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Mad Women
What's So Bad About Being Betty Draper?
What's So Bad About Being Betty Draper?
By Abbie Kopf , Contributor
Tuesday, 22nd September 2009
I’ve found a million reasons to be jealous of the women of Mad Men. As a smoker, I’m jealous that they got to smoke—inside! Or while pregnant! I love their clothes, their effortlessly effervescent hair and the way they never get red lipstick on their teeth.
Yet the Mad Women appear to be struggling through various existential crises or what Betty Friedan dubbed, “the problem that has no name.” But these housewives suffer while slurping down Manhattans. Particularly notable is the tortured and seemingly miserable Betty Draper, wife to womanizing leading man Don Draper. She is the picture of the 60s-era housewife who beams with pride to the world, but is probably a cutter when no one is watching. Betty is lonely and sad and inches from sticking her head in the oven.
The other female characters are equally tortured or dejected. Though, I will say that the scene where Betty Draper shoots down her neighbors birds with a BB gun, cigarette dangling ominously from her mouth, is pretty fracking awesome. These Mad Women have little freedom, mobility or independence. Yet I’m filled with hatred for these housewives who have everything that I want.
The other female characters are equally tortured or dejected. Though, I will say that the scene where Betty Draper shoots down her neighbors birds with a BB gun, cigarette dangling ominously from her mouth, is pretty fracking awesome. These Mad Women have little freedom, mobility or independence. Yet I’m filled with hatred for these housewives who have everything that I want.
On many days, my job is generally a humiliating experience from the start. I think that it’s actually to my deficit that I’m cute and young (what world is this?!) when working with older, more accomplished men. I have ordered lunches, schlepped boxes, taken notes, been blamed for things that aren’t my fault, and treated like I am essentially insignificant and dumb (hello, Peggy Olson) . At the end of my more wretched days, I can’t help but think (in the words of Betty Friedan) “Is this all?”Most days, nothing sounds better to me than playing with my puppies, cooking three-square meals, watching a Lifetime movie, and maybe doing a load of laundry or two. Surely I am not the only one who wishes that I were expected to stay at home? For the Betty Drapers, work was not an option and just being a housewife was not fulfilling. I get that. But a shameful part of me can’t help but feel that I wouldn’t mind being given the option to stay at home.
According to the Bureau of Labor and statistics, in 2005-2006, 60% of households which had children under the age of 18 were dual income. And within my own circle of friends and acquaintances, that percentage is even higher. Is there any woman who gets to be a housewife these days? Do I have to squirt out a kid to make this happen? What gives? And why aren’t I a kept woman?
I’m abandoning my feminist bravado, and going against everything I’ve ever thought, when I say that maybe the Betty Drapers didn’t have it so bad. Women in our time have no choice but to work, just flip-flop the “you can’t” with “you have to”. We have to work in order to feel good about ourselves and use our college degrees to pay for our single girl rent and independent woman high heels. Our husbands need us to work so that we can maintain our dual-income lifestyles. It’s expected.
But there are some days I wouldn’t mind wearing my gingham dress and cooking a turkey for my man if it meant I never had to return to my cubicle again!
Abbie Kopf is a nonprofit manager who lives in Dallas. She can be reached at abbie.kopf@yahoo.com
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