Peggy Olson

This season, Mad Men set in 1968, a time of powerful and exciting organizing in the U.S. feminist movement—while the fictional Madison Avenue advertising crew scribbles out new taglines for headphones, 1968 was the year feminists took to the streets to protest the Miss America pageant.  

From coffee shops to reception desks, from retail counters to runways, how do TV depictions of young women at work ring true, and how do they fall short?

I haven't been writing about Mad Men too much because I am trying to let it simmer for a while before I make any pronouncements of quality.  I will say that I'm still waiting for the good stuff, and that while I'm moderately optimistic that it's coming, this has, thus far, been a strange season for Mad Men's women.

 Take Peggy, for example.  You already know that I have a fondness for awkward young women on television.  It comes from a sense of solidarity with the future name-taker who hasn't yet seen just how many asses she'll be able to kick someday.  So it will come as no surprise, I think, when I tell you that I'm on Team Peggy in the Mad Men universe, hoping that she will ultimately triumph over the men who decided what she was before she had the chance to discover it herself.  I have always preferred her awkward ambitiousness to Joan's swagger and tart remarks - there was a sense of the outsider to the former, and a refreshing sort of self-awareness.