“Am I the only one who can work and drink at the same time?”
Mad Men starts on Peggy Olson’s first day in her new job
as a secretary at Sterling Cooper.
“I’m Peggy Olson, the new girl.”
Like the viewer, Peggy is a newcomer
to this strange new world.
“Go home, take a paper bag, and cut some eye holes out of it.
Put it over your head, get undressed, and look at yourself in the mirror.
Really evaluate where your strengths and weaknesses are.
And be honest.”
She has to learn to navigate a 1960s workplace,
and deal with people who aren’t exactly looking out for her.
“It wouldn't be a sin for us to see your legs.
If you pull your waist in a little bit,
you might look like a woman.”
But as the show goes on, Peggy reveals herself
to be “the new girl” in another way—
she’s a new kind of modern woman representing her time.
“I don't think anyone wants to be one of a hundred colors in a box.”
and she goes on to surprise everyone with her copywriting talent,
her ambition, and her assertiveness.
“I’d like to be the first woman creative director at this agency.”
She represents progress -- one small step for Peggy Olson
is one giant leap for womankind.
“The hell is this?”
“My new office.”
“What?
Why don't you just put on Draper's pants while you're at it?”
“You have your own office?
You?”
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“Every great ad tells a story.
Here to tell that story is Peggy Olson.”
In the first season, we might be expecting Peggy
as the new girl ingenue to be made over
and get on the Joan track… or on the Betty one.
Instead, Peggy carves out a new track that’s all her own.
“You're a Jackie or a Marilyn, a line and a curve.
Nothing goes better together.”
“Which do you think I am?”
“Gertrude Stein.”
Once she’s brought into the copywriting world in earnest,
her M.O.
becomes putting her work -- and herself -- first.
So by prioritizing her own dreams and desires,
she’s following the lead of the men around her.
“The conversation of a raise is not inappropriate at this moment,
but do not be timid.
You presented like a man.
Now act like one.”
Since there isn’t really a female example for her to follow,
she has to look to men.
“Do you think I act like a man?”
“I guess you have to a little.”
It’s easy for contemporary viewers to admire or like Peggy,
but the show keeps reminding us that people in her time
don’t always understand her.
“It was like watching a dog play the piano.”
They seem confused as to why she even wants to be a copywriter.
“I’m the first girl to do any writing in this office…
since the war.
Marge told me.”
“Writing?
Is that what this is about?
I thought you were doing that to get close to Paul.”
Peggy’s journey is wrapped up in the story of second-wave feminism.
The second-wave feminist movement started in the early 60s,
coinciding with the introduction of the pill.
“I will take you off this medicine if you abuse it.
It’s for your own good, really…
But the fact is, even in our modern times,
easy women don’t find husbands.”
It focused a lot on women’s rights in the workplace,
and The Equal Pay Act of 1963.
“They passed a law where women who do the same work as men
will get paid the same thing.
Equal pay.”
So Peggy’s timing is important because she enters the workforce
as a young, single woman soon before this movement takes off --
as opposed to someone like Betty,
who’s already a housewife and a mother by this point.
True to the second-wave feminist movement,
Peggy’s career is about showing a woman can do any job a man can do,
and claiming a woman’s right to equality in the professional sphere.
But the challenges that Peggy faces are very different from what a man encounters.
“Half of the meetings take place over golf, tennis, in a bunch of clubs
where I’m not allowed to be a member, or even enter.”
In Season One, she gets pregnant with Pete’s baby,
but she doesn’t even realize this until she goes into labor.
“Honey, you didn't mention that you were expecting.”
“What?”
“You're going to be a mother.”
One of the reasons Peggy doesn’t know she’s pregnant
is that she’s been putting on weight for a while --
“We call a girl like her a lobster.
All the meat’s in the tail.”
Show creator Matthew Weiner has suggested her weight gain
is a response to being objectified by men in the office.
“Now go write me some titillating copy.”
So unlike someone like Joan, Peggy responds to male sexual attention
by divorcing from her body --
“You’re hiding a very attractive young girl with too much lunch.”
and maybe this is a subconscious way of rebelling against
her society’s view of women, of refusing to fit
into the existing categories.
“Women want to see themselves the way men see them.”
After Peggy gives birth, she chooses not to keep the baby.
“Don't you want to hold him, sweetheart?”
This is a painful experience that stays with her over the years.
“Do you ever think about it?”
“I try not to.
But then it comes up out of nowhere.
Playgrounds…”
But Peggy refuses to be shamed, and again she looks to the example of men
to justify why this choice doesn’t define her.
“And no one should have to make a mistake just like a man does
and not be able to move on.”
The hard truth is that this sacrifice is necessary for her to even have a chance
at building a career, which is a daunting enough
in Peggy’s times as it is.
Over the seasons, we see Peggy repeatedly prioritize work
at the expense of her personal life.
“I know what I'm supposed to want, but… it just never feels right.
Or as important as anything in that office.”
Most of her romantic relationships are with men she meets at the office --
which suggests what she’s most attracted to
is professional achievement.
The most meaningful relationship
at the heart of Mad Men
is the unexpected bond between Don and Peggy.
“It’s been my privilege to not only be at your side,
but to be treated like a protégé
and for you to be my mentor and my champion.”
In the first season, it’s Pete who wants to be the next Don,
to become his protégé.
“A man like you, I’d follow into combat blindly.”
Pete as the privileged white male seems to have more in common with Don
on the outside, but Don actually sees himself in Peggy.
“I’ve taken you for granted, and I've been hard on you…
but only because I think…
I see you as an extension of myself.”
Like him, she’s strong-willed and creative
“If I get a hard time about this, I’m telling people it was your idea.”
“It was my idea.”
and she feels like an outsider.
“Where you from?
Are you Amish or something?”
“No, I, uh…
I’m from Brooklyn.”
The fact that Don can see this potential in Peggy
also reveals a seed of progress in him.
“Miss Olson, you are now a junior copywriter.”
Don Draper may seem to embody this fading era of the mad men,
but his relationship with Peggy also proves there’s a part of him
that’s better than that, a part that can look forward
to the future.
People can’t seem to understand why they would have this platonic relationship.
“Everybody thinks…
I slept with you to get the job.”
“So… are you in love with him?”
“No.”
“It’s not a ridiculous question.”
While most women on the show want to be with Don,
Peggy wants to be Don.
“I look at you and I think…
‘I want what he has.’”
She even tries to imitate him at work by being harsh with underlings
“The strategy is Clearasil stops blemishes that keep you from having fun.
That means no one should be having fun.”
strong-arming clients
“You have to run with this.
It's young and it's beautiful.
And no one else is gonna figure out how to say that about beans.”
and adopting his catchphrase
“If you don’t like what they’re saying, change the conversation.”
But over time, though, Peggy realizes she has to stop putting Don a pedestal.
“You're never going to get that corner office
until you start treating Don as an equal.”
She has to separate her identity from his in order to become more than his protégée
.
“I knew that Don did not respect her… and maybe because he made her.
And he always saw her, again, as an extension of him.”
Eventually, she doesn’t just become his equal --
Peggy’s more like Don 2.0.
She embodies all Don’s best qualities -- but she also has the self-control he lacks,
and she’s not crippled by self-loathing.
At times Peggy even surpasses her mentor, like when she wins the Heinz ketchup account
with a pitch that’s better than his
“J. Walter Thompson.
Bought it in the room.”
“Are you kidding me?”
or after the merger, when she ends up supervising his work for the first time
“25 tags should get the ball rolling.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
“Apiece.
That’s 50 total.
Between the two of you.”
Season Six ends with Don on a forced leave of absence
after yet another outburst, while Peggy sets up shop in his office.
The shot of her from behind as she looks out the window
mirrors the image of Don in the show’s opening credits.
But that opening animation is full of images of Don --
or the abstract man who evokes him -- falling… whereas Peggy is on the rise.
If Don is the tortured antihero of Mad Men,
Peggy is the show’s down-to-earth heroine.
Viewers have even labeled her the “secret protagonist” of the show
because she undergoes a more significant transformation than Don does.
So there’s an interesting hidden symbolism in this image --
this show that’s apparently about the decline of its stated subject,
the mad men, is in its soul really about the progress
of the other outsider characters with whom Weiner seems to truly empathize.
As much as Mad Men glamorizes advertising guys
having boozy lunches and living the high life,
the story is showing that this heyday is coming to an end…
and the future belongs to people like Peggy.
In our Betty video, we talked about how Betty’s tragic fate
follows from her outdated values and inability to change.
Meanwhile, Peggy’s very optimistic ending is the reverse--
it’s a way of affirming that her choices are on the right side of history.
At the end of the series, Peggy’s the only female character
who seems to “have it all.”
Peggy now has a happy personal life and a bright professional future.
“Keep it up, you'll be a creative director by 1980.”
“God, that sounds like a long time.”
“I'm telling you, it will happen.”
Her path hasn’t been easy, but in the end she’s rewarded
for envisioning a future for herself that other people couldn’t see or believe
in.
“Believe me.
Nobody wanted me there.”
“Alright, Peggy.
We’ll have a civil rights march for women.”
In Season Four, the secretary Miss Blankenship dies
and Bert Cooper reflects on her meteoric rise.
“She was born in 1898 in a barn.
She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper…
She's an astronaut.”
For a woman of her generation, becoming a secretary
was the greatest height she could dream of reaching.
“Nice to see you, Miss Blankenship.”
“I look forward to hearing that every day.”
Peggy is like the astronaut of the next generation.
“I have my own office with my name on the door…
and I am not scared of any of this.”
She starts as a secretary, and skyrockets to being a copy supervisor.
“You are the copy chief at one of the top 25 ad agencies
in the country.
You're not even 30.
I'm jealous.”
It’s no coincidence that the moon landing
happens in the same episode as her epic Burger Chef pitch—
“There may be chaos at home…
But there’s family supper at Burger Chef.”
The writers are aligning Peggy’s career achievement
with groundbreaking historical progress.
So Peggy enters the 1970s full steam ahead, with other women
following in her footsteps.
Looking ahead, we can imagine that someone like the secretary Dawn
has the potential to be a new kind of astronaut.
“I was the only one like me there for a long time…
I know it's hard.”
For viewers watching the show, Peggy’s grit plants the question
of what the next astronaut
could look like in our times.
As the new girl of her era, Peggy sets herself apart
with a self-determination that’s ahead of her time,
but which would become more and more accepted
and even celebrated in the years to follow.
“I know what you did, and it is a big deal.
And when it happened to me, they acted like it happens all the time.
It doesn’t.”
So the lesson Peggy Olson teaches us is that we don’t have to
just accept the status quo --
if you work for something there’s no precedent for,
you just might be the next woman to land on the moon.
“You going to be one of those girls?”
“I am one of those girls.”
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