'Mad Men' Is My Personal History

When I watch "Mad Men," I feel like I'm watching my mother's life morph into my own. The first two seasons were so painful in their treatment of women, I found it very difficult to sit through and often put off viewing it on DVR for days. It's getting easier, but only gradually.

Peggy is the pivot point of the series and the transition between eras. I'm old enough to remember what it was like to be shut out, to file complaints and lawsuits, to get included, and then to experience the weird gaffes of men who didn't exactly know how to treat you ("You're in my dreams," one prospective boss said; "Hasn't she blossomed beautifully?" an actual boss said to clients).

As recently as 15 years ago I was still having conversations with fellow female professionals about our new discovery that you could dress the way you wanted -- instead of "for success" in a severe, asexual skirt suit -- and still succeed. I still remember my first boss, a woman who wore those suits, and the way she treated me and the other secretary who worked for her. She called us "nice plain girls."

We were graduates of good schools (Brown and the University of Michigan), but we were not even allowed to correct grammar, much less streamline any language, when typing awkward longhand manuscripts written by lawyers. That was back in the days when men didn't type. Or should I say "keyboard"?

I watch this series and I'm horrified at the casual cruelty with which people treat their children. The lack of rules when it comes to drinking, smoking and littering, and the many, many rules meant to prevent you from being who you are. The layers and layers of repression and subtext. The whole thing has the feel of an Ingmar Bergman movie, stories about people who just happen to be living amid a pile of metaphors and deeper meanings.

Unlike Donna, I don't see Don Draper as a typical philandering husband. I cannot get out of my mind the final scenes from Sunday night's episode. Don gazes at the elementary school teacher doing a Maypole dance with her students, her hair flying, her feet bare on the grass. At first you think he's locking in on another seduction target. Then his hand strokes the grass and his eyes rise to the trees. He's groping for reality, truth, rootedness, maybe proof of life. His own.