As someone who is always late to the party, but gets there eventually, I started watching MadMen from Season 1 with Becky last night, in hopes of getting caught up before the fifth season begins. So far, I would say I'm impressed. What has particularly impressed me, however, is not the show itself, but rather the glaring contrasts between the culture it portrays and the culture in which I find myself.
After we finished our second episode - intrigued, we put on another one after the first - I found myself in the kitchen thinking about what I had just seen. As I washed the dishes and wiped down the counter, I thought to myself, "Don Draper wouldn't be cleaning up the kitchen." Then, I realized I had made dinner tonight; Don Draper wouldn't make dinner, either. In fact, Don Draper also wouldn't do things like hang around in the morning so he could feed his daughter just to have a little time with her that day or take her on weekend mornings so his wife could tackle the Sisyphean task of catching up on sleep. These thoughts kept running through my head.
Where they really took off, however, is when I started comparing the dynamics of Sterling-Cooper versus FactSet Research Systems, Inc. Men and women wore suits at Sterling-Cooper; jeans and sometimes even message t-shirts, if not business casual, are the norm at FactSet. Mad Men went out for four-martini lunches; we get $8 worth of food from our cafeteria, where I can assure you there are no libations.
What I find most interesting, entertaining, and at times even uncomfortable is the way women fit into the corporate dynamic in the late 1950's. I guess what I find so alien is the concept of "girls" versus "women". For example, "girls" worked at Sterling-Cooper; "women" work at FactSet. "Girls" are posessions; "women" are assets. "Girls" work for you; "women" work with you. To be a "girl" at Sterling-Cooper was synonymous with being a machine, albeit one that you expected to ooze sex appeal and always have a bottle of rye handy. To be a "woman" at FactSet is to just be another valued employee. Women have ownership of products and content sets; women are engineers; women are executives. Our general counsel is a woman. Several of my peers are direct reports to women. Don Draper would think he had died and gone to hell had Sterling been a woman. Perhaps the most impressive line, I think, came when Joan Holloway was breaking in Peggy on her first day. Upon uncovering Peggy's typewriter, Joan says to her: "Don't be overwhelmed by the technology. The man who invented this made it simple enough for a woman to use," to which Peggy replied "I hope so!" In thinking about this a little more, I don't know if Peggy's response was sarcastic, as I get the sense that she is a pretty strong person. When I heard that, however, I was astounded by the implied and accepted inferiority that both of them have; it's a sense that I gather is totally alien to most modern American women.
The second elephant in the room for me was the fact that everyone in this 1950's universe works for the white men. This is not just women, but minorities as well. Not only that, just "traditional" American minorities. Jews still operated in their shadow-universe, as was implied by their foray into having their first Jewish (and, gasp!) female client. Blacks were not to be heard or seen, unless they were bringing you a drink or attending a restroom. And good luck finding an East or South Asian even as an extra. Meanwhile, the corporate world of 2011 is truly a kaleidoscope, not to sound too cliched. In any given day, I will interact with white, black, Indian, Korean, Chinese, and sometimes Filipino coworkers. Yes, technology has made this a smaller world, but the contrast to this racial hierarchy where everyone knew their place really jumped out at me, as well.
Of course, Madison Avenue of the 1950's might have been more rigid in its ways that some other corporate cultures and, in 2011, some of the social inequities of yesteryear still exist. Just look at Wall Street or hedge funds, in particular. And, as a white man myself, I'm even willing to concede that the world of FactSet might not be as flat as I just made it out to be. But, I can't imagine a world like Sterling-Cooper; I just couldn't be that much of an elitist prick where women just deferred to everything a man said or did. And I'm sure Don Draper couldn't imagine a world where he had to take the ideas of women and brown people seriously and treat them as equals. In fact, I'm sure it would never occur to him.
Looking at the big picture, the fact that in the blip of time that is 50 years so much can change about the way we see and value ourselves and the way in which we see and value others is truly amazing.
