We’ve been binge watching the past seven years of Mad Men before
the final episodes air in April. With each show, I’m getting madder. The subtle
way that Betty stifles her emotions. The entitled way Don subjugates women. The
rampant sexism found in the office. While the time is late ‘50’s – ‘60’s, I
lived through a variation of it as a child and then again as a twentyish old in the ‘80’s - 90’s to be sure.
When Roger’s daughter refuses to have a lavish wedding that
sends Mona into near tears, I lived through that. We invited over 400 strangers to our wedding so that my mom could show off. It was a thing back then. Showing off for your
friends. Equating the wedding to your wealth and stature. I lived through that.
When Trudy whines to buy an apartment, then, is near
hysterical when she can’t conceive, I was that. And all because of social norms
that my parents inflicted on us. I remember insisting we buy a condo in
Hoboken, pretty much because my father thought paying rent was a waste of
money. Yup, I was Peter Campbell’s cringe-worthy social climber. Ugh.
I’m pretty shocked by how little progress women have made
since the ‘60’s. Today, 55 years later, even at jobs dominated by women, we are still paid less then men. In publishing, most women I knew started out as
receptionists and executive assistants. I was flippantly told by the Executive
Director at a large publishing house where I worked for years that I wouldn’t
be promoted to Editor because, and I paraphrase, “I was just going to go off
and have babies every couple of years…” I probably could have sued him, but I
didn’t. I should have gotten mad and argued with him, but I didn’t. I lived
through it and sit here today and wonder why I had to live through it and why
it goes on today.
There are a lot of very nuanced plot progressions in Mad Men
that makes the show so brilliant. Probably more so for those of us who have
lived through it. Like the shocking and yet hilarious way that Don chucks his
beer bottle in the public park and the way they just threw the napkins off the
blanket and left them all over the freshly mowed and manicured lawn. As if it
would somehow magically disappear.
My parents didn’t drink but you know damn well if they had,
they would have been just like the Drapers where Don instructs the daughter to
mull the fruit at the bottom of the Old Fashioned as she makes drinks for their
dinner guests. So funny because it was true. I lived that.
But what makes me mad is that I continue to relive these
stirred and shaken feelings over and over again. It’s not the ‘60’s, and today’s
inequalities are being addressed in public forums and not just undressed in
bedrooms away from the eyes and ears of the impressionable children.
And still, I want to make a point to my husband that he shouldn’t
have flirted in the office. I had gone to two separate workplaces and the first
thing one of the women blurts out to me in each place was, “Oh the things I
could tell you about your husband!” What the fuck is that supposed to mean? This
was pertaining to a job he held in NJ and then again several years later in
Florida.
And you can be damn sure, I felt the slap across my face the
same way Betty did when the crass comedian told her something similar for the
first time. And funny, she responded the same way I did (or should I say it the
other way around?). We both got really drunk and threw up.
And there’s Don. Asleep in the couch and Betty comes up to
him with very little emotion, actually, for such a serious accusation. She
wakes him and asks him, “How can you do that to someone you supposedly love? “
Of course, she didn’t confront him when she found out. She waited nearly a
week, I think. And the provocation wasn’t another woman, but her choice of
beverage. Betty takes offense not at his affair, but that he was laughing at
her, that she was so predictable that his latest ad campaign had lured her in,
unwittingly. She says, “You embarrassed me.” And he has no idea what she’s
talking about. When he does figure it out, he denies it. Because in Don Draper’s
world and in mine, men work hard at jobs that tear them down which makes them feel
entitled to seek attention outside of their homes. Because, like it was during
my dad’s day, the men in my generation had only my dad and Don Draper as role
models. They had a work-life – where they were the hunters. And they had the
home-life where they joined the gatherers. Dogging around was part of their
job. It validated them as men and while they’re out there in the world, they’re
entitled to that. Afterall, it was
their job.
Women, on the other hand, like the women of Sterling Cooper,
were paid for their time at work. They sacrificed self-esteem, self-worth for
what little power they earned in the workplace. No matter what, as with me and
Peter, he would make the money. I would always, always make ½ what he did.
I loved my job. As an editor in a family-owned children’s
publishing house, my community was supportive, for the most part. I knew my
work had positive social value and I appreciated the steady climb of my career.
I had planned to work even after I had children, but that wouldn’t be the case.
Peter didn’t want his kids growing up in Manhattan. Not enough green space.
And so, we moved to a beautiful but remote area, an hour and
a half commute each way for me. I loved my job. This was all I had ever wanted
since I was in second grade. But that meant being away from my daughter for 11
hours a day. Someone else would be raising her. How could I do that? How do you
juggle your career, your family, your marriage?
For me, I gave up on me. I made do with freelance that, by
the way, is far harder then going to work 8 hours a day. Deadlines were insane
and so my family suffered regardless of my not having to go to work every day.
Because to meet that 6 week deadline for a book to be completed, I had to put
the kids in daycare, have my parents watch them, work on weekends and evenings,
stressed out and spread too thin, I never did anything well. It broke me. But I
lived through it. Much like the
countless women on Mad Men and around the world lived through their own set of
sacrifices in order to maintain their home and their marriage.
Just look at my mom. She was a great student with much
promise. But, she met my dad and it was up to her to support him in his career.
Becoming a doctor was about as good as it got in the Philippines. If she stood
behind him, she would be there when he was the head of the pack. And he was, and
she did. And I lived through that.
She also gave up everyone she loved and everything she knew
in order to progress his career. They had the opportunity to move their family
to the United States in the ‘60’s. That would cinch their fate and the fate of
their children. It was a huge sacrifice for a woman who had servants, was from
well-respected family, and was surrounded by loved ones. But this would ensure
his success, and so he went, and she went with him.
The sacrifice was also in leaving their children. My older
brother, my younger sister and I stayed behind until they could find and set up
a home. Then, they would send for us. Two weeks or months tops. But our
grandfather didn’t want us to grow up American. They had decadent ways. He
refused to accompany us to the States. My brother was only four, I was three
and my sister was not even one.
One year and countless heartaches later, we arrived and grew
up American – good and bad…We arrived in 1967, which is where the demise of Don
Draper starts to unfold.
* * *
Jon Hamm’s facial expressions are so telling – the mark of a
truly great actor. And who doesn’t believe that January Jones is really that
cold and vacuous? That’s how good she is! All of the characters go through
multiple manifestations over the seasons and during each episode.
And we’re like that right? We can watch period pieces like
Mad Men and remember the way things were. The set-up of a perfectly decorated
home only to find out that it’s locale was best known for it’s maximum security
prison and with the change of name, came the influx of growing families fleeing
the city for an idealic life in the suburb – the Madison Avenue Ad Man gets
taken by his own creation. Funny.
And we remember the ads they talk about too and remember how
much we relied on the new medium, television, to bring us what life was supposed to be, how we were supposed to live it and I can remember
distinctly when life came in techni-color.
And like the characters, one thing I realized during the
harrowing awareness of life imitating art, I was thrust right back into the
same feelings I had back then. Back when Peter and I were first married and my
parents still dictated how I should behave. I remembered the commercials for
Spic and Span and Playtex, who I tried to meet their standard of cleanliness
and beauty. Blah blah blah…
But it’s not real and it’s not life. It’s 55 years ago and
things have changed. While I can vividly recall how I felt when I learned of Peter's flirtations; it was much like Betty's confusion and devastatation upon learning of Don's philandering. I can relive that hurt again and again. But it’s not happening today. We lived
through it and we moved on.
I can feel those feelings but they’re not happening now.
Quite frankly, I’m watching these episodes, but even they aren’t happening now.
We’re rewatching them so that we’re on top of the final season’s final
episodes. We’re going over them again because we forgot some plot twists and
want to be current when the new episodes air, so we don’t miss anything, so
that we understand what is going on now.
And that’s the significance of this for me. I’m reliving,
recapping, rewatching rethinking what happened over the years so that I don’t
miss anything today. The price I pay for documenting our life together is
rehashing the bad with the good.
But there's something else I just realized. My husband is just one
generation away from Mad Men. As I said before, he and I only had those mad men
and women as our role models. But our children, they’re going to have us. And
Peter and I have taken careful notes and have lived in radically different ways
and worked hard to recognize the shortfalls of the Dons and Bettys before us. Our
children can look at the time that this show takes place and say, ‘OMG! I’m
so glad women don’t have to wear such those clothes; that men aren't so clean shaven; that we all know how bad
smoking is; and how we need to buckle our children (and dogs) in car seats; and
that women are smart and can contribute intellectually to a conversation, a household budget, and serve as world leaders! And on and on and so
forth…
I’m glad I lived through so much of this madness so that my
children can live without it.
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