No, not this Betty. But speaking of her... Via cliff1066 @ Flickr.
I think some folks don’t want to know the truth – about their moms or grandmothers or even their wives. The truth is that stifling and silencing women can make them downright unlikeable. A lifetime of infantilization can make a woman childish. Motherhood is not every woman’s “calling.” Putting women in a prefab box can make them small. People want to think their maternal figures were honored and excited to wipe their asses and make dinner for daddy day in and day out, not that they might have been unfulfilled, frustrated and wanting more.
Or are people – the people watching Mad Men, at least – beyond that now? Is Betty-hatred just a simple case of a double-standard?
For me, it’s as simple as an aversion to petty, childish, mean-spirited behavior. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why Betty D. is the way she is; Betty F. called that one perfectly in Feminine Mystique. Still, knowing that doesn’t make Betty any more likeable as a human being, IMO. And it should be noted that plenty of women of Betty Draper’s generation faced the same strictures and infantilization without becoming rigid or petulant or emotionally abusing their children.
In that way Betty reminds me of many of the mean girl/cheerleaders/prom queens I encountered in my adolescence. MamaSharper used to say “They’re insecure/unhappy, and that’s why they act that way.” Well, yes, but even if I have some sisterly empathy for their issues, that doesn’t mean I have to suffer uncomplainingly in their company.
For me, the problem is that Betty doesn’t seem to enjoy anything much or be good at anything. I know her world is limited, but she has choices and opportunities within those boundaries that she just doesn’t take advantage of. I was shocked to learn that she studied anthropology because she doesn’t seem interested in anything. She could be running a little domestic empire in her home or at the kids’ school, but she doesn’t like being a mom/housewife. She doesn’t have hobbies. She’s not doing more Junior League activities. She’s not interested in doing church-related things. I haven’t heard her say much about politics. She’s not riding horses anymore. She didn’t seem to enjoy the one-night stand she had.
She did enjoy the trip to Rome — and I enjoyed seeing her in that episode. She was interesting and good at her job (being Don’s charming sophisticated wife). But then why not insist on more trips? Why not suggest they move to the city where she might be happier? As soon as she got home, she was back to whiny Betty who doesn’t want to take any actions to make herself happier because then she’d have to take some responsibility and stop acting like a child.
I am frustrated by Betty because I want more for her that she seems to want for herself.
I should note that I’m only up to early-mid season 2, so my mind may yet change (yeah I seek out spoilers; the show isn’t really about the suspense for me, and I dealt better with the Bobbi Barrett incident knowing what to expect).
That said, I feel the way ceejeemcbeegee does. Betty just makes me sad.
If I had to deal with her or someone like her on a regular basis, I would probably feel differently, but I never really have. My grandmother isn’t like that, and my mother (~5 years older than Sally) definitely isn’t.
I am with you, Ceejee.
I do feel like people are more willing to forgive unhappiness in a man than a woman, though. Moody men are interesting and mysterious; moody women are spoiled, etc.
ETA: that second part was not a response to you, Ceejee. Just in general.
She’s the classic “Bad Mother,” the worst of the worst. Who cares if Dad’s a bastard? Only in the last few episodes have I started to feel for her. I started getting really mad at the writers, (I’m nutso)–letting Don have every pleasure and continually making Betty impossible to sympathize with. I started to think-why do the writers hate her so much?! What are they trying to achieve with her character? Then again, how often are less-than-perfect mothers shown on TV? I’m not talking about the flawed but good-hearted ones, but the ones that like you said Sarah, did not come equipped with the mothering gene. It’s fascinating to show their struggles too.
I gotta say though that as much as I love the show, it’s really triggering. As the ex-wife of a chronic cheater and liar with a double life, you can imagine why! I had kids later in life, but I had 3 in under 2 years. (twins) The fallout was immense, and I am still sorting through it. As much as I have disliked Betty, don’t think I have never identified with her, even as a modern woman with supposedly all the rights and options in the world.
I liked this post about the subject.
That essay from What Tami Said linked in the Bitch blog post really sums up my thoughts about the disproportionate Betty hate. Betty is not an entirely sympathetic character for obvious reasons. However, she seems no worse than a lot of the other characters and no one wants to cut her the same slack. It seems like “The Fog” really highlighted that when so many people bitching about her helplessness didn’t seem to get exactly how little say she had in what happened before and while she was doped up.
To me, Don and his past are the most boring parts of the show. Is he supposed to be more enlightened because he opens up emotionally to the women he is seeing on the side? Betty is a bad mother yet Don can simply not come home when he doesn’t feel like dealing with his suburban family. Must be nice.
Those posts are both great.
What’s amazing to me, as some of you have pointed out, is that DON DOESN’T EVEN SLEEP AT HIS HOME WITH HIS FAMILY! Night after night after night.
But the kids won’t ever be alone or unsupervised. Because of Betty. And Carla. Carla is more loyal to that family than Don, FFS. But Betty is horrible. Don just flutters away, leaving her to be that way.
As I’ve said before, I actually love Betty. Yes, she is a terrible parent, but so is Don and so is Roger.
I find that she’s not as easily categorized as the other female characters on the show, who are either transient or minor characters (Don’s mistresses, the secretaries by and large) or much easier to like/support. Peggy and Joan are both also going through self-actualization processes, but in ways that we presently consider positive: either by negotiating an endangered existence with a violent/abusive man or by beating men at their own game, etc. For both of them, this process doesn’t come at a cost to others that we care about (i.e. if Rapist Ken or Kinsey get hurt, we don’t care, which I think is right). But for Betty, this process comes not just at a cost to Don (awesome!) but at a cost to her children (terrible!).
I wonder if this is a story that we don’t often hear: the collateral damage to children caused by women’s self-actualization/feminist awakening/etc — which strikes me as inevitable if children are left exclusively to the care of mothers and mothers end up needing time and energy to consciousness-raise. I think in this case, if Betty actually does end up figuring her shit out, it’d be worth it, but then again I’m neither a parent nor the child of parents that resemble Don and Betty in any way.
God dammit, I like Betty.
I feel bad for her because of the situation she’s in, and how little control over it she has. I cheer for her when she does snatch back whatever little bits of control when she can, even if many times those things seem petty or just plain stupid. Like the fainting couch- I don’t like the fainting couch as a piece of furniture, I don’t like the fainting couch as a symbol of her fantasy about feminine “powerlessness” and being swept away by Don/Harry Francis- but Betty likes the fainting couch! And she put it in her house no matter what everyone else said. And you know what, that’s taking a stand, even if it’s kind of silly.
Yeah, alright, we can say she could leave Don &etc, but last episode made it clear why that’s not really the case. And she could be more involved in, well, anything, but I don’t think she’s found her ground yet. I think she will, though- especially after last week’s episode.
I like Betty. Where some see inaction and whining, I see clinical depression. And why wouldn’t she be depressed? She has been infantilized, forced into a tiny box, given no training on how to deal with her own emotions, told to be happy, dammit, because she has what women were *supposed* to want, and her husband checks in and out of her life at will. A divorce at the time likely would have cost her her house, and possibly custody of her children. People give Don credit for being a good parent, but I think that’s wrong. He’s good with the kids during the rare times that he decides to come home and play Daddy, but that’s only when he feels like it. Betty is uninterested in children, the same way I suspect I might be if I had them, but she lives during a time when it wasn’t optional (there is an allusion made in one episode to the idea that she married Don because she had become pregnant with Sally). As I said on Jezebel, I think people are uncomfortable with Betty because they want her to be a martyr, just waiting for the women’s movement to come save her, but instead she’s a totally flawed person.
A lot of women did weather the culture of the time better than Betty, but a lot of women went down her path (it doesn’t help that her husband is a worst-case-scenario liar and cheater).
I think I empathize with Betty because I suspect that I myself would become a small, bitter, angry, sad person if I had to live her life.
My negative Betty feelings have a lot to do with her mothering. I can like a bad TV mother if she has at least occasional affection/concern for her kids. Don’s a terrible father, but I can forgive that as a character flaw because of the (admittedly rare) intimate moments he shares with Sally and Bobby. There’s no balance with Betty. And that, along with her other flaws, makes her hard to sympathize with.
Betty and Don are by far the most boring characters in the show, and a Betty episode pretty much assures it’ll be Betty, or Betty and Don plots, which are almost uniformly unwatchably boring.
Don doesn’t get it as bad, because the plot could be Don & Pete; Don & Peggy; Don & Kinsey; Don & Harry; Don & Sal; or some combination thereof, allowing Don to leach off of a worthwhile character to not make the episode bad. Betty doesn’t really have anyone to latch onto this way (except Sally to an extent, but she doesn’t do it much)
It’s the same reason everyone hates Chakotay, Jake Sisko and Wesley Crusher. It’s not that they’re necessarily dislikable as characters, but episodes that revolve around them are uniformly awful, and the second they open their mouth you think “Well, this episode’s ruined.” Visceral gut reaction.
Betty-as-bad-mother really doesn’t bother me, for two reasons: one, because, like Flackette, I’m pretty sure I know what being a mother would make me, and two because I think we’re judging her by current standards of mothering and are appalled, simply appalled, with Betty’s lack of interest in her kids. She’s not a good parent, but I don’t think she’s a monster, by any judgment.
@PhDork: I think thats very true, that we’re judging her parenting by our more modern ideas about parenting.
@bluebears & PhDork: Agreed. Although I still wince every time she’s mean to Sally.
Of course I wince whenever Betty’s mean to Sally too. I hate it. But I don’t give Don a lot of credit for being a nice parent. Naturally, he is; he’s only around them once in a blue moon. Betty’s there all the time.
@sarah: exactly. its easy to be the “nice parent” when you barely ever see your kids.
Betty’s there all the time, but she hardly seems overworked. Claustrophobic and bored, yes, but when it comes to the kids, Carla seems to do the heavy lifting.
That scene with Betty lounging in the tub reading Mary McCarthy was pretty emblematic. I don’t know many primary caregivers with small kids–let alone with newborns–who get to do that.
Well the tub thing could have been late at night when her kids were in bed. I see what you’re saying, and I agree that Betty is hardly overworked there, but she is still in the house dealing with the kids much more than Don is. Even if she’s not perhaps, getting them dressed in the morning or cooking them meals.
Yeah, she’s still running the household, which is tedious and it’s still HER responsibility, not his.
But I think of my grandma, who was a widow with three children in the late 50s/early 60s and had to go back to school and then work full-time while raising kids on her own….she would have killed to have Betty’s easy lifestyle.
Honestly I think that’s people’s real issue with her, that she doesn’t appear to appreciate all that she has which is a lot. But I would again argue that neither does Don and much more so than Betty, but people (not saying you specifically beckysharper) seem to cut him way more slack and I think its interesting to wonder why.
@SarahMC: I don’t think moody men are all that mysterious. Don is more mysterious than moody because you know there’s tonnes of secrets pressing down on him. Whereas Kinsey is more moody than mysterious, and just seems like a spoiled brat. Course, we’ve learned that he isn’t from money, but a scholarship Yalie, and then we just drop that. Kinsey needs a swift kick to the ass, and I like to think that scene where Peggy and Don take his non-idea and make it a slogan was a good example of it. But we’ll have to wait to see if Kinsey saw it that way. But yeah, moody men aren’t mysterious, they’re just silly.
Betty is a bit more than moody, she’s incredibly repressed. I’m not sure if she doesn’t want anything, or if she can’t bring herself to admit what she wants.
I think people are uncomfortable with Betty because they want her to be a martyr, just waiting for the women’s movement to come save her, but instead she’s a totally flawed person.
Spot on. It got me thinking. I’m going out on a limb here and say that I believe that in people’s appreciation of the female characters on this show, present-day views play an important role and I’m not sure that’s fair.
In most modern drama, we’re used to see characters obtain either victory or tragedy: we are supposed to root for them when they’re trying to reach their goals, or we are supposed to root for them when they sacrifice themselves and their needs for others or a ‘higher calling’. It’s either hero or martyr. I haven’t thought this out very well, but I feel that dichotomy is mostly fixed for women, who in drama overwhelmingly tend to fulfill the latter part. In that respect, Mad Men is not that different in its treatment of female characters. But it is when it comes to Betty.
There is Peggy. At the beginning of the show she discovers she wants something (a career), and while the deck is stacked against her, she is fighting for it and trying to beat the system with all she has. Then there is Joan, who states flat-out she wants something in the beginning (marrying well), and uses her considerable powers to get it. People respect characters who are clear in their wants and straightforward in fulfilling them, at least as long as nobody else is hurt, and Peggy and Joan always were straightforward. (though note the backlash with viewers against Peggy when she gets one over Kinsey, and against Suzanne, who is straightforward but is also seen as hurting Don’s family) They are heroes as the present day defines them.
On the other side there is Married-Joan. When she gets what she wanted – and we have seen how, something we haven’t seen with Betty – she sticks with it in spite of the horror that is her husband. She brings in the money, she plays the good wife to further her husband’s career, she helps him wherever she can. She does all that in spite of what he has done to her, and she puts all her talent at his service. She has sacrificed her freedom and continues to sacrifice herself to support him. Married-Joan is a martyr. (until she stands up for herself once, and everybody loves it)
But then we have Betty, who we get to see right from the start as having got what she allegedly wanted already. And so much of it! But though we never exactly know why, she’s restless and unhappy. We don’t know what she wants, I believe she doesn’t either or at least doesn’t have anyone to articulate it to. She has no goal to pursue. And while there is therefore no chance of her getting to be a hero, she won’t be a martyr. She won’t swallow her own unhappiness for long to make their marriage more palatable for Don, who is one of the sources of her unhappiness, and she won’t sacrifice her own needs for her children either. She doesn’t fit into the dichotomy at all. I think that makes her more unsympathetic in our eyes. And the show doesn’t make it easy for us to understand her.
I believe the key word for the three main female characters in the show is choice. Peggy chooses a career, and while she makes her sacrifices – the understanding of her family, pursuing traditional relationships – she sticks with it in spite of it all. She’s successful. Joan chooses a “good” marriage, sacrifices her freedom and talent, and while it is unsuccessful she sticks with it. Betty chose a life that she thought would make her happy, but when it doesn’t she simply doesn’t know where to go from there.
We are immersed in the thinking that you choose your choice and when it doesn’t turn out to be what you thought it would be, you get to have a choice in what to do next: stick with it or get out. You have your fate in your own hands. But I think one of the key points of the show is that it wasn’t like that in that era (and I’d say it isn’t like that now either).
I don’t think we make enough allowances for difference of temper or unbringing or context or era when it comes to Betty. I’m pretty sure she is only gradually becoming aware of what is making her unhappy, and she is not at all aware of what would make her happy. Choice, for women like Betty, with their upbringing in that time, is an entirely different beast. I’m not sure she knows there are other options or that she realizes that they are open to her. Or that when she does, she would be willing to make the – many, hard – sacrifices that other options would require, or go against what her society was telling her her duties were. Personally, it makes Betty all the more human for me, in a way that other, male characters are, with all their faults and restrictions and lack of purpose and repressedness. She is so much a product of her time that I don’t believe it’s fair to hold her to modern-day standards, but I think at least a part of where the Betty-hate comes from is that viewers do.
(I tend to compare her to my mum, who is only a few years younger. My mum was always a bit rebellious, but not rebellious enough to truly go against what she thought was expected of her: have a family, keep the peace, raise children. She automatically got fired when she got pregnant, she could only work again when my father gave her permission and as long as he wasn’t impacted negatively, and when there were irreconcilable differences, her family made it very clear that she was supposed to stick with her choice and not get a divorce)
This is my first comment, but I’ve been reading here for a while and I really really like the blog.
I actually love Betty. I love her style on a superficial level, and I have loved watching this rage build in her, to break out at moments like when she shot her neighbors pigeons. She’s just so dark and twisty and strange – she is the way she is because she was raised to be a beautiful ornamental woman, and I think she’s going to get more interesting from here on out.
I think the rage against her misses the fact that she is a very stylized character – she’s not supposed to be accessible like Peggy or Sal. She’s somewhat inexplicable, like Bert Cooper.
I sympathize a lot with Betty and find her character fascinating. But I’ve realized she reminds me of my own mother, who up until about two years ago, I would have expressed the same frustrations and dislikes.
I have a different perspective on my mother now — and I’d say she is someone who perhaps should not have had children. I like what both Sarah MC and Penny posted above, that taking into account the roles that woman had grown up with and how it shaped her does matter in how she approached the early feminist movement. And ditto to the poster about depression possibly being involved.
I think it’s easy to tear down someone who chooses inaction and passive-agressiveness to deal with their misery, especially when we feel we have so many choices today. I can’t say I appreciate what my mom or those like Betty went through, but I do understand it on some level. It’s one of the reasons why the fight for feminism is so important. Feeling trapped causes a person to behave in all sorts of negative ways and not everyone is built with the capacity to fight the status quo. It’s up to those if us who are to fight for change for those who cannot.
Make no mistake, I HATE Don, too, ever so much more than I am frustrated with Betty. The cheating never flies with me: I don’t care how bad your childhood was (cry me a river, will you?), if you are married (esp. if you have kids), you don’t fuck other women. Period. Yeah, he helps Peggy, but he’s a cheater. Yeah, he did right by the OG Mrs. Draper, but he’s a cheater. Yeah, he seems to be a decent dad, but he’s a cheater!
He’s more of a spoiled little child than Betty. Betty may stomp her foot and pout, but Don will just disappear and screw other women. (Don’t get me started on the hoarding money thing…) The whole internal conflict they’ve created for Don/Dick rings as complete and utter bullshit to me. He’s all Oh Betty I need you. I want this life. I want this to work. then the next minute Hey Midge/Rachel/Joy/Bobbie/Suzanne, you make me so happy, I’m so free!. It’s like the guy gets off on being a duplicitous asshole. And what he said to my Big Gay Sal! Fuck Don. Fuck Don right in the ear.
I watch the show for Peggy, Joan, Harry, Ken, and the dude with the beard who’s name I can never remember. (Pete’s on thin ice with me too). I keep hoping Don will get the clap or crabs or whatever STD people got back then and then his career will be ruined or something.
I came back here to see I wrote a novel of a first comment. Um, sorry about that, honestly. I’ve been thinking about this show far too much, and somehow about half of that was about Betty.
I don’t hate Betty. I love her.
She made me understand why my grandmothers are the way they are. Marginalization and infantalization turned them into petty, boring, gossipy, WASP wives with nothing better to do.
And it is easier to talk to them and care for them now that I know it.