"Mad Men" writer thinks today's young women are all a bunch of Bettys
Image courtesy of AMC.com
While waiting for Battlestar Galactica to return in January, I've become obsessed with another cable show that, on the surface, also appears to take place in a completely alien universe. Mad Men is set on the Madison Avenue of the early 1960's, and the creator, designers and producers go to impressive lengths to ensure that the show remains firmly rooted in the past: every crystal decanter, every Wheel-O children's toy, every Chip 'n Dip are carefully chosen for period accuracy. This throwback world is ruled by huffing, puffing, slick-talking suits and their harems of pencil-skirted secretaries (at the Sterling Cooper ad agency), coiffed wives (at home) and sultry mistresses (everywhere else). Beneath the cloud of cigarette smoke and the haze of 11am martinis lies a pervasive chauvinism and near-misogyny.
It can be easy for modern career gals like me to dismiss the craven office politics of Mad Men as an anachronistic blast from the past, and to breath a sigh of relief that the show's blatant and infuriating sexism belong to bygone days. But while I may be lucky enough to work at a women's magazine where the male-female ratio of top execs is the inverse of Sterling Cooper's, it's still a mad, mad world out there in the industries of law, finance, science and yes, advertising.
I was reminded of this the other night while listening to some of the Mad Men behind-the-scenes commentary for Episode 6: Babylon (that's one of the nice things about watching a show for the first time on DVD: you can totally gorge on the special features). This episode, in which several characters reveal a secret longing for some unattainable conquest (Don for Rachel, Rachel and Betty for Don, everyone for personal fulfillment) while the agency pursues an account with the Israeli Tourism Bureau (hence the beautifully metaphoric title), was written by the husband-and-wife team of André and Maria Jacquemetton.
During the writers' voiceover, Maria Jacquemetton provided historical context and led us on a tour of the gender landscape of the time. "Women were forced back into the home largely by advertising," she said. She explained that advertising made women feel like they had to be the perfect housewife, with the perfect house and the perfect children, and still be able to "cook dinner in a crinoline skirt." She blamed the 60's for forcing women back into the straightjacket role of homemaker. Jacquemetton then went on to observe that what was happening in the 60's "is very similar to what is going on today."
I was puttering around the apartment at this point, half-listening to the commentary while cleaning up and getting ready for bed, but when I heard this, I handed the sponge to my fiancé (who was already holding a mop and a trash bag) and tuned in. I thought that Jacquemetton was about to bring up the sexism of the modern workplace, and maybe point out that while women are no longer relegated to the steno pool and bosses can no longer demand that their assistants show more leg (often because those bosses are often female), we still haven't reached true workplace equality. Perhaps she'd point out that in many industries, women are still paid less for the same work. Or maybe her goal was to spark a discussion of the more insidious and less obvious ways that the American work culture holds women back, such as providing paltry or nonexistent maternity and paternity leaves, penalizing parents for leaving early to pick up kids from school, treating fathers better than mothers, refusing to acknowledge the difficulties of being a working parent in an increasingly demanding work sphere. As many of us are realizing, the new twenty-first century sexism often waits to strike until after a working woman becomes a working mom.
But instead of pointing out examples of sexism that still exist, Jacquemetton chose instead to turn on young women workers. "It's surprising to me that a lot of the attitudes are kind of similar to today," she said. "I talk to young women, and it's upsetting to me sometimes how many of them want to stay home and raise their children and don't care so much about their careers."
Aha! I got it. Jacquemetton was referring to the women who desert their professional posts and ditch their careers in order to care full-time for their children. This group, first brought to national attention (obsessive national attention, I might add) by that infamous 2003 New York Times article by Lisa Belkin, have become popular whipping-girls for older feminists. I could see where this was heading.
As expected, Jacquemetton then launched into defense of the Women's Movement, which quickly turned into a rebuke (albeit mild one) of my peers. "[These women] see their mothers and my generation, women like us fought really hard, we fought to make inroads for people to have something for themselves.
"I'm not diminishing children --I'm a mother: I have two children. But at the end of the day, who are you as a person and what do you have for yourself…that's what matters. I see young women stepping back into that role [of housewife] now and it's scary how similar it was to back then."
Oh, Mary. A catfight? Really?
I agree that advertising created impossibly high standards for feminine perfection, and that not only drove many well-off women back into the home in the 60's, but also led to a national epidemic of female low self-esteem (this is classic Women Studies 101). I agree that there's more to life than cooking, cleaning and kids, and that women need to pursue meaningful work outside the home – hey, I read The Feminine Mystique.
What saddens me is Jacquemetton's desire for intergenerational antagonism. I think it’s a bit of a hyperbole to make it sound like today's young women emulate the housewives of the past, like we're all marching off to some "scary" Stepford Wives future. At that NY Times piece has been endless criticized for overstating the situation and focusing on a narrow subset of women. Why are older women so stuck on that article?! There are so many more of us who have absolutely no intention to leave our careers when we have kids -– but we still don't have a clue how we're going to do both.
It's a bummer to hear highly successful First Wave feminists--our mentors--turn around and blame younger feminists for failing to reach similar levels of success, or for defining success differently. We all agree that young feminists owe their moms and aunts and big sisters a grand debt of gratitude. But I get frustrated when I see women in my mom's generation adamantly refuse to sympathize with the challenges faced by their daughters who want a family and a career. I'm sure it wasn't easy for Jacquemetton to become a hugely successful writer and producer and to raise a family. I have no doubt that she faced all kinds of insurmountable-seeming obstacles. Perhaps one of the ways she dealt with them was partnering professionally with her husband (or marrying her writing partner). She clearly found a solution that worked for her, and she's happy and fulfilled, and has two kids and a long list of impressive writing and producing credits--not to mention a shiny new Emmy for Mad Men. In fact, as an aspiring writer (and maybe an aspiring mother, as well), and someone who is feeling great stress and despair over how to do both, I'd love to learn more about her choices.
I assume that Maria Jacquemetton figured she was giving female viewers a little shake, and embarrassing some of them for entertaining pathetically retrograde ambitions of housewifehood. But if you were contemplating or embarking upon a life path that everyone else agrees is "challenging" at best and madness-inducing at worst, her jibes probably wouldn't provide much comfort. And if you were already a stay-at-home mom, hearing your choices referred to as "scary" and the first step towards a return to the stifling, repressive past probably won't compel you to make any bigger decision than to turn off the DVD commentary and return to the main menu.
On second thought, that may be the best and most effective plan of all. Because Mad Men constantly reminds us that while all women were treated second-class citizens back then, the stay-at-home-moms ranked the lowest. Housewives like Betty Draper have little power and no autonomy, and their empty lives are micro-managed by philandering absentee husbands (who are always running around with more independent, successful working women!). Poor disillusioned Betty is bored and lonely, in denial about her crushed expectations, and can barely control her frustration (remember when she slapped her single-mom neighbor in the supermarket? Or when she shot the neighbor's pigeons with her son's BB gun?). No thinking viewer could ever envy Betty's situation. The lesson best and most persuasively expressed in the episodes (not the commentary) is that the world of Mad Men is not a world we'd ever want to return to.