyard burn pit on a windy Saturday afternoon used to be common household maintenance. However, emitting dangerous airborne pollutants will get you in trouble in modern times, especially in things like instant city citations, EPA investigations, and angry neighborhood mobs.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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12 once-normal things ’80s people did that would confuse kids today
People in the ‘80s did a bunch of things that were completely ordinary back then, but now sound weirdly complicated and kind of ridiculous.
12 once-normal things ’80s people did that would confuse kids today
