drama takes place upheaval, not least for its fem The Women of Mad Men Amanda Marcotte Friday 5 April 2013 With all the recent talk about the end of men and the rise of women, it's tempting to imagine that male anxiety in the face of women's increasing demands is a new phenomenon. If you watch Mad Men, you'll know these tensions have been around for decades. The show begins its sixth season without any characters mentioning the word 'feminism', but the pressures of shifting gender roles affect all characters, from the aspiring businesswomen to the happy homemakers, and, of course, their male counterparts, who don't know how to handle the erosion of male dominance. Despite its title, Mad Men is as much a show about the dramatic changes in women's lives in the 1960s as it is about those men. Unusually for the television industry, the majority of its writers are women. The show begins in the early 60s, an era in which it was assumed that women only worked if they couldn't find a man to support them. Still, cracks in the facade of the Leave It To Beaver ideal were showing. Wives languish in suburban homes, succumbing to what Betty Friedan describes as a "devastating boredom with life". In Mad Men, husbands invariably grow tired of their housewives and cheat with urban-dwelling women whose minds aren't dulled by being trapped in the house all day. Their wives respond by trying to squelch their suspicions in the name of keeping up appearances. Alison Brie, whose character Trudy Campbell is being routinely cheated on by her ad executive husband Pete, describes the dynamic. "Like most women at that time, Trudy is able to turn a blind eye to anything she finds off- putting for as long as she is able," she says. "Trudy had always been concerned with what others think, so she's able to project a state of sunniness in public, even if things at home aren't perfect." Christina Hendricks as Joan Harris There are female characters who reject these expectations and choose to work instead. Joan Holloway begins as an office manager who believes she can't wait to get married and quit working, but slowly realizes she needs the excitement and validation she gets from running the administrative side of the advertising agency. Joan also discovers a major benefit of having a job in the fifth season, when she decides to divorce the husband she had once thought she needed to complete her life. Joan boots him out the door while informing him that she doesn't need him, a decision she can only make because she has a pay check of her own to depend on. Contrast this with an earlier season: Don's wife Betty can only leave him after she lines up another husband to take care of her. One of the series' central characters is Peggy Olson, a younger woman who starts the first season as a secretary but quickly climbs the ladder to become first a junior copywriter, and then the top copywriter in the office. Peggy doe.

1. drama takes place upheaval, not least for its fem
The Women of Mad Men
Amanda Marcotte
Friday 5 April 2013
With all the recent talk about the end of men and the rise of
women, it's tempting
to imagine that male anxiety in the face of women's increasing
demands is a new
phenomenon. If you watch Mad Men, you'll know these tensions
have been
around for decades. The show begins its sixth season without
any characters
mentioning the word 'feminism', but the pressures of shifting
gender roles affect
all characters, from the aspiring businesswomen to the happy
homemakers, and,
of course, their male counterparts, who don't know how to
handle the erosion of
male dominance. Despite its title, Mad Men is as much a show
about the
dramatic changes in women's lives in the 1960s as it is about
those men.
Unusually for the television industry, the majority of its writers
are women.
The show begins in the early 60s, an era in which it was
assumed that women
only worked if they couldn't find a man to support them. Still,
cracks in the facade

2. of the Leave It To Beaver ideal were showing. Wives languish
in suburban
homes, succumbing to what Betty Friedan describes as a
"devastating boredom
with life". In Mad Men, husbands invariably grow tired of their
housewives and
cheat with urban-dwelling women whose minds aren't dulled by
being trapped in
the house all day.
Their wives respond by trying to squelch their suspicions in the
name of keeping
up appearances. Alison Brie, whose character Trudy Campbell
is being routinely
cheated on by her ad executive husband Pete, describes the
dynamic. "Like most
women at that time, Trudy is able to turn a blind eye to
anything she finds off-
putting for as long as she is able," she says. "Trudy had always
been concerned
with what others think, so she's able to project a state of
sunniness in public,
even if things at home aren't perfect."
Christina Hendricks as Joan Harris
There are female characters who reject these expectations and
choose to work
instead. Joan Holloway begins as an office manager who
believes she can't wait
to get married and quit working, but slowly realizes she needs

3. the excitement and
validation she gets from running the administrative side of the
advertising
agency. Joan also discovers a major benefit of having a job in
the fifth season,
when she decides to divorce the husband she had once thought
she needed to
complete her life. Joan boots him out the door while informing
him that she
doesn't need him, a decision she can only make because she has
a pay check of
her own to depend on. Contrast this with an earlier season:
Don's wife Betty can
only leave him after she lines up another husband to take care
of her.
One of the series' central characters is Peggy Olson, a younger
woman who
starts the first season as a secretary but quickly climbs the
ladder to become first
a junior copywriter, and then the top copywriter in the office.
Peggy doesn't just
work to pay the bills but stays late at the office, pounding away
at ad copy like it's
a religious calling. Elisabeth Moss plays Peggy, and she
describes her journey
with an enthusiasm reminiscent of her character. "She doesn't
set out to be this
great feminist and go for equal rights and equal pay. She's just
trying to do what
she loves." She talks about how thoroughly Peggy rejects the
constraints put on

4. women at the time: "She keeps crashing against the glass ceiling
because she
doesn't know it's there."
The genius of Moss's performance is that she compels the
audience to believe,
as Peggy does, that selling baked beans and cigarettes is not just
crass
commercialism but an art. "I like the idea of this person who
treats it like an art
form," Moss says. "We've all seen ads that made us cry, made
us think. Peggy, if
she were around, would be making those great Apple ads that
came out in the
80s."
Peggy's status as an outsider in her world – not just because
she's female, but
also because of her roots in working-class Brooklyn in a world
made by Ivy
Leaguers – makes her highly attuned to the aspirational feelings
that drive good
advertising. "It's about not being satisfied with who you are,"
Moss argues. "A lot
of artists want to make change; are not satisfied in the world
they're in." For
Peggy, advertising is the perfect art form to project an image of
the carefree,
single woman she wants to be.
It's not all fun and games for Peggy, of course. Moss points out
that women who
wanted to invest so much in their careers back then had to make
sacrifices that
we now demand they shouldn't have to make. "Women today,"
she jokes, "we all

5. watch Oprah. We know about balancing our lives." For Peggy,
however, that
balance is elusive. "For Peggy, having a great job, and also
having a boyfriend
and getting married, is foreign."
Not that Peggy has given up. On the contrary, she routinely
resists the heavy
pressure to choose between having a private life and having a
career. On Mad
Men, women who are just a little younger than Peggy are
starting to find the idea
that one should have to choose between having a husband and
having a career
too preposterous to acknowledge, much less fret over. Megan,
Don's bohemian
second wife who listens to the Beatles, is far more worried
about what career she
wants to have – copywriter or actress? – than whether she
should have one at
all.
Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olsen
Megan had been a background character until the last two
episodes of the fourth
season, which portrayed her whirlwind courtship by and
marriage to Don. This
was not without controversy among the section of the audience
who preferred old
school Mad Men, much like Don prefers Sinatra to the Stones.
Artistically,

6. however, the choice turned out to be a remarkable one,
encapsulating the rapid
gallop of cultural change that left many older people behind.
Don loves his new
wife, but he doesn't understand her, and he especially doesn't
understand her
new, self-assured kind of womanhood.
"Megan is not concerned with doing everything exactly right,"
explains Jessica
Paré, who plays her. "She just wants to contribute to the world
in a way she feels
is important."
Like Moss, Paré sees Peggy and Megan as reflections of real-
life women who
aren't responding directly to feminist ideology, but whose
enthusiasm for living
more self-directed lives helped create the context for feminism
to exist in the first
place. "Women were starting to feel like they could lead their
own lives and not
define themselves by their fathers and husbands. It was a bit of
a groundswell."
Don doesn't seem to know quite what to do with this eager
young wife who feels
entitled to live life by her own rules. He keeps setting traps for
her, and she
evades them. He pushes for her to have babies, and she laughs
him off. He
gives her a job in his office so he can have her near, and she
resigns. He even
tries to make her eat orange sherbet, and her dislike of it – and
more importantly,

7. her unwillingness to hide her dislike – sets off an ugly fight that
ends in Don
chasing Megan around their flat and tackling her, trying to gain
physical control
over the woman who won't let him own her spirit. In a later
episode, she hands
him her Beatles record to listen to while she takes off to pursue
her life as a
bright young artist in New York. He gives Tomorrow Never
Knows half a listen,
and then grumpily shuts it off, frustrated at his inability to
contain or even really
understand a wife that has no use for the old way of doing
things.
Jessica Par as Megan Draper
Sally Draper, the youngest female character on the show, gained
screen time as
she aged into her middle school years, and now Kiernan Shipka,
the actor who
portrays her, has graduated from guest star to series regular.
Sally's adventures
during the fifth season read like Judy Blume's Are You There
God? It's Me,
Margaret, which was published in 1970 and mines similar
territory of a girl
growing up in an era of rapid social change. Sally repeatedly
experiments with
acting more adult, but usually ends up feeling overwhelmed and
running away.
Part of the problem, Shipka says, is Sally's lack of role models.
"When she looks
at the people who are grown-up around her, she doesn't want to

8. be like them,
because she doesn't like them very much."
This is the dark side of the 60s: the children who were left
adrift because the old
ways of doing things – particularly the old gender roles –
weren't working any
more, and petulant adults were too busy pouting to find new
ways to make things
work. Sally's mother childishly uses her daughter to toy with
her ex-husband and
punish him for seemingly moving on and forgetting about her.
But Sally pushes
back, and hard. "Sally has some of Betty in her," Shipka
suggests, which makes
their difficult battles "a Betty versus Betty fight".
Sally finds herself bouncing back and forth between her more
traditional mother,
whom she understandably loathes at times, to her romantically
independent
stepmother. "She looks at Megan as more of a friend figure,
because Megan is
young and fun," says Shipka. As Sally grows more into her teen
years, this
struggle over what kind of woman she would rather be will only
grow more
complicated.
Kiernan Shipka as Sally Draper
When we last saw Mad Men, it was spring 1967. Women's roles
were already
changing, but they were still living in the time right before an

9. avalanche of change
pushed feminism to the forefront of people's consciousness.
This is before the
1968 Miss America protest, the 1970 Ladies' Home Journal sit-
in, or the state of
New York legalizing abortion in 1970. It's before cigarette
brand Virginia Slims
used the feminism-inspired slogan "You've come a long way,
baby", a
fictionalized version of which Peggy comes up with in the fifth
season. Watching
characters grapple as the pace of change speeds up even more
should be
fascinating business. So much has changed for these women in
the past five
series, but in many ways, change is only just beginning.
The Mad Men Effect: What's The Deal With Other-Era Sexism?
Meghan Casserly
Forbes Staff Writer
.
Photo Credit: Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC
Since the debut of AMC’s hit Mad Men in 2007, the show has
been ever-present in
conversations of gender equality (or reflections of it) in the
media.
Is it a feminist show? There are female writers! It has female
characters in the

10. workplace! There is open talk of contraception! Or is it more
accurately a sexist show?
The women are mostly secretaries! They only go on the pill so
they can sleep with their
bosses! Suburban housewives flounce around in girdles cooking
dinner while their
husbands booze it up in the city!
Yeah. It’s not a feminist show, ladies. Its characters are smug
sexists who treat women as
little more than playthings and subordinates. But it’s okay! We
still love it.
Because there are costumes.
Gloria Steinem calls it the Mad Men Effect: wherein a show is
so steeped in nostalgia and
impeccable set pieces that the sanctioned workplace and
cultural misogyny becomes just
another part of the artistic rendering of the era. Are we so
bewitched by the clothing,
flagrant indoor smoking and brown-boozed cocktails that we
overlook politics and
behavior that we would in no way tolerate in contemporary
programming or—god
forbid—our own homes and offices?
Case in point: we like Betty better than Peggy. “Mad Men itself
might ascribe to the
feminist agenda, but thanks to its pervasive impact on pop
culture, the show is crafting a
whole new generation of would-be Bettys (the stylish wife) not
Peggys (the show’s
ambitious “career girl”),” says Ms. Magazine’s Anna Kelner.

11. “Mad Men has always acted as a vicarious time machine,”
writes Emily Nussbaum on
NYMag, in a post dedicated to everyone’s favorite redheaded
secretary, Joan. She posits
that female viewers might actually lust after an era of clearly
defined gender roles,
however misogynistic they may seem. Is Mad Men period porn
for the halcyon days
of “In the first season, there was a definite ambiguity to the
show’s critiques, mixed as
they were with nostalgia for a world of gimlets and clear gender
roles. For female
viewers, it was possible to have a fleeting sense of “weren’t
things easier then?” — back
when the choices were narrower, when dinner was paid for,
when expectations were
lower?”
Alyssa Rosenberg says oh hell no, and that the reason why Mad
Men is so effectively
addressing the gender bias of the time is precisely because of its
subtlety. That the
costumes are meant not to bewitch us into overlooking cultural
flaws, but to force us to
address them head-on, both in history and in taking stock of
where we stand today. “The
clothes and the cocktails may be appealing,” she wrote on
Salon.com. “But they’re a way
of setting us up to revisit a moment when women were starting
to remake the world, and
to take on the knotty questions of where the fight for women’s
equality got derailed.”
An excellent point. And given the fact that, over the course of
all five seasons of the
show, more than half of the writing staff has been female, one
I’d like to think is the

12. underlying message. Jessica Butterbaugh, a friend and Mad Men
fan who holds her
Masters in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College,
thinks it’s actually both: that
the costumes serve as window dressing to misogynistic behavior
and female viewers are
left with a choice, either to ignore or address the sexism.
“The misogyny of Mad Men is rendered ‘quaint’ because it is
set in the past, and
glamorized by the costumes,” she says. For some viewers, it’s
easier to allow the real
gender issues to be glossed over. For others, shows like Mad
Men might serve as
catharsis for real life issues. “It’s often easier to relate to a
fictionalized character than a
real-life co-worker experiencing misogyny in the workplace,”
she offers.
But it doesn’t stop me from thinking about other period shows,
movies and books in
which women are treated as playthings—and the smart,
confident feminist women who
consume them with utter delight. Take Game of Thrones, both
George R. Martin’s book
series and the hit HBO series (championed by a woman, Sue
Naegle for HBO) in which
female characters are raped, beaten, burned and trafficked—and
those are the highborn
ones. A poor woman in Game of Thrones? Forget about it.
Even on Downton Abbey, set in WWI-era Britain, poor Mary
Crawley is forced to find a
wealthy suitor since she won’t be able to inherit her father’s
title. We watch with baited
breath as she romances from one wealthy suitor to another and
rarely comment on the

13. outrage that some distant broke cousin will one day be Lord.
But it’s okay, because there are costumes. (Don’t even get me
started on the newest
fantasy to sweep ladydom, the Twilight-inspired 50 Shades of
Grey.
As for me, I can’t say I understand even my own motivation, or
captivation by series that
showcase sexist behavior towards women. Am I glamoured by
set-dressing, accented
actors and intricate up-dos? I can’t say that I am. Do I like it
because, put in a historical
setting, the gender bias makes me value how good I have it
now? I don’t know if I’m that
appreciative. But whatever the case is, it’s interesting, and
opens up a whole new
conversation for whatever poor souls are forced to watch
Sunday night’s Mad Men
premiere.
Until then, I’ll leave the last word to Steinem.
“I think the idea that [these shows] are a step back would make
a great column,” she told
reporters at a press conference in August for the premiere of the
HBO documentary
Gloria: In Her Own Words when asked about throw-back
programming for women. “But
I think the real question is: What is their attitude? Are they
aggrandizing the past in a
nostalgic way, or are they showing the problems of the past in
order to show that we have
moved forward?”

14. Readers:What do you think? Do you think about the gender
issues in your favorite TV
dramas?