Mad About Mad Men

Mad Men, the new, slick, stylish show, that epitomizes a time when Playboy was the ultimate in sophistication, offers up a view of how women in the office were treated that would give today's HR rep a heart attack, has helped me relate to -- of all people -- my mother.

The show, about a Madison Avenue advertising agency, just debuted three weeks Thursday, and I'm already a loyal viewer. And, at 11:01, as soon as I finish watching it, I frantically call my mom for clarification and a history lesson. My part of the conversation usually begins with, "Did you see what he did/said to her and could that really have happened?"

I've never considered myself much of a feminist -- I'm not not a feminist -- but with the exception of a media job or two where the old school behavior induced more eye rolls than HR calls, today, for the most part, there really hasn't been an overwhelming reason to go out and burn my La Perla.

But I'm floored by the antics in Mad Men and the entitlement of the men in the office and the combination of resignation (boys will be boys) and if-we-can't-fight-it-let's-work-it-to-our-advantage attitude on the part of the women.

Was it really like that?

Yes and no, according to my mother.

Her situation was a little different from that of the women on the AMC show. She didn't work in an ad agency and she wasn't a secretary. She worked in a Wall Street law firm whose founder thought he was being "very modern and progressive" by hiring a woman. (My mother had graduated from Columbia law school, where her boss, once a poor Irish kid when that wasn't exactly a fashionable thing to be, had graduated from on scholarship so he was eager to give someone else from Columbia a chance. And, if I may be allowed to do a little bragging here, she at 20 (!) was known at the time as the second youngest graduate of the school. Roy Cohn was the first.)

So, here's what she told me. She was hired as a lawyer -- the firm's first female lawyer -- and for the most part, the eleven other attorneys in the firm were supportive. The clients, not all so much. On several occasions, my mother was asked by her boss to sit with the secretarial pool so as not to upset the clients that a female lawyer was working on staff.

She was also the only Jewish person working there as a lawyer; a fact that her boss pointed out, kind of a proud of himself for hiring someone Jewish and a woman (a two-fer!). "Here's my little Jewish worker" is how, beaming, he would introduce my mother to the clients who were more "progressive" themselves.

My mom's reaction? She wasn't thrilled, but what could she do? She knew she was lucky even to have her job. The Mad Men types who she would see as she headed into work from the train in Larchmont -- she lived at home for her first few years after law school; she was, after all, twenty when she graduated -- were amazed that she was taking the train into town with them, and not waving goodbye to a husband waiting on the platform. They kind of looked at her as a curiosity. When it was printed in the paper the next year that she was admitted to the New York City Bar (one had to be 21) people she hardly knew came up to her to congratulate her; the fact that she, as a young woman, had made it was a big deal.

Often the women who graduated from law school (and there were only six in her class out of three hundred) had difficulty landing a job in their field. The thinking was that the women wouldn't "fit into the culture of the firm." This was known throughout the school. And, while I don't know this for a fact, she told me for years that she thought this was the case with one such woman older she knew of at Columbia: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who upon graduating at the top of her class worked as a research associate at Columbia Law School.

But my mother's tenure at the Wall Street law firm did not last for long. Within a year, one of the married associates, whom she barely knew, told their boss that my mother was sending him unsolicited love letters (what today we would call stalking). This crazy allegation came out of the blue, and despite protestations ("I'm dating a single Jewish doctor, why would I want to send married Mr. ___ letters??), and lack of evidence, she was shown the door. "I'm sorry to have to do this," her boss told her sincerely, "but we can't afford to have any 'trouble' here."

Such was the late 1950s for professional women.

(My mom didn't do too badly -- after working in retail for a while at Saks to pay the bills as the world of Wall Street law firms was now shut for her -- she went on to open a very successful private practice.)

But Mad Men has made me understand my mother's perspective and attitude -- just be grateful that you have a job, in an industry you like -- something that we have clashed about over the years. How lucky, I am, I realize to live and work at a time when we don't have to put up with the things that her generation did. The funny thing is, though, she says she wouldn't trade her experiences then for anything: "What would be the fun in achieving something that is so easy to get?"