Groovin' to the Sixties

I was a child of the Sixties. Not a hippy-dippy type, more of a Marlo Thomas/That Girl girl. The decade was a joyful collection of uncomplicated childhood, innocence, and then later, coming-of-age fun with junior and senior high school friends. Those years between first and 10th grade were idyllic, and if a book, movie or television show promises to take me back to that time, I’m in. Always.
Which brings me to my latest infatuation--Mad Men, the Emmy award winning series from AMC that transports us to 1960’s ad agency life at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, a place where the alcohol flows well before noon and office-couch trysts are customary. And the women? Well, they’re typing. Unless you’re talking about Peggy Olson, the naïve secretary-turned-copywriter who’s gaining a foothold in this mighty world of ad men.
Mad Men airs Sunday nights and each week I wonder. Was life back then on Madison Avenue really this smoke filled? Was it this boozy? Were affairs this routine?
According to a new book called Mad Women, by Jane Maas, a real Peggy Olson-type back in the day, it was. Mad Men gets lots right, according to Maas. Not everything, mind you, but enough.
Maas, a Bucknell grad, gives us a backstage pass to ad agency life and doesn’t skimp on the details--storyboards, focus groups, television shoots, meetings, multi-martini lunches, nine-hour flights to California---all while wearing suits, heels, white gloves and hats. And she serves up enough proof on the subject of extracurricular sex and sexual harassment to acknowledge that Mad Men producers aren’t exaggerating when they recreate scenes of steamy liaisons over lunch.
If you’re like me and relish the thought of revisiting the 60s and 70s, or want to know more about ad agency life or love Mad Men, Mad Women will be worth your time.

The Push From the Book

Each book we read leaves its mark and gives you a push: a new way of thinking, a new take on life, new ideas, new goals. Here’s what this book did to me:As much as I delighted in this book, it also refreshed my memory about what women back then were up against. For starters, no equal pay for equal work. Maas writes that men even got the better work spaces. Offices with windows for males; cubicles for women. If you had children, there were precious few options for child care, no flex-time to attend school functions, no maternity leave. And speaking of pregnant, when you started to show, many women left--as in forever.

So yes, I love the 60s, but it was far from perfect. Women who wanted and needed to work struggled and cleared a path for the rest of us who entered the workforce decades later. Women are still dancing to do it all, but it’s so much better than our mothers had it. I shouldn’t forget that. Ever.