Thoughts about Mad Men (and women)

[the title may be misleading, I went totally off track as usual, I'll try to follow up on this idea later]


I keep two sets of notebooks. One for my more self indulgent private thoughts and another, this one currently for things that I might want to talk about with other people.
3 am smoke again. For once I'm not thinking about myself or the constant crowd in my head."My mother always told me it wasn't polite to talk about yourself" - Betty Draper. She wanted to smoke again.
I was thinking about Mad Men. "What do women want?" he asks repeatedly. Fraiser - "That's ridiculous! Men don't use sex to get what they want... Sex IS what they want!"

I read an article about Mad Men and feminism. But I'm thinking about men. Don Draper and Men. This cartoonist called Lev did a video called "How to be a man?", he mentioned that Askmen.com voted Don Draper their Top Man of 2009. I thought about the effect this show would have on the idea of masculinity that a lot of guys subscribe to. I'm not suggesting that people take their ideas of how to live their lives from TV shows, but I've seen how Entourage or How I Met Your Mother creep into the thoughts and language of my friends (just as Gossip Girl and The OC affects my girl friends) and I was just wondering how the glamourous old school cigars and cadillacs vibe of the Mad Men would affect people.
I'm still at the surface of the show, just started it, 4 episodes down. I've seen some episodes from the newer season on TV, but I don't watch TV most weekdays and I can never follow shows on TV, too tedious, plus they're censored. But I'm fascinated enough by it to start streaming it. And I love it already. Also, Christina Hendricks - YUM!
Having an insatiable curiosity about the past is part of the job of being a history student, besides I have a tendency to live part time in the past anyway. And these days I seem to be time travelin to the 60s a lot.
On the show, a woman told Don that she had never thought about it before, but it must be hard being a man. I agree. This was an era before 'moisturized masculinity' [as one of my professors said in a talk about Bollywood and masculinity - yes, we have men in the land of the amazons]. Whether or not you drove a Volkswagon minibus and wore your hair long or worked at Madison Avenue and wore your hair short and full of gel, there was a definition of what it was to be a man, and what it wasn't. Encroachments on this territory and questioning of this definition was not appreciated or tolerated very often.
One of my primary sources of how I started formulating my idea of "what it meant to be a man" uses moisturizer, borrowed my beaded necklaces and drinks white wine while watching Desperate Housewives.
As of now, I don't believe there is a way to be - either man or woman. Of course there are experiences exclusive to who we are - man or woman (both in biological and social terms), Indian or Belgian, Hindu or Wiccan. But smoking Lucky Strikes or drinking scotch or taking serious offense at being talked down by a woman doesn't make you more or less of a man. Neither do "masculine virtues" (virtues or attributes that come with being a man) like "chivalry", "aggression", "decisiveness" or "emotional firmness", I don't believe in "feminine virtues" (socially created fiction, both) either. I think everyone should have the choice to decide who they are. We're all as neurotic as each other, as vulnerable (Don's emotional repression, his "secret identity", his alcoholism?), as in need of other people to validate us once in a while and ultimately, we're all living in our heads.
My other main source of "What It Means To Be A Man" has been in a war, both commands and demands respect (and still gets flustered with insubordination from us two irreverent, civilian women), turns an ecstatic  pink when he gets a bargain at Sarojini Nagar, bonds with his daughter over cricket matches but sends her off to the other TV when the soaps are on (though still tries to keep up appearances by asking the score during ad breaks)  - "bonding" with his wife over the lives of shrill, scheming sati savitris.
As for me, I've grown up priding my bruised knees, climbing trees and walls, being told by old granny figures to sit with my legs crossed and try to occasionally dress like a girl, inheriting wisdom and Black Sabbath cassettes from leather jacketed motorcycle riding older brother, being consulted on the gory details of my male friend's relationships, having contraband CDs of lesbian pornography available for them during exam time internet blockades, discovering feminism and femininity for myself, being part of the intimate emotional crises of my female friends, still feeling confused when guys try to talk to me like a girl, wearing boxers under a pretty dress and combat boots with a mini(by my standards!)skirt. I'm still grappling with what it means to be me.
But I guess that's an experience shared by all of us. Even my estranged bisexual 2 year old (hopefully, if he's still alive out there) cat.