Essay on Teenagers Life After the World War II

📌Category: Life, Lifestyle
📌Words: 485
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 04 May 2021

During the 1950s after World War II, teenagers found themselves sandwiched between the gap of adults and children. As the teen generation soon gained their own styles and image, many adults chose to marginalize teens because they didn’t believe in the same values. Teens felt like they were being ignored while things in their everyday lives failed to embrace them. For example, there were very few television shows for teens and there was nothing on the radio speaking to teen life and things that they could relate to. Rock n’roll was an essential outlet for teenagers in the 1950s because it acted as a way for teens to express themselves freely in something that all teens could connect to each other with.

There were always conflicts between children and adults but the gap between teens and adults were much bigger. Many adults chose to marginalize teens because they didn’t believe in teenage values. Many rules and prohibitions were implemented as a way for the adults to do something about the teen lifestyle that they disapproved of. For example, some of the rules would be that the new slang or hipster talk was not allowed because parents believed it was part African American and street slang which was seen very badly upon as adults. Another rule was that most girls weren't allowed to wear pants, and boys weren't allowed to wear blue jeans.  Even Stanford University prohibited the wearing of jeans in public during the 1950s. In the article titled “The Life of a 1950s Teenager”, John McKeon recalled "What I remember most about the 50s were rules.  Rules, rules, rules... for everything.  Rules about clothes — which clothes you could wear when.  Rules about church.  Rules about streets.  Rules about play.” All of these rules prevented teenagers from being able to express themselves freely and it was rock n’roll that allowed them to escape their trapped world. Rock n’roll was essential for teenagers because it allowed them to break free from all of the rules they felt strangled with.

When rock n’roll was first introduced, many parents disapproved of the music because they believed that the messages in all of the songs appealed to teenagers in the wrong way. Many of these songs consisted of messages teens could relate to. For teens, rock n’roll was a way to let music incorporate aspects of their lives and messages that they could relate to. In an article titled “A Decade of Music that Changed the World” written by Robert Palmer, Palmer writes, “it was the only form of popular music that specifically addressed and was tailored to teenagers — there had been adult records and kiddie records, but nothing for that burgeoning bulge of the baby-boom population caught between childhood and adulthood.” Instead of having music mainly directed towards adults and children, rock n’roll allowed teenagers to have their own music in which they could express themselves freely. With the influence of the music they could relate to, rock n’roll played an essential role because it allowed them to be able to relate to messages and aspects of their lives in the songs.

 

 

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