Betty Draper: Blonde and Beautiful Housewife?
So we all know Betty Draper as Don Draper's beautiful housewife. Formerly a model, Betty Draper sits at home doing laundry when she wants, and raising her children when she feels like it. She's the perfect trophy wife for Don who "works" until late hours of the night win Manhattan (as far as she's concerned at least). She's not very street smart, and she's pretty naive which makes her the perfect choice for Mrs. Draper.
What do we see? Well, we see a beautiful young wife with the perfectly curled hair and painted nails with a nice dress. This image sums up the characterization of Betty. According to Adrian Jones of Lucky Strikes and a Three Martini Lunch, Betty Draper is, quite literally, the poster child of what and how a housewife should look like and act as it was sold to American women during the fifties and sixties (2012). She wears the Dior New Look dresses, her nails are always perfectly manicured, and she stays at home to raise the children (Also, if you notice in the picture, Betty is reading a book on how to be a hostess; Another thing that was part of a housewives "duty"). Betty does everything she is supposed to do in order to have a seemingly picture-perfect life. She has the handsome husband, she has two healthy kids, she has an African-American nanny named Carla, and the Draper family is pretty well-off. However, after watching the series, the viewer learns that everything is not as it seems, and the Draper household is far from perfect.
Betty tries very hard to maintain the face of the American housewife. She even goes so far as to tell her daughter Sally, that she could have been permanently scarred and "living a long-lonely miserable life" if she did not take care of her appearance (Stern 2012 p. 134). This goes to show how much value Betty, among other women at that time, put on her appearance. In addition, Betty can be very naive. She tends to take what Don says at face value, without questioning his authority, which is something that was very relevant in the sixties. Women were not able to challenge their husbands in any way, or else you were not doing your "job".
Most of the time when Carla has the kids, Betty spends hers cleaning up after the family messes, or gossiping with her girlfriends. One of the more prominent topics of discussion is that of the new neighbor, Helen Bishop, who doesn't have a husband and is a single-working parent. More to come about their relationship in another post. Something ironic with Betty, is that for being as much of a poster child as she is four housewives, she's not very good at it. She's not an affectionate mother at all, and she has surprisingly harsh punishments put in place for relatively insignificant issues her children have caused her. She also has to see a psychiatrist because all of the stress of being a housewife has gotten to her, and sometimes she is physically unable to preform said homemaking duties which is a huge problem to Don.
Betty's parents are both dead, and she can be pretty immature. Immature in the sense that she hasn't fully been able to move on, and she can act childish when presented with something she doesn't want to deal with. Her relationship with her parents as well was interesting, because they definitely pressured her into being the perfect housewife, or even trophy wife, modeling gig and all.
We will talk more about Betty's role as a housewife in another post as well, but I wanted to provide this characterization of her so that the reader can get to now who they're reading about.