are you a jackie or a marilyn?

This question has been on my mind ever since this episode of Mad Men ran a few weeks ago (click through and watch the clip and know why this show is so amazing.)

The part of the clip that keeps running through my mind is Don's pitch, when he says, "Jacqueline Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe. Women have feelings about these women because men do. Because we want both, they want to be both. It's about how they want to be seen by us: their husbands, their boyfriends, their friends' husbands."

As a women going about the business of her life in this postmodern, post-Women's Movement era, I bristle at that statement: "I'm sorry, I dress, primp, and coif for me, not for men."

Or do I? My most recent hair color & style choice is decidedly in imitation of you know who. And I completely identified with Blonde Correspondent Tolly M.'s mixed feelings about being oversexualized as a blonde, and undersexualized (but taken seriously) as a brunette. And this makes me feel feminist guilt.


Amy Klein said it well in her recent "Modern Love" piece for the New York Times magazine, describing her slight disappointment when, after several years of harassment, her cyberstalker finally left her alone:

"When you are young and pretty, nothing outrages you more than unwanted, persistent attention. You want to be taken seriously. But as you get older, and people start to ignore your looks and actually do begin to take you seriously as a professional, you feel like yesterday's news."


Then again, I'm the kind of girl who always wants what I haven't got.