Month of Meta: Dinosaurs on Mad Men

[sistermagpie]

I can't believe Mad Men is back this weekend. I was not happy at the end of last season, though I loved the season itself. Waiting for the premiere, I found myself thinking about a discussion I seemed to have constantly on message boards about that show during Season 4 that made me really sad, but people felt very strongly about it

Comments

[aubade_saudade]

from what my mother (she had me in her 40's) has told me (I've asked her about the 50's and 60's, particularly since watching the show) people all wore a sort of uniform in that era. her parents had immigrated to the US during the Depression and her mom had also had her late. my mother was considered a rebel because she wore short skirts like her cousins from the Caribbean which she'd visit in the summer (they wore their skirts above the knee, though NEVER pants in public) stopped trying to make her hair wavy (she had straight black hair) because it took forever to do, and wore nude lipstick. she wore black all the time, and ballet slippers because she was a ballerina and her dream was to live in NY. she'd gone to the Village a few times while playing hooky and saw some girls wearing all-black ensembles. so she looked like a mix btw a Caribbean girl and a beatnik, and her teachers would shake their heads and say, "But you're such a good girl, why do you dress like that?"

so yes, people had their own sense of style even then. yet i think it's a complex thing. like, Don and Joan are dinosaurs because they are wearing the wrong uniforms? While they were wearing the right uniforms before, keeping them would be going against the grain. Not sure if i'm explaining myself well.

[sistermagpie]

I think you are explaining yourself well! I mean, one of the things I've always gotten from that era and before was that, like you said, there was a uniform. I think clothing today is sooo much freer in terms of what you can wear and what it means. Like, of course there are some things that people where to make a certain impression, but it's not usually so strict as if your skirt is too short you're not a good girl.

And I think the late 60s had a lot to do with that. That was when there was a conscious throwing off of a lot of "adult" uniforms. I think the show's shown some of the guys wearing some of the more casual looks, for instance. But it's not like somebody would look at a 40 year old man in a suit and think he should be dressed in jeans. He's part of the establishment and nobody's going to believe him as anything else.