Friday, September 09, 2011

Mad Men’s Maddening Style

Oh, the elegant style of the early 60s. For men: the narrowly tailored suits and knife-thin ties; for women, the pencil skirts with wide cinching belts, the clinging cashmere sweaters punctuated by pearls.  Take a look around and it’s clear that this season we are mad about Mad Men – and not just the TV show. Suddenly, in the “ya-gotta-have it” world of merchandizing, the winking vintage sex appeal of the early ’60 is being cranked up to sell upscale mall clothing, batwing eyeliner, and even retro telephone handsets so you can have Bluetooth technology but still look like you’re answering the phone for Don Draper in a red-lipsticked whisper.

What the heck is going on?  I’m a sucker, myself, for vintage fashion, but I wonder why now – in this political moment – we are hungry for the style of those very conservative “men will be men” and “women will be objects” times.

It’s especially curious because the show Mad Men hardly romanticizes those years.  Don’t worry – no spoilers here for those of you who might still be Netflixing your way through the first four seasons.  But it’s no secret that through Don Draper’s volcanically catastrophic professional and private life, we see sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, racism, and self-loathing stitched through nearly every encounter.  The show is at once about the shiny American Dream, and the nightmare beneath the surface, even for those who seem on top of the game.

And yet, the show’s gorgeously realized period sets and costumes make for such seductive entertainment.  It’s a disconcerting viewing experience.  On the one hand, we are appalled by the numbing alcoholism and blatant sexism that the show reveals in Technicolor close-up.  But on the other, the luxurious interiors and costumes make it so fascinating to bask in those times.  Oh, for a tinkling scotch and soda and a curve-hugging knit dress – and at work!  It’s so bad!  And such horrifying, fabulous, fantasizing fun!

And now the look of Mad Men – the style of the pre-revolutionary ‘60s – has been unmoored from the show’s critical context, and is free-floating everywhere in commodity culture. Huge windows in our malls display character look-alikes in chicly retro clothes, asking us: “Are you Don?” “Are you Betty?” … when who wants to be either of those characters, as miserable as they are beautiful?  And where’s the window featuring the scrappy proto-feminist Peggy, urging us to dress like the character who is pushing for equity, pushing toward the revolutionary later ‘60s?

As I try to make sense of my own dress-up appetites, yes, I’ll admit it - whetted by Mad Men— I reach for media scholar Susan J. Douglas’s latest book, newly out in paperback under the title The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild. In it, she argues that the rise of retro-sexism in pop culture is enabled in part by a misguided belief that feminism’s work has been completed – that women have already risen to power in a way that makes it ok to enjoy sexism again, because we can do it with an ironic wink and an air of superiority.  We know better now, don’t we?  So, millions of viewers this fall will devour the Mad Men knock-offs on network TV: The Playboy Club, and Pan Am, both of which will likely encourage us to tsk-tsk at those misguided times, while providing the spectacle of young women squeezed into playboy bunny costumes, stewardess suits, and babydoll negligees. Same old sexism, parading under ironic distance.

If only there were distance.

We might like to imagine we’re beyond those mad and maddening times, but a front-page article in the Guardian recently noted that at the current crawl toward pay equity, the salaries of female CEOs won’t match their male counterparts for another one-hundred years.  And just last week, it took an outraged petition to get J.C. Penney to pull a t-shirt from their collection for girls ages 7-16 that claimed in spunky script, “I’m too pretty to do homework, so my brother has to do it for me.” We can feel superior to the retro sexism of The Playboy Club on TV, but how different is it, really, than the latest Celtic-themed breastaurant to open in a posh part of Michiana, featuring female servers in naughty Catholic schoolgirl get-ups?

Meanwhile, in TV land, Mad Men is creeping toward social revolution, when people finally burst out of their girdles and narrow suits, all the better to agitate for progress. So, who benefits, now, from selling retro-sexim? School’s back in session, folks.  Open Susan Douglas’s book.  Pull up the trailer for the new documentary on women in the media, titled Miss Representation.  Instead of getting numb with a Don Draper drink, let’s get sharp and think.  And then, my fellow students of culture: Let’s discuss!

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on September 09, 2011 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Arts & Entertainment • Customs & Rituals • Fads & Fashion • History • Women & Men • Work • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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