Absolutely, astro, and a know some of these myself. It’s not really pertinent to Mad Men, but it’s an interesting and I think very complicated question.
Some very quick impressions of mine:
#1 Most people’s work life sucks even if they’re very well educated and have what’s considered a good job. Caretaker Man allows a woman to take her job or leave it. (And if men wouldn’t feel emasculated by it, I’m sure many more of them would be happy to have a Caretaker Woman give them the same leeway)
#2 People in a relationship do need to take care of one another. So in that sense we all are looking for a Caretaker Partner. But I think women are much more likely to think that the kind of Care they need from a partner involves a man who solves all of their problems for them. Men are much more likely to think that their Caretaker Woman will do stuff like household care, childcare and figuring out where to take dry cleaning
#3 There is a sexual element here. I think some women still feel like if they don’t have a Caretaker Man they haven’t quite arrived at what their biology destines them to seek out. (I think this is bullshit but people’s psychic lives are very complex so the bullshit you’re steeped in all your life can feel very, very real).
Why bullshit? Re “biological destinies” most women’s baseline sexual selection mental wiring is configured to evaluate and (generally) select the most capable males in terms of resource provision based on whatever criteria she chooses to use. If a rational women looks around her at her peers (or potential aspirational peers) the women with the males most capable of providing resources (ie wealthier or better educated men) are not typically differentially unhappier than women with less capable men. If anything many seem quite satisfied with their choices.
Marrying or couple bonding with a wealthier or high achieving man may have it’s challenges, but it’s utterly rational and common sensical for a woman to seek out the highest quality resource providing male possible if she intends on having children or otherwise seeks to be provided for.
My point is that that is not what I’m seeing. Intellectually, I think that’s what I’m supposed to be seeing, but either the writing or the acting is failing to portray that. The only reason I’m getting that is because I’ve read modern history.
It’s one of my problems with this season; I think someone has dropped the ball when it comes to the women. Suzanne, for instance, isn’t quite working as a character. Most of her actions portray a certain character, and then her words or actions just go completely off the deep end and stop resembling any person I’ve ever met, ever and it isn’t really in service of the story and I can’t figure out what the hell the show writers are doing with her.
I really do think that’s all bullshit astro. If what we’re talking about is a woman with a college degree, choosing a man on the above basis isn’t rational at all. I don’t believe that women are mentally wired to favor what you call “resource provision”; and if they were they would find Bill Gates a whole lot more sexually attractive than, say, Jon Hamm before he became a celebrity.
In fact the mentality you outline dictates a mode of default Betty Draperism for women and it can lead to the kind of incoherent mess that you regret in Betty.
I don’t think this is the place to get into the details though–it would be an unconscionable hijack of a truly great Mad Men episode.
You’re right as the characters become more complex over time women’s “voices” in Mad Men season 3 seem to gone completely off track re any relation to contextual reality or how the character is presented. You listen and you go " Where the ***k did *that *come from?" The women’s roles are not really being scripted all that coherently.
Regardless of what I feel for her ability to get some on the side, Suzanne is neither a good role-model nor teacher – her sleeping around is having a direct, negative impact on her students, because she’s sleeping with their fathers. Don obviously wasn’t the first.
Even if she’s the bee’s knees for teaching their ABCs, she’s also wrecking their home lives for her own selfish reasons.
I’m hoping the character is gone for good. She’s not really well-developed, more of a caricature of the Free Spirit. The other characters who’ve done rather awful things – Don, Peggy, Pete, etc., etc. – have enough development to make them sympathetic. All Suzanne had was her brother, and that wasn’t nearly enough to redeem my interest.
But Suzanne is a prop, whereas Betty is not. I’m not sure I understand the disconnect between what you think Betty is supposed to symbolize and what you think the actual writing/performance enables her to portray.
It’s interesting if you’re right since this season of Mad Men IIRC was written almost wholly by women–between 20-something and 50 I think I read.
Okay–I think I see your point. Though I would add that given what we know about Don and Betty it’s hard to think that if only one teacher had had more moral fiber they’d have been on the road to secure family life for Sally and Bobby.
Totally agree. She’s a bit like Midge who was also under-developed but had interesting friends
It’s not that they don’t sound like “women” it’s that character development wise they sound like slightly schizophrenic women. Being a female writer doesn’t make you an ace at writing coherent female characters any more than being a male writer does for men’s roles.
Re Suzanne being a “prop” that’s exactly what we don’t expect with the writing quality of Mad Men. Even if someone has a limited role the character was exquisitely crafted. Susanne as an off the rack hippy-chick-nurturing-earth-nymph is just that “a prop” and that’s not up to the expected quality of the series.
I don’t disagree about Suzanne (as I think my comments on her so far make quite clear). I also don’t disagree about female writers–I just find it interesting that the show is now almost wholly written by women.
Where I think I do disagree is that I find Betty’s “schizophrenic” features to be convincing and compelling. I don’t often like the character and never admire her but I do think that’s the intention of the writing and direction.
I’d add that I’m pretty disappointed with Peggy this season. I don’t absolutely reject the affair with Duck as something that might happen for this character–but the scene of their first encounter just didn’t work for me. Peggy has temporarily lost some of that take charge aspect of her character that made her stand out and have such an interesting narrative arc in seasons 1 and 2. She is best in her interactions with Don, but there isn’t as much of that as I’d wish. And of course Joan, who is great, has almost disappeared by now.
The eggs of this season are almost wholly in the Don/Betty basket: but if I’m impressed with the basket it’s because I think it’s been brilliant and that’s partly because I think the writing/performance of Betty has been really good.
My last, I promise, thoughts on Ms. Farrell…I was responding to The Weird One’s odd idea that who a teacher sleeps with shouldn’t matter as long as she does her job well. Uh, yeah, it DOES matter. Then mhendo thought I should be ‘congratulating’ her for doing her job and putting up a facade of wholesome role model. Uh, yeah, she’s hiding her affair with Don well, so far - of COURSE she is, she has to hide it. What’s to ‘congratulate’ her about?..Surprisingly, her storyline hasn’t gone anywhere in spite of overheated online speculations, and now it’s just hanging there. So she may very well have been just a prop, unless she does something desperate in tonight’s final episode.
Why? You’re being kind of prissy re Peggy’s decisions. She’s taking charge of her own sexuality. She’s moved from being attracted to a series of boyish, quasi-androgynous men to a more rough edged real man. She drinks, she smokes, she competes, she’s got 100 times the sexual vivacity and energy of Betty Draper. She likes to fuck - a lot - and is kind of ham handed at seducing or being seduced. Duck as a horny bastard who finds her attractive is a mutually satisfactory solution for both of them.
I guess it’s very hard for me to imagine duck as anyone’s idea of a good fuck. He’s inept and awkward. He’s trying to pull off the 60s manhood thing but never quite does. In fact, he makes it look pretty abject.
Well I guess I can imagine how someone else might see it that way.
Bear in mind, Peggy is an important character for a certain kind of female viewer who really enjoys Man Men even while knowing that she would hate having to live through that kind of sexism (among other things).
It was great to watch her move from someone so ignorant that she didn’t even recognize her own pregnancy to someone in possession of talent and ambition. We know that sexual relationships will be difficult to work out for a young woman as she deliberately offroads into a man’s world. We’ve seen Peggy transit from willing office plaything (when she was still Don’s secretary), to a career woman trying to be a woman and one of the boys at the same time, a career woman objecting some guy’s hard sexual sell, a career woman without much of a life, and a career woman hiding who she is to have casual sex with a college guy. All of this IMO was very interesting and well done.
And then comes the affair with Duck.
Well without going into the full array of details of what turned me off in that episode, and without belaboring the point about Duck’s abject masculinity (about which I could go on), I can only say that you seem to assume that for a twenty-something woman like Peggy sex with an older man will always be better than sex with a man her own age.
Now I am guessing astro that you are a straight man, no?
If so, without any disrespect at all to men of Duck’s age, I’d just like to say that sex with a twenty-something man is not half bad
