Peggy Olson's role in AMC TV Series "Mad Men"

The AMC Mad Men series is set in the 1960s and focuses on an Advertising agency called "Sterling Cooper" on Madison Avenue of New York. The show is very popular winning and being nominated for many awards for its historical authenticity, directing, and acting. The characters depicted in this show are mostly wealthy and high class and the show is driven by the actions of the men in the show. The women in the show are often shown as weaker or simple minded and only thought to be able to perform simple tasks such as being a housewife or a secretary at the agency. These women are taken advantage of sexually and are almost always bowing down or complying with the actions that the men take upon them. This is the trailer of for season one of Mad Men and even in this short clip it can be seen how women are objectified and men are abusive of the power entitled to them by their job https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7NChV93LBw.

Peggy Olson is a women in the show that starts out in the agency as a young secretary that is still finding out the way things are done in this workplace. Originally she is the secretary of the agency's best creative mind Donald Draper and almost immediately feels that it is a part of her job to become somewhat a sexual object at Draper's command, this can be seen briefly in the trailer where she caresses his hand on his desk while giving a sort of hesitant look on her face. She is shot down by Draper in this attempt and is told to keep it professional between them two likely because Draper doesn't find her appealing. I personally believe Mad Men isn't promoting that women should be willing to put themselves in a position to be used by men of power for sex but instead challenging the idea and highlighting the wrongness of the concept. Later in the show the agency realizes Peggy provides a useful perspective from advertising because she is a smart girl and contributes largely to the agency's success in landing big companies that produce women's products. Yet still after her role in the agency is increased, she is still put in her place because she is a woman and consistently being pursed by coworker Peter Campbell, who at one point in the show gets Peggy pregnant. Interestingly Peggy hides this pregnancy from everyone likely to keep her status at the agency and possibly to seem more like a man by not letting a child get in the way of her moving up in her career, just as a man would not have to deal with a child possibly hindering their career progression. Olson is a good representation of the challenges women face in the corporate world because there are a lot of barriers that she must avoid in order to try to keep up with men that she is just as, if not smarter than, in the agency.

Another interesting situation in the show is the main character Donald Draper and how he has taken the identity of a fallen officer in the Korean war he took part in so that he would not be seen as a coward for running away from the dangers of the war. He takes the dog tags of the real Donald Draper and cuts off his relationships with his poor family so that he can effectively live as another man and absorb the power that comes along with it. Unintentionally his brother recognizes him one day and Draper pays off his brother to never attempt to come in contact with him again to preserve his image. Draper is married with two kids but like all the other men in the agency he goes out to have affairs with multiple other women possibly challenging the other idea that men have to be sexually dominant in order to fulfill their role as men in society. His wife becomes suspicious of his actions and eventually divorces Draper wrecking their family household. In my opinion Mad Men does an excellent job in showing that being this type of person isn't what it is all set out to be and every action has a consequence. This shows that keeping up an image just because you feel like it is your job is not worth losing a lifetime's worth of memories and relationships that will never be able to be recreated and this internal conflict takes a toll on Draper's conscious, changing him as the series unfolds.