Tattletales fascinates me. That’s right! I’ll admit it! The game show. It’s a pre-bedtime ritual for little ‘ol me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This kooky little show brings together my love of the mid-1970s with pure, unabashed messiness in a way I’m not sure anything else has quite equaled.

Through all that mess, though, I’m fascinated by Tattletales’ strange complexity. Through these six questions about sex and gender, the game show gives us a snapshot of history, humanity, and 1970s cultural studies… all through a green, shag carpeted lens.

In almost every episode, we see the confusion inherent in the mid-1970s. Socially. Politically. Culturally. Sexually. 

We see men often struggling with the ideas of second-wave feminism. In a show that spotlights men and women in opposition, their respective cultural voices stand out in a clear and often painful manner. Men openly rail about the women’s movement. They gripe about how things are changing, and feminists are often the butt of the joke. 

Women on the show are often seen sitting perilously on the cusp of these societal changes. Quite a few admit to believing in and following the women’s movement. Some openly admit they don’t care. Others, meanwhile, claim not to understand it. Through every episode, though, in listening to these women, there’s an awareness. They understand how society views women during this era. The battles they fight. The struggles only they know. 

Little hits me in quite the same way as Mary Ann Mobley’s openly explaining (with trepidation) that her looks and brain were both so “awful” that she had to focus on her looks. Mobley was Ms. America 1959, for those who might not know.

Later in the same episode, she admits she was ready to settle down because she was the “oldest living unmarried Ms. America”.

These moments break my heart thanks to not only their reality but also their painful humanity and uncertainty. I see this beautiful, charismatic, and capable woman clearly struggling with everything facing women… even if she never directly addresses the women’s movement. The need to “have it all”. The need to be everything to everyone. The world was changing so fast in the 1970s, but it was never quite fast enough. 

To me, Tattletales shows the 1970s in all their weirdness. This is a world that is still barely removed from the 1950s, and so many of the era’s values remain the same as rebellion percolated throughout culture.

This is an era straining against itself. Things were moving forward. Advances were happening. We weren’t the same people we were only 20 years before.

Not everyone was ready to admit it, though.

Originally published at Piercing Pop Culture.