I love this show! I have equal parts disgust for the way women were treated, and envy at the ability to be a total pig and get away with it. (smoke and drink and sex at the office? Hell yeah!) Maybe life really was simpler then, at least for the guys.

If that's the way it was it really makes you understand where the women's movement came from.

As a woman I have mixed feelings on this issue, on one hand it's certainly quality work to be so truthful about the 60s, but I must say I dislike to watch that particular scenes (When the women get treated as brainless pets) and I'm always close to turn the TV off. So it seems to me - again - that this is a show which tries to please the male audience only (?)
@MadMen: To my knowledge as a non American the women's movement of the US was "reborn" in the 60s because of that, at least that's what the books about that era says :-)

I think it's great that the show depicts things the way they really were, at least in our neck of the woods - NYC/NJ.
Older viewers will remember with either a chuckle or a smirk, but definitely with a nod of the head at the accuracy.
Younger viewers may come to a fuller appreciation of the justification for the so called 'women's movement'. And it wasn't just confined to the workplace! Even the social gatherings and of course the family dynamics, were segregated into the male/female hierarchy. What a show!

I always thought that it was so bittersweet the way Peggy subverted gender roles for the time period, but ended up subverting her own sexuality as a woman. I know the plot line was that she was pregnant, but throughout the show I kept thinking we were meant to believe that there wasn't enough space in the office for women to be both smart AND beautiful. Pick one, Peggy. Hopefully, by the start of the second season, we'll see a lot of that mentality starting to shift, hopefully with Peggy as a successful, and no longer fat/pregnant copywriter.

I like the comment madmanfan wrote about the women's movement. I am forty-six and I have younger friends who "refuse" to call themselves feminists because they have this "femi-nazi" image of us and absolutley no concept of what things were like for women not so very long ago. My mother was twenty years old in 1960 and she worked in a large office. She says the show gets it exactly right. She also admits that she didn't see how degrading it was at the time...

I don't know, I think Mad Men is dead on with how women were and could be treated (not all places were so wholly sexist, but there'd always be one or two guys). It really depended on the head of the company's own philosophy and respect/lack of respect for women (and it does influence the whole culture of an organization, believe me). Mad Men's office culture is very sexist, but you see that in movies The Apartment and The Best of Everything.

Go back and watch The Apartment, The Best of Everything, Two for the Seesaw or even Love With the Proper Stranger, all based in NYC, about working women/single women. All those films were written in the era (mid 1950s-1960s) and filmed then. I think they give pretty accurate portrayls of women's "roles" in society and business at that time. You had to be kind of tough to withstand the sexism/harrassment, and not fold.

Usually, though, the cautionary message was that a woman would have to sacrifice her softness, femininity, and morals to compete with men at the same level in business (i.e. the ultimate career woman Joan Crawford) or to even work in a man's business environment for any length of time before skipping off to marriage.

I agree with you Clayton, about Peggy's subversion of her femininity in order to have ambition. But, Peggy seemed like an innocent deer-in-headlights when she walked into that office, and Joan started showing her the "ropes" to survive.

But, come to think of it, Peggy might have always been career ambitious, because she walked right into Don Draper's office and made the hand-touching advance to let him know she was "available" which kind of shocked me. When Joan was filling her in on how to get along (and ahead I guess) at Sterling Cooper, Peggy acted turned off and resistent. But then she did the hand thing with her new boss, Draper. So, Peggy wasn't entirely rejecting the culture of the place - she did what was necessary for advancement.

After Draper rejected Peggy, and she succumbed to Pete's advances only to find out that she was a "conquest" and not an object of love, Peggy kind of shut down but switched gears pretty quickly. When Draper gave Peggy the career opportunity (minus the sex), she ran with it pretty fast.

Remember Peggy's blind date,and her bragging about business? I do think Peggy's more ambitious, than sexual to tell the truth. Because she seems to take any route that will advance her in business whether by sex or not. Don't you think when the next opportunity to advance comes up, and it means selling someone down the river to do it (who's she's not directly under), that Peggy will do what it takes? Strangely enough, I do.

I love this show because it reminds me so much of my parents. I was born in 1965 so I don't remember much of the 60's but when I look at old photos of my parents when they were young, they looked a lot like the show (the way they dress, the furnishings etc...). I do remember that my Dad never left the house without a tie, jacket and hat. I wish men still dressed like Don Draper. That is how my Dad dressed back then. And I bet Don uses Vitalis like my Dad did LOL.

LFWH, I remember Vitalis - haven't heard that name in years. Don't know why my dad didn't use Brillcream. And, of course, the standard razor Gillette, and aftershave, Old Spice!

I agree with Clayton and JAMM54 about Peggy's values seeming inconsistent.....

One minute she is castigating Joan for her "loose" morals, and the next she's boning someone she barely knows, in the workplace!

I don't get it. I can't figure out if she is an ambitious hypocrite, or she's just incredibly naive and confused.... I'm sure Season Two will clear that up.....