Whatever Happened to Ladies and Gentlemen?

Whenever I read a book or watch a movie set any time before 1970, I’m always taken aback by the propriety of the “days of yore”. For hundreds of years, people spent so much of their time and energy being “proper", from ladies wearing dresses 24 hours a day to gentlemen rising to their feet whenever a woman leaves or enters a room. It all seems so foreign to me, because in a matter of 40 years we have pretty much become a nation of slobs. While at times I think all the rules and regulations of being a “lady” must have been a colossal pain, I can’t help but long to live in a society where people show their respect for themselves and others by meticulously doing all the right things. While it’s great that I’m socially allowed to wear pants (even pajama pants) to the store, I still have to be subjected to a grown man wearing Budwiser flip flops and a hoodie with machine guns printed all over it to CHURCH (yes, this person does exist). How did we go from women vacuuming their own houses in six inch heals to teenage girls wearing fuzzy slippers to middle school? I took enough sociology classes in college to answer my own question. I mean, yay for women’s lib and everything, but my lady parts hurt just a little bit whenever I see a girl walking around with her thong underwear purposely showing.