Are We the Women of Mad Men?
September 1, 2010
by Patricia Garrison
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
I’ve been watching the fourth season of Mad Men with a knot in my stomach. For the first three, I convinced myself that the level of blatant sexism at the Sterling Cooper (now Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce) advertising agency was as retro as three-martini lunches and girdles. But the most recent episodes have disabused me of those notions. Truth be told, when it comes to sexism we have little to brag about. After 40 years, we’re not as far from Mad Men’s women as we might like to think.
For the non-viewer, the show brings us back to the days right on the cusp of momentous social change – before women, people of color, and gays shouted “enough!” and demanded equality. Mad Men focuses on the strained relationships between the sexes and the simmering anger that occasionally explodes when women scratch the surface of the sexism that defines their lives. It’s now 1965 (the series began in 1960) and you can see the subtle shifts in how the women respond over these years to being treated as afterthoughts, trophies, sexual conquests or children. Two years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, junior copywriter Peggy Olson now pushes back harder against her dismissive boss and male colleagues. Betty lashes out at ex-husband Don Draper’s self-involvement and Joan Holloway claims a less dutiful posture at the office – and at home — asserting her smarts and her limits. Secretaries bedded by Don don’t automatically accept his morning-after nonchalance.
That said, it’s still a sexist cesspool at the ad agency, and the women who work there are generally leered at, laughed at, or ignored. The cold crème focus group scene in Episode 4 was particularly painful to watch, as the women give voice to their rage and hurt (as their male bosses smirk from behind a two-way mirror, conveniently explaining away their angry tears with a “they just want to get married”).
It’s tempting to think that this level of sexism is behind us, and Julia Baird’s excellent piece in Newsweek reminds us how it made millions of women crazy and drove many to suicide (before they got liberated). But honestly, we are really far from being out of the woods. It may no longer be legal to bar women from certain jobs and fire them when they get married or pregnant, but laws that ensure a basic level of equality and protection against rape, harassment, domestic violence, stalking and other gender-based crimes don’t change the culture.
The dynamic between women and men in 2010 looks alarmingly similar to that of 1965. Contempt for women is obvious in politics and business, and the sexualization of women is ubiquitous in entertainment and advertising. The double standard around sexual freedom remains, with no male correlative to “ho” and “slut” that I know of (to some who think that owning one’s “slutiness” equals power, I respectfully disagree). Glass ceilings are rarely shattered, gender discrimination and harassment on the job are common in many industries, and there is a growing trend throughout the blogosphere insisting that it is men who are the real victims of domestic and dating violence, even though nearly all battered victims are women. But, what about those outlandish comments from Roger, Don, and the guys behind the two-way mirror? In the past four decades, they’ve gone from clumsy double entendres to brutal, in-your-face, insults.
Getting back to that focus group, I can’t help think that the same would happen today – maybe worse. Now, women might brush off the sexism they live with, or deny that it even exists at all. (The Mad Men women didn’t have that F-word baggage to contend with, yet.) If Mad Men reveals anything about sexism, it’s not how far we’ve come, but how little progress we’ve made in 40 years. We may have anti-discrimination laws and violence against women may now be considered a hate crime, but culturally, we share more with Peggy, Joan, Betty and the secretaries than we are willing to admit.
It is definitely possible to fire a woman who is pregnant. It just happened to my daughter. All you need is a corporate lawyer.to find a way around the law.
I watched a few episodes of Mad Men and had to stop, because rather than show how far women had come, it was making me feel like we’ve made no progress at all, in fact, in some ways we may actually be going backwards.
Great piece Pat. Posted it on my Facebook page (easy to do viewers – just click on the FB icon at the beginning of Pat’s article).
We have a long way to go….
I hear about TV shows like this, and I am not naive enough to think that they are abject lessons to the viewers in how bad things were. They are viewer fantasies, provided the viewer is a straight white male. A husband and wife sit on the couch and both “enjoy” the show — but the wife thinks the husband is thinking what she’s thinking, which is, “Yes! See? That’s how bad it was!” when what he’s thinking is, “Man, it was nice back then, wasn’t it?”
This is male fantasy, not a lesson learned. Men LIKE stuff like this. It’s like a neonazi watching Schindler’s List and thinking it’s a comedy.
One more comment swallowed *sigh* …
BTw, I’m not accusing the author of being naive — that’s just the only thing I’ve heard women saying about this show really, is that it’s wonderful because it teaches people how bad things were. I think people (men) aren’t watching it and learning that lesson. I think they view it with wistful nostalgia.
“Contempt for women is obvious in politics and business, and the sexualization of women is ubiquitous in entertainment and advertising”
This statement is very true right now and that is because there is no free market in media. All the cable channels, broadcast channels, movie producers, TV production companies and cable and satellite companies are owned by a small group of companies and men and their preferred business practice is gate keeping anyone else out. Authentic women do not have a voice in media now. The crap content they shove into you home and claim is simply what customers want or reflective of our culture is nothing but this little isolated cartel of men’s view of the world.
But this is changing with the internet. Very soon the cable system that has promoted this profound sexism will be destroyed. Women will pay for only what they want to watch and will probably turn to the internet for entertainment rather than the cable company which pushes a malecentric one size fits all men 14-55 with an IQ around 80. Things are changing very quickly, soon there will be no way for them to keep authentic women’s voices out or to finance their sexist schlock at our expense.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/.....upt-cable/
Men become so filthy in the presence of women, filthy inside themselves; full of contempt, envy, and bitter hatred. They seek to escape this smallness. They cannot see straight because of it and do not see that their actions come from their own smallness, their own bitter hatred, envy, and contempt. They see their actions as somehow justified by order. Men still discriminate against women just as much, but see Feminism as an excuse to do it violently, but fail to see this as a hate crime like racism; the bitch deserved it. The discrimination is just more sneaky now, very subtle, with dishonesty. And they are just as proud of it as they always were. They think it’s a game, but when men do what they want, which is to physically kill women, you end up with a country like Haiti. You end up in a shit pile. Men don’t correlate the two; that they feel inferior because -they are-
“I think people (men) aren’t watching it and learning that lesson. I think they view it with wistful nostalgia.”
Probably, but truthfully I think many women are watching it and thinking the same thing. Oh look, the same old boring sexism, but at least men held the door open for you.
I tried watching it as an example of “look, things could be worse” but all that happened was I started thinking women’s progress has been highly over rated. I’m not sure we’ve gone anywhere but sideways.
Corporate Media does not reflect the reality of the world around you. It is a mans eye view and sometimes a wishful mans eye view. It is never a womans view. Men do not have a conspiracy against women. They aren’t that organized and they aren’t that smart. Stop watching Corporate Media. It is not good for your outlook on life. It doesn’t even originate from the part of the country where you live in most cases.
The Corporate Media companies do not even consider you to be customers even though you pay your $100+ cable bill monthly, they consider you suckers who pay money to have unwanted advertising venues shoved into your home. They consider advertisers to be customers.
I have found to my dismay that younger women erroneously think things HAVE changed, as in this post by HuffPo Power Girl Patricia Handschiegel: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....28234.html
Where is Patricia Handschiegel getting her “60% of the workforce is female” idea from? The BLS data from 2009 states that 72 million women (over age 16) and 82 million men (over age 16) are in the labor force. 49 million women (over age 16) and 32 million men (over age 16) are not in the labor force.
Also, women have always been in the labor force, concentrated in low-paid positions. I have been following the annual salary percentiles for men and women, and there is some good news there, with dramatic improvement in women moving from low-paid percentiles to higher paying percentiles over the last 30 years. I wish Ms. Handschiegel did her research before spouting off numbers.
I think men -do- have a conspiracy against women, and that everyday men benefit from it. It goes down through everyday men in everyday governments to you husband, brother, and neighbor who gets a well paid job and an “atta boy” at your expense. Wars and all of that stuff are for the most part insignificant to these men, like all men, like war because they like to watch women get raped and common knowledge of technology disappear. Do I believe there is a conspiracy of men in underground bunkers using AI and computer technology to create sex robots? Yes. Do I believe that there is a conspiracy of men in underground bunkers making hybrid ocean mammals to give birth to humans? yes. Do I believe they burned a hole in the Ozone layer with a laser. I do. Sounds like science fiction, but it is the only thing that makes sense to me, and I am (provably) one of the smartest people on planet Earth. It’s women’s technology. Men only understand how to destroy things.
stupid people can and do conspire. They need to in order to survive.
I tried to watch “Mad Men”, but couldn’t get past the first few minutes before it made me extremely uncomfortable and then, it made me angry.
The last thing we need is more shows which depict the male characters as blatantly sexist and treating it as if it’s “cool” (sounds a lot like how obama is viewed). We’ve been fighting against this image since the beginning of time and we will not bring any kind of real change in this attitude if we continue to remain silent.
To add insult to injury, the damn show keeps winning emmys (what is the ratio of women to men who are voting for these shows to win the award?).
IMO, the message such positive feedback for such a show gives to young boys and men is that it’s ok to treat women with disrespect and like property because society will reward you for it and you’ll be cool to boot!
Actually, I like the show a lot. I’m 56 and it reminds me of how it used to be.
However, when I was a young woman in a sexist corporate office I never had the balls that Joan and Peggy do. They are aware of the way the men are trying to run over them, but they’re always figuring out ways to get over on the men (witness the last episode where Peggy stripped naked, thus calling her writing partner’s bluff.) Somebody said the show should be named “Mad Women” because it’s almost more about the evolution of the women than the men. This is huge for me.
“witness the last episode where Peggy stripped naked, thus calling her writing partner’s bluff”
Are you kidding me?! The female character shows her power by stripping naked?! Oh Please! Like I say don’t watch Corporate Media they don’t have any authentic women.
Bes, did you not see it? In context it was brilliant.
Lynne: I don’t watch much TV because it isn’t entertaining. However it sounds like the same old $hit you see on TV, any excuse to cause a female character to strip. I am surprised they didn’t have branded underwear. I am afraid it is a little too predictable and PETAish for me. But I am not surprised it wins industry awards.
Oh come freaking ON. Dropping your skirt as an expression of power?! PLEASE!
I think the network executives wanted to find a way to broadcast a show that was extremely sexist. Knowing they would never get away with it in 2010, they decided to have it occur in the 50′s.
I have never watched the show and never plan on it.
Ladies, without watching a few episodes, you can’t really know how well done it is. Trust me. I’m a middle-aged, open-minded, modest person (you can check out my blog, http://www.AnyShinyThing.com to see the proof of this!) and I am enjoying the show very much.
Lynne, how many times have you seen women strip goddamned naked to get a point across in a management meeting? I can tell you precisely how many times I’ve seen it, how many times I will see it, and how many times it’s happened: ZERO.
Lynne I read and liked your article on why boomers need to talk to young people, and how nothing has actually changed, but for some reason we think it has.
“Lynne, how many times have you seen women strip goddamned naked to get a point across in a management meeting? I can tell you precisely how many times I’ve seen it, how many times I will see it, and how many times it’s happened: ZERO.”
And yet it is one of those inauthentic things that happens all the time on TV. WOW! I wonder why?
I live in Dubai where, until recently, we haven’t had great access to mainstream TV and the vids that follow. The fact that I haven’t owned a TV in 5 years doesn’t help
However, I’m in Canada at the moment and, on the recommendation of a friend, who loves Mad Men, I got season one on DVD and started watching a few days ago.
I’m sickened by the sexism in the show, just as I am sickened by the violence in war movies. But just because the content turns my stomach, doesn’t make it any less real (if in fact it is a true depiction of what “life was like back then.”)
I’m not sure what to think about the popularity of the series… anyone have research on what is the source of its success?
Susan,
As I understand it, the show gets about 3 million viewers. That is not alot by network standards. However, it has had a huge cultural influence — fashion primarily, and it has generated a lot of discussion since it began airing about four years ago. The success of the show is based on many factors, including it’s writing, stylization, characters, plot, etc. But, people are also fascinated about a time that gets little attention in the US, ie, the period after WWII and before the SIXTIEs (that is the late Vietnam war sixties that gets retold over and over again). It introduced a generation of Americans to a period of time that they knew little about.
Thanks for the info Pat. I’m fascinated, in a sickened and horrified kind of way…
Can’t say I agree with what you say. It’s easy to watch a TV depiction of the 1960′s and opine that you think little has changed. Perhaps actually having lived it would change your tune. Time and distance is quite a barrier to actuality.
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