An intersection of civil rights and women’s rights is woven through this episode about women’s voices.  In this post, I would like to follow on from Kristen Warner’s engagement with the previous episode, about Mad Men viewing race relations through white women’s eyes.

In seasons past, Peggy was mentored by women about how to fit into the career path that was opening for her.  Joan Holloway and Bobbi Bartlett advised Peggy on how to attain mental and physical confidence.  Now a copywriter, Peggy continues to trace one woman’s movement through the social and career space of the time.  In “The Beautiful Girls” episode, Peggy is mentored about race relations in corporate culture (via Don) and counterculture (via Abe).

Don reminds Peggy that the agency’s role is to sell products not civil rights, consumer capitalism not social justice.  Abe raises Peggy’s consciousness about racial segregation but is dismissive of the need for women’s rights.  Peggy points out parallels between the exclusion of women and the exclusion of African Americans, but, despite her experiences, does not see that gender can cross barriers more easily than race.

In SCDP’s roundtable of ideas for the autoparts client, the agency struggles to find a strategy that can market to two classes at the same time, professionals and ordinary people:  “for the mechanic in every man.”  Later, Peggy suggests that Harry Belafonte sing the jingle for the ad:  “everyone likes him.”  By the early 1960s, Belafonte was a popular musician and film actor.  He had already made substantial inroads into mainstream entertainment.  Belafonte had significant exchange value.  But, the northern agency cedes without question to the client’s race segregation in its southern stores.  Recall, from an earlier season, Pete’s failed attempt to convince Sterling-Cooper to advertise television sets to an African American market.  Peggy crossed the gender lines at SCDP because brains trump gender.  Harry Belafonte cannot cross the race lines at SCDP because race trumps everything, even business sense.

In this episode’s didactic moments, Mad Men invites the audience to witness the clash of corporate culture and social consciousness.  Intelligent and candid, Peggy is our guide, our familiar – a white woman, newly aware, frustrated and uncomprehending about attitudes towards gender and towards race.  However, in Mad Men’s conceit about historical verisimilitude, the show remains poised at the edge of social progress.  I am reminded of R.W. Fassbinder’s comment about Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1956):  everyone in the movie theater cried, because changing the world is so hard.  Peggy asks why the agency is doing business with a company that supports racist practices, even as Joan and Roger are mugged by a black man as they walk through a “bad neighborhood.”  Abe is patronizingly dismissive of women’s rights, even as SCDP’s female professionals demonstrate competence.

Peggy may continue to develop awareness and negotiate corporate culture, but SCDP is not likely to explore the possibilities of progressive business practices.  Yet, the television audience today is not a mute and powerless witness.  In the blogosphere, people are sharing perceptions and lived experiences of the burgeoning civil rights and women’s rights movements that sit at the margins of Mad Men’s storyline and timeline.