Golden is 79 — "I say 80 because it's more impressive" — and worked as a copywriter on Madison Avenue until the eighties, when she started her own radio advertising company, Joy Radio. It was exclusively focused on humorous radio, "because I'm funny." Here she is doing an AMC promo for Mad Men, part of a series of Madison Avenue legends. She admits to "hanking and panking — but it was always elegant."

What was it like to be among the first generation of women in advertising? "At the time I didn't think about it. I really didn't," she said. "I was just happy to get a job right out of college. I didn't think about the social aspects of it." As she rose through the ranks, Golden learned how to assert herself. "By the time you go to be a copywriter you were no longer in the secretarial pool. I learned not to be a pushover, just like Peggy in the series."

In Selling The Sixties, in a segment originally taped for Mad Men DVD extras (above), Golden talks more about on what life was like for a woman in advertising back then. "You just had to kind of keep away from the guys, at least I did. I was cute in those days so they used to knock on my cubicle, so to speak. 'You wanna have lunch?' 'No.'" (Bonus: legendary journalist Gay Talese says there were no attractive women at The New York Timesat the time because they were all in advertising.) Overall, she was thrilled by the work itself and the excitement around it.

But it didn't last. "Things changed," Golden told me. "What happened is, it became technological creative rather than creative creative… so we all kind of lost our hearts."

Right around them, George Lois came by to chat. Earlier, he had explained that he had been getting dozens of emails telling him he was right about Vogue. Golden complained that he and Gay Talese had been cut off from their Esquire reminiscences in the panel earlier that night.

"I was kind of getting to a punchline, wherever I was," Lois said. "I'm always about to get to a punchline."

"That's the story of life," said Golden. As Lois left, she said coquettishly, "Do you kiss old ladies?"

"Of course I do," he said, leaning in affectionately. "I kiss old ladies who are eighty but look like they're sixty." He left, promising to do a Jezebel interview.

A few minutes later, Golden turned to me. By way of goodbye, she said, "You have my permission to make me famous again."

It says something when the industry theoretically geared towards reading and determining the collective psyche is, at the creative level, overwhelmingly male-dominated, particularly at the higher (yes, Don Draper) level. According to a piece on AdAge, this was "a hot issue" at the magazine's annual "Women to Watch luncheon," whose very existence in 2009 is somewhat telling. While women are well-represented at the executive level, they're still lagging in "creative," and fewer women go into that end of things. In a video from the event, Tiffany Kosel, creative director and VP at the Crispin Porter & Bogusky agency, paraphrases one woman's explanation: the issue, she says, is the classic "tightrope" : "be confident, speak up, get respect, while still being feminine enough that we're not seen as overly aggressive."

And she ends with an eerie and perhaps unconscious paraphrase of one of Mad Men's more memorable lines, the savvy Bobbie Barrett's sage advice: "(N)o one will tell you this, but you can't be a man. Don't even try. Be a woman. It's powerful business, when done correctly." While in the context of the show, there's the ever-present implication of sexual power and a set of weapons no more at a woman's disposal than a man's overt power to sexually harass his assistant, it's essentially Kosel's message: women bring something different to the table - in fact, the perspective of more than half the population, which would seem to be a valuable commodity in an industry largely geared towards selling to that percentage.

It's interesting that the discrepancies should exist in creative, rather than executive spheres: it seems like the issue is exactly what that one woman elucidated, that of balance. A woman can be business-minded. She can be soft and creative. But the two are still not reconciled in our culture. Take the heroines of most movies: ethereal free spirits and uptight control freaks pretty much cover the waterfront. Advertising is one of the businesses that's always mixed commerce and creativity most overtly, and from the beginning: and the industry, of course, perpetuates and crafts these continuing perceptions. In a sense it would be peculiar if that industry itself didn't cleave to the same standards. There was a really interesting quote on the estimable Media Commons blog dealing with Mad Men: the show, the authors averred, is essentially "about subjectivities in the making: how men construct identities for women and how women struggle for narrative space in and through those representations." I'd go so far as to apply that construct to most creative industries, a lot of life, and certainly the business of selling image.

Creative Directors And Gender: Why The Male Domination? [AdAge]
Why Women Don't Get Ahead In Advertising [Media Commons]

Related: "You Can't Be A Man. Be A Woman. It's Powerful Business, When Done Correctly."

First, let's look through Mademoiselle from May of 1961.

One cover line boasts a full 38 pages of clothes for, amongst other things, "job-goers," "plaid-faddists," and "...other summer people." Did they run out of other ways to label people based on things they wear/do that are somewhat related to the summer months? How can their creativity be so limited when they can boast so many pages of editorial fashion?

Oh, but look what we found a few pages in:

A dreamy Maidenform ad!

We found one editorial about Southern college girls' dances (or whatever), in which a young Southern Belle had super-realistic aspirations!

Ah, so your choices are getting married or becoming a model? Wow, what a charmed life you lead. And this was before models were expected to maintain a BMI of 14 or lower. This girl is pretty much on an express train to Betty Draper town.

Speaking of Betty:

Here she is in a fashion spread!

Oh, and look who else we found:

Our favorite little former-secretary, current junior copywriter on Madison Avenue! Right next to the ads for the illustrious Barbizon modeling school.

Well, the rest of the magazine is pretty much just ads for lipstick and spoons (Seriously, WTF is up with the ads for spoons in old magazines?) but we were able to find this little gem of an ad:

It is nice to see an ad for women traveling alone (even if they are mostly surrounded by square-jawed men) and it is also nice to remember that at one point in time women with low-paying jobs could afford to take trips to the Caribbean. Those days are pretty much gone thanks to rising fuel prices and a horrible economy.

Moving on, we found an old issue of Charm from July of 1951. It may be a decade before Mad Men takes place, but the magazine can give us some insight to the working women of that era.

This handy little editorial talked about the most important part of a working woman's daygetting dressedand also ran some numbers about women in the workforce. The biggest group was, naturally, the "office workers:"

The "office worker" category should not be limited to secretaries, however, as one woman proves that they also include the magazine's editorial assistants in the realm of "office work."

Aw, how cute, she isn't going to be the boss of anyone! And, again, the goal is marriage, marriage, marriage! You know, lest you think she is a spinster or, even worse, a lesbian!

The magazine does discuss high-powered women too (after teachers and nurses):

That's kind of a large number of women, isn't it? Maybe the mid-century workplace wasn't as packed-full of hostile males as our beloved Mad Men wants us to believe. But then again, these are un-citied, un-verified stats that were probably pulled out of some writer's ass when pressed to make catchy headlines for her story.

Here are some things that you don't see that often in Mad Men, or even in contemporary women's magazines:

Wow, "Married or single, her life is full and satisfying"? Even in 2008 women are taught by magazines that we are never going to Have It All and lead a satisfying life no matter what decisions we make. Well, we guess that "already satisfying life" doesn't really sell perfume and shoes (and spoons!) that well.

By the way, here is the woman who was featured as the real-life "lady executive" (and fashionably behatted vagina-owning boss-woman) Eleanor W. Howard:

We tried to dig up some more info on her but all we could find out is that she used to work in advertising and is in charge of "advertising, publicity, and fashion coordination" at Miron Mills, Inc. when this picture was taken. Perhaps advertising wasn't as male-dominated as Mad Men would like us to believe, huh?

Oh well, it is just a television show.