It's A Wonder We've Made it This Far!

Mad Men is a TV series, currently ending its third season, about a Madison Avenue advertising executive in the early 1960s. Both the writing and the acting in each episode is nearly flawless.I have become addicted to the series, so I spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday watching the Seasons 1 and 2 DVDs.

The authenticity of this program is impressive. All managers are male. All secretaries are female. Everybody smokes cigarettes constantly. Hard liquor is available in the boss's office. The three-martini lunch is de rigeur, and marital infidelity is as common as the snap-brim hat worn by all class of men. And the women wear curve-hugging clothing, the highest of heels, and carefully coiffed hair, all designed to attract passes from the bosses and their minions. Everybody is a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) and ethnic jokes flow like the booze they all drink.

Female employees are patronized or objectified, sometimes both. Most of the time, they are ignored. They are expected to "cover" for their bosses' indiscretions and lapses in character, while enduring snarling wrath when their covering doesn't work.

The men feign camaraderie while operating under a brutal set of Rules of Engagement. They will do anything (or anyone) to get ahead while keeping secrets capable of undoing it all. This is certainly the 60s I was trying to grow up in.

It is often painful, sometimes shameful, to watch these scenes play out. But I love it because it proves how very far women (and men) have come in the American workplace, and I have lived through it all. Luckily, I was still in high school in the early 60s, oblivious to shenanigans in the offices downtown. With all the smoking and drinking and carousing that went on, it's a wonder anybody lived to old age!