Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Fashions on the MTM show

In this image you can see the strange 70s fashions of the Mary Tyler Moore Show - Mary going braless under a hot pink turtle neck and Phyllis wearing a horrendous monstrosity that makes my eyes hurt. Only Rhoda looks modern in her all-black ensemble, except for the gigantic red-white-and-blue scarf she's wearing in her ponytail.

I don't remember the crazy colors because we had a black and white TV.

I also don't remember that Mary went braless. What a unique moment in TV history - I don't think anybody today on TV would go braless.

In this episode Phyllis asks Mary to tell her daughter Bess about sex. I don't remember that either, but it's possible that my mother made my father turn off the TV at that point. So I don't remember that Bess tells Mary that she already heard about sex, because another kid told her about it, and she didn't believe it at first.

That's how I found out about sex too - some kid in school told me, and that was my reaction too - I thought the kid made it up to gross me out. Only when I read my first adult non-fiction book Black Like Me, which describes some sexual situation (I forget what now) did I believe it was true.