For those who've seen mad men, does Peggy embody the scorned woman feminist that many people like to accuse

Question

all feminists of being. She got a little power and started treating the other women terribly so that she could play with the "big boys". Do you think that that behavior could've been avoided and still gotten the big feminist rights accomplished?

Answer 1

In actuality, feminists were most likely to oppose that behaviour; it was mostly evident of women in organizations dominated by conservative men, i.e. Connie Marshner, Meg Greenfield. That behaviour can be avoided if enough women commit never to treat each other that way. Besides which, this was in the 60's, when advertising was ruled by the big boys; now the field is about 60% female, if I remember correctly.

Answer 2

You're looking at this in reverse. She's not cruel, she's insisting on the same respect the secretaries give the men. Peggy's good at upholding her "role," while the secretaries still treat her as a "friend." A correlary is parents who act like their kid's friend, instead of his/her parent.

Answer 3

Just a quick check and I see this is yet another mass media show depicting a woman which is produced and almost entirely written by, men.

Sure, whoever her name is embodies something ~ but I'd be willing to bet she's pretty much the standard media feminist of male creation (only two of the 15 or so writers are women, and neither of them have written an episode with this character as central).

So, what does she embody?

The stereotype, of course.

But thanks for the heads up.

If it comes to Australia, I won't fall for the 'ground breaking' hype which sucked me into two episodes of the Sopranos ~ two hours of my life I'll never get back.

For the record, I have a long and varied working life and have never come across someone like this. I'd say they are far more the exception than the media would have us believe.

Cheers :-)