“Am I a good [white] mother?” Mad men, bad mothers, and post(racial)feminism

ABSTRACT

In this article we locate, interpret, and critique the figure of the “bad” white mother, focusing on the critically acclaimed AMC drama, Mad Men. Advancing feminist and postcolonial approaches to myth, we uncover a prevailing “white consciousness” that relies on racializing logics in, first of all, Mad Men’s representations of (white) motherhood through the character of Betty Draper, and second, public discussions of the show in academic and media outlets. Drawing on Black feminist thought, we propose that these discourses rely on and feed underlying assumptions that support post(racial)feminism—an ideological location that allows for the explicit embracement of “bad” mothering as a progressive, even transgressive act that, at the same time, implicitly relies on expectations for (good) mothering shaped by white privilege. This cross-pollination between postfeminism and whiteness, we argue, is especially important to engage, since it carries potentially limiting implications for our collective imagination about what anti-racist and feminist struggles should entail.

KEYWORDS:

• Bad mothers
• Mad men
• myth
• post(racial)feminism
• whiteness

Notes on contributors

Susana Martínez Guillem is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico, USA. Her research interests are in cultural studies, critical discourse studies, migration, anti/racism, and social in/equality. Her work has appeared in Discourse & Society, Critical Discourse Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, and Journal of Intercultural and Intercultural Communication. She is also co-author of Reviving Gramsci: Crisis, communication, and change (Routledge, 2016).

Christopher C. Barnes is a Ph.D. student in Media Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research interests focus on the political economy of communication and media; race, gender, class, and sexuality in popular media; and social movements and their communicative practices.