I was just folding laundry and listening to I Love Lucy in the background, the episode called The Fashion Show. In that episode, Lucy goes to an exclusive Beverly Hills designer to buy a $100 dress – she doesn’t look at the price tag of the one she buys, so she ends up with a $500 dress. It’s been altered, so she can’t return it.
When Lucy says in the show that Ricky (her husband) will pummel her – I thought it was just an expression, just like we say “me va a matar”, “he’s going to kill me”, commonly in Spanish. But later, as Lucy is looking for ways to diffuse the situation, she comes up with the idea of going down to the pool and getting what would look like a sun-burn, “Ricky wouldn’t dare hit me”, she says, if he thought she was sun-burnt.
Did I hear right? Was the expectation in the 50’s that a man could and would hit a woman if she “deserved it”? I am flabbergasted – not just that that would be the expectation, but that a TV show would sanction it. Well, perhaps I misunderstood.
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