The appeal of Don Draper

One of the great things about coming to Mad Men so late in the game is that I can pick the low lying fruit from other people's commentary. Not stupid people being stupid—which is predictable and boring—but smart people missing the boat in the same way over and over again, which is a lot of fun.

Take Peter Suderman and Katie Baker, for example. Two very clever people so deep in denial their brains are addled by lack of oxygen. Here is Baker:

Why are we so wild for Draper? By any measure, the character's a cad. He constantly cheats on his wife. He skips town for weeks and won't write or call. He doesn't talk much, and anesthetizes any feelings with copious amounts of booze. He's an enigma, a locked box of a man who resists, maddeningly, easy explanation. And yet he excites an attraction among women—particularly ones my age, women in their late '20s and '30s who were born after the era that Mad Men portrays ...

And here is Suderman's reply:

The fact that Draper is a high-powered, serial-cheating workaholic with crude, old-fashioned notions of gender roles might play some part in why he's so attractive, but it seems to me that this post overthinks the question. Draper isn't sexy so much because he's a cad or a lout or a sexist; he's sexy because he's a fictionalized, idealized fantasy of an iconic form of masculinity.  Draper's womanizing and crude beliefs aren't what make him appealing so much as his impeccable suits -- always carefully pressed and form fitting -- and his posed cigarette smoking, his immaculately lit surroundings and the elegant way he holds a glass of scotch.

Now, that may seem like a rational response but it won't remain so after you read Baker describe the responses that got her so wrought up about the issue in the first place:

When I told my friends about the sighting, their reactions were similar. "I don't get excited about celebrities," one said, "but if I saw him, I'd tear off my clothes." "He is so sexy," said another. "I love him," said a third. "He looks like he would know how to throw me to the wall and do me right."

Now a good suit and flattering lighting will do a  lot for a man but these things will never be enough to make a woman think, "He looks like he would know how to throw me to the wall and do me right."

There is another way to ask the question. Rather than saying, why do women like him despite his negative qualities, Suderman and Baker might well ask what positive qualities the guy might have.



If you are joining me here, this series starts here.

The next post in the series is here.