Like many TV shows, Mad Men is packed with plenty of sexy and attractive women. There’s Betty Francis (January Jones), the classic (yet cloying bitch) beauty. There’s Megan Draper (Jessica Paré), a bombshell of the ultimate Madonna-whore. There’s Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks), the voluptuous, charming and take-no-shit office manager-turned-partner. There’s Jane Sterling (Peyton List), Roger Sterling’s mistake of a second and much younger trophy wife. And, of course, there’s Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) string of past lovers – Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt), Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), Joy (Lauren Ramsey), Candace (Erin Cummings), Suzanne Farrell (Abigail Spencer), Bethany Van Nuys (Anna Camp) and Faye Miller (Cara Buono).
However, the most interesting sexual woman in the cast is Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss).
In the early days of the series, Peggy looked and came off like a wholesome and naive girl next door type. As she started coming into her professional prime, she’s polished up her image, but still comes off as being rather proper and straight-laced. Perhaps it’s her rule-oriented Catholic upbringing and part of it is her conscious effort to be taken seriously in a man’s world. She’s also very well aware that she has to prove that she hasn’t slept her way up the corporate ladder.
But sleeping around, oh, yes, she has. At the beginning of the series, she willingly took on Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) as his last fling before he set off to marry Trudy and on an after-hours spin on the couch in Pete’s office. Throughout the series, there are a number of scenes in which the two exchange jealous and longing glances at one another – especially when she crashed the all-boys celebration at a burlesque club and plopped herself on the lap of one of the Maidenform execs.
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After she had and gave up Pete’s baby, she had a one-night stand with a guy she picked up at a bar – and she had it like a (jerk of a) man. After the deed was done, she got up in the middle of the night, got dressed, was evasive about wanting to see him again, and just told him, “It was fun,” on the way out of his door.
And then there was the hand job she gave to some random guy in a movie theater in Season 5.
Pete wasn’t Peggy’s only work-related tryst. After Herman “Duck” Phillips (Mark Moses) left Sterling Cooper in Season 3, he tried to woo Pete and Peggy to Grey. Peggy didn’t take Duck up on his offer to jump agencies, but she did take up his offer to jump into bed with him.
Duck Phillips? Ick. What was she thinking? He was twice her age and had the looks and personality of mold on cheese. Maybe that was another reason she kept him a secret along with his assumed less-than-graceful departure from SC.
For a while, she tried to redeem herself in Season 4 by having a 1960’s traditional relationship with Mark Kearney (Blake Bashoff), a dull, trite and boring dipshit of a guy. She tried reinventing herself as the good girl by putting off having sex with him. He pressured her in a lame attempt by bribing her with cookies in exchange for some nookie. When she turned him down, he accused her of being “old-fashioned.” Eventually, she gave in, but in the “after” scene, she didn’t look happy about it. Eventually, she broke up with Mark … and Duck … in the same episode.
Then there’s Abe Drexler (Charlie Hofheimer). It wasn’t love at first sight, but after a day at the beach, the two of them headed to Peggy’s apartment for a romp in the sack. At first, it seemed as if Peggy was going to use him as a boy toy for the night. Peggy telling him he talked too much as they were getting undressed was more than a clear indicator of her intentions. However, the morning after, she had a change of heart.
In many ways, Abe seems to be the most oh-so-wrong and yet oh-so-exciting match for Peggy. While they’re both mavericks and revolutionaries, they’re on totally opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. He’s an underground journalist who’s down on the corporate world; she’s a pre-feminist corporate ladder climber. He’s Jewish; she’s Catholic. He’s rather gruff in both appearance and personality; she’s extremely proper and uptight in her looks and mannerisms.
Of course, Peggy’s flipping and flopping between being a good girl and a bad girl has a lot to do with her role in the series. She’s caught between being a traditional girl and her non-traditional role of being (or trying to be) a success in a man’s world. She doesn’t put herself out there sexually, but she does make a lot of privately provocative sexual choices. They’re choices that are shocking for the time as they are for her character … and that’s what I think makes her an extremely sexually interesting character.
Tuesday, October 20, 2020