Mad (Sad) Men and the Strongest Women

I recently started watching Mad Men. I know, I'm really ahead of the curve. Anyways, I had watched an episode before, the series premiere, on a plane ride to Austin, TX to see my boyfriend. During the episode, I decided to write down every line that pissed me off. Then I stopped because it was impossible to do while fluently watching the show. Either way, I had written down a few lines that especially sparked my interest in some way. A line in particular goes like this, "I never realized it till this moment but I guess it's hard to be a man, too." The irony, however, is in the fact that it was said by one of Don Draper's mistresses (at least from my recollection so I could possible be wrong). Despite who said the line the fact is that this show is very powerful. Its subtlety can be misleading -- it actually is an entertainingly eye-opening examination of the way gender has been constructed and simultaneously perpetuated throughout history.

It is not just the women who are constricted in roles where little equality or self-agency is apparent, it is the men as well. However, it is at times a grueling task to sit through near hour long episodes of man after man abusing his power to sleep with attractive secretaries. Nevertheless I continue...

Don Draper is just a quintessential character for the show and for the time period. He comes from a broken home, no family left; he is a war deserter, a womanizer and a seemingly gentle yet tortured soul. You see the goodness in him shine through only to be ruined when the next attractive woman walks through his line of vision.

So it was also hard to be a man?

I definitely see this in some of the male characters of the show. But I see it in almost every female character. But the thing is, it's almost as if I get more upset when the woman succumbs to sexist traditions. Like the way Joan (Christina Hendricks) asserts her confidence in the office yet has to be especially cruel when a secretary has made a mistake. In order to affirm her authority she acts aggressive, all-knowing, dominant-- the most masculine of qualities. Likewise, when Peggy pitches asks Don Draper for the job of copy-writer, she is told by him she needed to ask like a man. It is here we see the prioritizing of masculine qualities which just so happen to benefit men. Is it all their fault? No. It is all women's fault? No. Do we often contribute to this prioritization? Yes.

Neither men or women are fundamentally happy in Mad Men (Maybe with the exception of Sterling right now with his young wife --- I'm only on Season 3 so I'm sure this will change). It is because everyone felt constricted in some way; Men like Don Draper keep their whole identity hidden to the people he cares about most (presumably) and only allow vulnerability to show in the most extreme of cases -- in Don's case he shows it to the wife of the man who involuntarily gave him his identity. To me, however, my heart goes out instead to Peggy, sitting in her own office after giving up for adoption a baby she never knew existed. She is one of the woman I worry most about yet have the most confidence in (and I haven't even mentioned Betty played by January Jones, that's another post in of itself). I believe she will be successful and that's good, but I also fear that she will not allow all of herself to come to the forefront, to make a stand as the woman she really is deep down, not as a man.

I guess we'll all see.