Apothia “If” ***

If my last posting was only for the fume heads, this posting is only for the Mad Maniacs (Sorry!! Just have to do it!!)

This time I have to ask the question: What does Peggy Olsen smell like?

Ok. So. Now, you must understand right here and now that I can’t be 100% objective about Peggy because, you see, every time I look at her, I think to myself: I AM PEGGY. Awkward, plain, slightly mannish, with mild-to-moderate sartorial issues, doesn’t quite know how to fit in--I feel you, sister. Oh, but so earnest. So upright and correct. Sharp mind harnessing an iron will. We all root for her, I know for a fact. But what will become of Peggy?

In writing about Betty, I asserted that two main components to the Mad Men series are discursive violence and silence. Peggy brings another foundational element to the show: dissonance. Peggy is all dissonance: her appearance, her relationship to her own body, her station at the office. Nothing fits together smoothly. Nothing, as it turns out, about her is either fish or fowl. This fact is Peggy’s greatest hurdle, but it’s also the source of her tremendous strength.

When we first meet Peggy, it’s her first day at the office. But we don’t see her at the Sterling Cooper office—she’s at the doctor’s office, sent there by Joan, the office manager. She is being fitted for a diaphragm. The modern equivalency of taking a drug test and having one’s credit score checked, (unmarried) women at Sterling Cooper are expected to be “available” to the men who will oversee them.

After her first day at work, she is visited at home by Pete Campbell, the sleaze-weasel. He invites himself…in…shall we say. The rest of the season, we see Peggy slowly change—she’s gaining weight, letting herself go. There is a silent horror for the audience in watching Peggy’s descent—is she pregnant? If she is, she’s not letting on. Is she gaining weight to insulate herself against this charged setting where she’s being continually judged and preyed upon for her looks? Well, if she is, she’s not doing it consciously. Either way, Peggy is suffering in an environment of casual, corrosive sexual harassment.

In the final episode of the first season, we know the answer. The diaphragm was not fitted in time: she learns she is pregnant when her water breaks. Her denial is total—she is not pregnant—she can’t be (but she is.) She rejects her baby and eventually gives him away. We know now that Peggy is capable of epic suppression, walling off huge chunks of herself.

This is her connection to Don, a fellow traveler who has also endured unbearable shame to remake himself. If I had to pick one scene out of the entirety of Mad Men that sums up its towering, awful brilliance, it’s the hospital scene in Season Two (the episode is appropriately titled “The New Girl.”) Peggy has been back at the office for a few episodes now—we don’t know what happened to her and her pregnancy. In a flashback we see that her post-partum refusal to acknowledge her baby in any way has landed Peggy in the psychiatric ward—she appears to be drugged.

Don is sitting by her bed. He is not warm, sympathetic, or kind. Instead, he is there to dole out the only medicine he knows: Do and say whatever she needs to do to get herself out of the hospital. Then, put it behind her. “This never happened,” he says. In the nine most chilling words in the entire history of television, he leans forward to drive his point home: “It will shock you how much this never happened.”

To the sensibilities of the modern viewer, this recommendation of total obliteration of trauma and shame is primitive, medieval, even biblical: If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out. What Peggy needs is therapy, a good support group, rehabilitation; to grieve, to learn that she’s not alone, and to integrate this experience into her sense of herself.

But this is the 1960’s, people! No time to feel sorry for yourself!! Up and out of the hospital, Peggy heads back to work and gets busy redefining herself as a successful career gal.

So it that truly what she is, or at least, on her way to becoming? Has she weathered this terrible storm? Has it given her the strength to remake herself?

Peggy sees herself clearly enough to know that she doesn’t fit in: she doesn’t want to be one of dozens of female typists out in the general pool, and she doesn’t want to marry herself out of a job. She is smart enough to study and master the rules. She is good enough at what she does to deserve promotions, and she’s forceful enough to ask for them. We can see her seeing herself in a better place. For all these reasons, we modern viewers love her, pull for her, want to see her get what she deserves. But I fear that by having the power to turn such a blind eye upon herself she is setting herself up for a huge fall.

***** This next section is only for the die-hard MM fanatic—the references are esoteric, and will only make sense if you’ve seen the whole show. Skip to the next set of **** if you want to avoid plot spoilers from both the second and third seasons.

Peggy’s ability to see and honor her own oddness turns out to be a good thing at times: she is conscious enough to see others clearly, identify their motivations and hold them gently while remaining true to herself. Indulge me with a few examples to make my point:

On her failed femininity: Joan and Peggy are in the break room. Joan is giving Peggy some unsolicited, excruciating advice on how to improve her appearance and thereby increase her status at the office. (Not only is Peggy not “hot” enough as a woman, we know she’s no mother either.) Peggy is at first, understandably, irritated and defensive. We are witnessing Joan at her most queen-bee punishing, and it is a terrible thing to watch. But then, we see Peggy’s face change: “Wait a minute,” she says. “You think you’re being helpful.” In that moment, the energy shifts—Joan thinks she’s being listened to and appreciated. She softens and smiles. But Peggy is miles above her now—the head-mistress may be administering her lessons, but it is for a game that Peggy has absolutely no interest in playing.

On her value in the workplace: Don may have saved her, may have promoted her, but he still takes her utterly for granted. When he gets ready to leave Sterling Cooper and plans to take Peggy with him, he essentially commands her to pack her things and follow him. We see Peggy digest this order and the rationale behind it: “Everyone thinks you do my work for me—including you!!” she blurts out. She won’t go with him, and it is her unflinching refusal to be either bullied or seduced (Don's two default modes for getting what he wants--remember how he tries flattery in asking her the second time?) that snaps Don into getting real. He must ask her a third time: In standing up for herself, Peggy forces Don to look her in the eye and give her an honest assessment of what she means to him. And when he does, she will say yes to him.

On navigating her way with the runt-weasel, Pete Campbell: Throughout the first two seasons, we watch Campbell treat Peggy like dirt: he uses her, ignores her, demands her again, then drops her.

There is a scene at a bar where the office is meeting after work. Peggy, fresh from early-morning illicit office-sofa sex with Campbell, is trying on this now-found power of hers—she’s attractive to this man, and she likes it. She starts to do the Twist—shyly at first, but gaining in confidence—she’s trying out her body in new ways, and she makes eye contact with him, dancing towards him. Is this what it feels like to be wanted?

Campbell won’t have any of this—Coldly, he smacks her down: “I don’t like you like this,” he says, and gets up and leaves. (I could have killed him with my bare hands for that…)

But Peggy will survive. Remember during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Manhattan empties out as everyone awaits nuclear destruction. The other weasel man in her life, that creepy priest who has made making Peggy repent for her transgressions his pet project (!) has advised her to confess her sins.

Peggy will confess, but not to the Good Father. She goes in to visit Campbell, (the Bad Father?) holed up in his office with his beloved rifle. (!!!) He’s pensive on this day, the eve of destruction. He is magnanimous, contemplative, expansive. Like a king awarding titles, he deigns to reveal to Peggy his desire for her: she was the one he should have married, he tells her. He thinks he is the lead actor here, the one who has made a terrible mistake.

Peggy, again, is right there with him, all the while flying miles above. No, she says. She is the actor: she had his baby, told no one, and gave it away. She could have shamed him, could have forced him into recognizing her and her predicament. But she didn’t. They find themselves where they are today not because he failed to act, but because she acted alone.

Conscience cleared, fully confessed, Peggy goes home that night, tucks herself into bed, crosses herself, and falls asleep. Law unto her own.
*****

So yes, Peggy at her best is a tigress. We should have nothing to fear for her, she who is growing into a trailblazer

for women in the workplace, knowing that she has the steel spine to work twice as hard and to endure epic sh*t to get where she’s headed.

But I fret for Peggy—I really do. And here’s why: She has the power to will herself into being, to conceptualize herself in a nontraditional role (not a typist, not seeking her M.R.S. degree, not a victim.) But what is the positive vision that she has for herself? As far as I can tell, she is modeling herself on the bad behavior of the men around her: live to work/work to live, abandoning tradition, family, God, and the borough of Brooklyn.

Her only mode for her sex life seems to be predatory: prey or be preyed upon. She turns a sexual encounter with a sweet boy who seems to want to like her into a one-night stand, and now she’s having nooners with Duck. (Dry drunk or wet drunk, Duck’s got serious disconnected/dissonance issues of his own. This particular pairing for Peggy sets off all sorts of alarm bells for me.)

Peggy hasn’t shown us to be a drinker nor a smoker like the boys around her. But perhaps she found herself a new vice with elements of both: She took to pot right away. (Remember her getting up to leave the room after an afternoon of smoke-filled debauchery at the office. She is disheveled, hair awry, but her face is soft and dreamy: “I’m in a really good place right now,” she says, as she floats out. She’s never been steamier.)

My fear is that Peggy is growing into a Mad Man, right about the time that these ad men and the rest of the world around them are learning that this old pattern of checked-out, disconnected behavior is empty and defunct. Part of why we feel for Peggy is because she has to be her own role model. Will her differentness lead her to becoming something magnificent, authentic, and resplendent, or will the parts of herself that she shuts off to manifest what she thinks she wants to become be her downfall?
------

So, I know what you’re asking yourself right about now: How, in heaven's name, does all of this add up to Peggy wearing Apothia “If”?

Like Peggy who negotiates her feminine status in the masculine world she’s chosen for herself, “If” is defined by its contrasting elements: a heady (feminine, floral) tuberose is wrestled into submission by a crisp, almost bitter, (masculine, citrus) grapefruit rind. With those two troublesome, tricky elements in a wary standoff, the buttery musk underneath gives this scent heft, sensuality, and weight. “If” has an oil base, which means it has nearly no sillage

at all—it remains very close to the skin—an ideal office scent for a woman who lives for her career. Like Peggy, it doesn’t draw attention to itself right away, but when you get up close to experience it, you’re drawn in by its sensuous, swoony power.

“If” is a scent of secrets, of illicit sexuality, of unruly forces kept uneasily in check. I am no tuberose fan-- in fact, just the opposite-- but I can't get enough of this stuff. When I think about "If," I think about applying it to the back of my knees-- the only scent I can honestly say that about, and surely only trouble can come of that. Only it's tendency to die down to almost nothing within 2 hours keeps me from giving it a full four stars.
------

I see Peggy as a rare thing: a study in discordant authenticity. She is a cubist painting, a Picasso girl. She doesn’t fit together into something that “reads” right the first time. She is something beautiful and strange, however, with the potential to become a modern and self-actualized person, capable of seeing both herself and the world around her for what it is, with the power to remake them both in her own image. She’s a heroine, to be sure, but whether she’s tragic or triumphant remains to be seen.

Image credits