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Mad Men Women: Who’s the best candidate for ’60s liberated woman?

Elisabeth Moss as Peggy in Mad Men

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More thoughts on “Mad Men,” Season Four, so there’s SPOILERS below, you’ve been warned.

As the ’60s wear on, both in our memory and on Mad Men, inklings of feminist consciousness appear to be awakening, if mainly with a whisper instead of a thunderclap.

Peggy is the career girl gaining confidence with each successive business win over most of the moronic frat boy types she’s forced to work with, so she’d be the natural choice.

Christina Hendricks and John Slattery as Joan and Roger in Mad Men

This season, she gets some extra tutelage from her downtown lesbian friend Joyce (played by Zosia Mamet, daughter of David Mamet and Lindsay Crouse) – who seems content with providing heterosexual matchmaking services, but that’s another post.

Still, Peggy is very concerned about the boyfriend or lack of one, claiming virginity (she who has thrown her spiked heels to the ceiling willy-nilly at Sterling

Elisabeth Moss as Peggy and Randee Heller as Miss Blankenship in Mad Men

Cooper and then later, big surprise, had a baby) in one instance before apparently finding a real keeper (and a real looker) in Charlie Hofheimer (Abe Drexler), which was, incidentally, set up by Joyce.

And of course, she’s wistful that Pete Campbell’s wife Trudie finally has their baby, when she (and we) all know that she suffers still as a mother who had to give up her illegitimate child (well, she gave it to her sister to raise), fathered by Pete. So, it looks like she’s holding a torch, somewhat.

But still, pretty liberated for the 1960s!

Then there’s Joan. I’ve always thought she was constrained by her looks, much smarter than her job description or pay grade would assume. She’s always known how to use her hourglass figure and large bosom to get what she wants both personally and through intimidation of both men and women in the workplace.

At her job this season, she got a promotion and new title without any extra money (gee, why does that sound familiar?). I was sad to see her resume her affair with Roger Sterling, though I do see her with a more high-powered guy than her sweet husband, the handsome, pleasant (most of the time, when not raping said wife on office floor) enough doctor with some head problems who’s got “I will not make it out of Vietnam intact!” written on his forehead.

But mostly because Roger is such a dick. He IS hot, who can resist, I mean, take me out for a steak, a martini and to your swanky hotel, I’d say yes, for sure Rog, let’s go!

But c’mon, we all know Joan is destined for much greater things than to be pining away as an army doctor’s wife. Basically, I think she can write her own ticket, and she’s conniving enough to do so.

Which brings me to….OK, claiming the baby you are going to have is your husband’s even though you know and the real father will know that it’s not, will just. not. end. well. It never does – Joan doesn’t know it, but DNA testing is on the way!

And because I don’t think this is smart of Joan, I can’t really say she’s the exemplary women’s libber either.

Betty Draper doesn’t really come into this mix since she’s still very much playing by a 50s rulebook, and can get away with it because, well just because. She’s got the right everything in just the right quantity which will set well until about 1969 or 70, when those kids become teenagers and she has the first of what I would think would be many identity crises. Involving vodka and barbs.

So, that leads me to conclude that the real feminist of the show is:

Jon Hamm as pensive Don Draper

Don Draper himself! Yes – it shows in his dealings with the women in his life – whether it’s Peggy, who he treats as an equal (meaning, just as harshly as the men reporting to him at the firm) to the respect he shows to his ex-wife Betty even though she must be maddening to him. But not only the easy ones, all the women he dates or beds who, for the most part, get respectful treatment with Don (even Doris the waitress, recipient of a blackout fuck, was at least apologized to) – but also with those females with which he plays a different role – say, as the perplexed but fair father to Sally or the bemused boss to the force that is the elderly Miss Blankenship.

You have to give the man credit. A less thoughtful character would treat all of them as somewhat less – Don’s been through enough pain to understand some of what it’s like not to be king of the universe.

 

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