--- title: Elisabeth Moss: Mad Men's Peggy Olson Is TV's Most Relatable Feminist description: A New York Magazine profile on actress Elisabeth Moss reminds us why Peggy is the most relatable feminist on TV canonical: https://time.com/18645/peggy-olson-mad-men-feminism/ author: Eliana Dockterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-10T21:29:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:43:00.236Z og:title: How Mad Men's Peggy Olson learned to lean in and move up og:description: A New York Magazine profile on actress Elisabeth Moss reminds us why Peggy is the most relatable feminist on TV og:url: https://time.com/18645/peggy-olson-mad-men-feminism/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd65162105d6456d/698684c8e8524b8b1e601be5/mar10-23elisabethmoss.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2363 og:image:height: 1329 og:image:alt: Mar10-23ElisabethMoss.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Mad Men's Peggy Olson learned to lean in and move up twitter:description: A New York Magazine profile on actress Elisabeth Moss reminds us why Peggy is the most relatable feminist on TV twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd65162105d6456d/698684c8e8524b8b1e601be5/mar10-23elisabethmoss.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # An Ode to _Mad Men'_s Peggy Olson: TV's Most Relatable Feminist > Sponsored content. 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It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=28e7ff9e-d41b-483f-8b16-d480ecae91f7&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1)  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Mar 10, 2014 9:29 PM UTC  Elisabeth Moss on the cover of New York Magazine Elisabeth Moss on the cover of New York Magazine Cass Bird—New York Magazine  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Mar 10, 2014 9:29 PM UTC Over the last five seasons of _Mad Men_, we have watched Elisabeth Moss’ Peggy Olson go from apologizing to Don Draper to sitting in his chair. Surprised by her initial success as a copywriter, Peggy slowly grew into her talent, eventually realizing that Don’s approval wasn’t everything and demanding that she be respected for her work. More than any other character on the show, Peggy has grown and changed, and on April 13—when the seventh and final season premieres—she will adjust to finally being in a position of real power. In this week’s [_New York Magazine_ cover story](http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/elisabeth-moss-on-mad-mens-final-season.html) on actress Elisabeth Moss, Willa Paskin teases that this final season of _Mad Men_ will be as much about Peggy as it will be about Don. She posits that Peggy, after all, has been the secret protagonist of the show all along. And while _Mad Men_ has quickly addressed and then dismissed many issues of the 1960s—from race relations to hippies—it has consistently addressed the issue of feminism through Peggy and Joan’s struggle to move up the corporate ladder. And of the two, Peggy has become the feminist icon, working tirelessly for her spot at the top. Long before _Lean In_ hit bookshelves, Peggy was already demonstrating its principles, for better or worse. Paskin writes of Peggy: --- > “” --- But why is Peggy so damn relatable? Maybe it’s because she’s crusading for a different kind of feminism than we would expect in her 1960s setting. When the fifth season of _Mad Men_ began last year, [Elisabeth Moss told Vulture](http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/mad-men-elisabeth-moss-interview.html?utm%5Fsource=feedburner&utm%5Fmedium=feed&utm%5Fcampaign=Feed%3A+nymag%2Fvulture+%28Vulture+-+nymag.com%27s+Entertainment+and+Culture+Blog%29): --- > “” --- Relatablity is the key. Watching Peggy, working women see their own fight for respect in the office. She works twice as hard as her boozy compatriots. She’s beautiful in the girl-next-door kind of way, but refuses to use her looks as a means of advancement like her colleague Joan is wont to do. She makes mistakes: she’s stubborn; she falls in love with her boss; she sometimes doesn’t play nicely. And slowly but surely her confidence grows until she can challenge her own mentor. But she’s also a little bit unlikable. She takes things more seriously than her colleagues. She turns off her superiors and clients by sticking to her ideas and refusing to woo them with sex appeal. She doesn’t have the best taste in guys: she’s had affairs with three coworkers and dated some real schlubs. Rather than struggling with splitting the burdens of work and family—[a favorite topic among today’s feminists](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020/)—she simply denies and then forgets that she’s had a child, choosing to forge ahead with her career instead.  Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) - Mad Men \_ Season 6, Episode 12 \_ 'The Quality of Mercy' - Photo Credit: Jessica Brooks/AMC Jessica Brooks—AMC But her beauty lies in her refusal to fit into a box. Sure, her clothes have gotten better, and she’s gotten more adventurous. But she’s definitively not the girl Joan or Don or anyone else wanted her to be. She’s a testament to the fact that you don’t have to lean in or out, be less bossy or more bossy, be charming or asexual. You can just be the best you. While the struggle to go from disposable secretary to young powerhouse may not be as daunting as it was in the _Mad Men_ era, it’s no cakewalk nowadays either. As Sheryl Sandberg and Anna Maria Chávez [pointed out](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304360704579419150649284412) in the Wall Street _Journal_ this weekend, ambitious women today are as likely to be dubbed by underlings and colleagues as “bossy” as Peggy is on the show. Her struggle is our struggle. And just as Peggy inspired _Mad Men’_s audience, she surely also inspired other shows to write in strong female characters who are good at their jobs. Before there was [Virginia on ](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/12/18/working-women-masters-of-sex-virginia-and-lillian-are-the-new-joan-and-peggy/)[_Masters of Sex_](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/12/18/working-women-masters-of-sex-virginia-and-lillian-are-the-new-joan-and-peggy/)or Elizabeth on _The Americans_ or even Moss’ detective on[ _Top of the Lake_](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/arts/television/top-of-the-lake-on-the-sundance-channel.html?%5Fr=0), there was Peggy. So yes, of course Peggy has been the secret star of _Mad Men_ all along, a hero to Don’s anti-hero—his better half. Watch her evolution in this great video, curtesy of Vulture, from 2013. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/18645/peggy-olson-mad-men-feminism/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/18645/peggy-olson-mad-men-feminism/"},"headline":"An Ode to Mad Men's Peggy Olson: TV's Most Relatable Feminist","datePublished":"2014-03-10T21:29:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:43:00.236Z","description":"A New York Magazine profile on Elisabeth Moss reminds us why Peggy Olson is TV's most relatable feminist","url":"https://time.com/18645/peggy-olson-mad-men-feminism/","keywords":["Living","feminism","Entertainment","Television","Mad Men"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd65162105d6456d/698684c8e8524b8b1e601be5/mar10-23elisabethmoss.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcd65162105d6456d/698684c8e8524b8b1e601be5/mar10-23elisabethmoss.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Mar10-23ElisabethMoss.jpg","caption":"Mar10-23ElisabethMoss.jpg","creditText":"Cass Bird—New York Magazine","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/18645/peggy-olson-mad-men-feminism/","name":"An Ode to Mad Men's Peggy Olson: TV's Most Relatable Feminist"}}]}] ```