Viewers anticipated seeing the same fragile, porcelain-skinned Betty Draper when Mad Men returned for its fifth season in April 2012, but they were taken aback. She weighed a lot. Noticeably, purposefully, and uncomfortably heavy. The woman who had spent four seasons as the epitome of a 1960s housewife, complete with frozen smiles and Grace Kelly cheekbones, was now sitting by herself in a dimly lit kitchen, spooning through two bowls of ice cream and eating Bugles straight out of the bag while the rest of the family moved around her as if she were a piece of furniture.
For a show that had always used Betty’s physical appearance as a sort of shorthand for her emotional state, it was a truly shocking moment. Even now, the debate it started about fat suits, aging women on TV, and the writers’ true intentions hasn’t been fully resolved.
It was not too long before the useful explanation emerged. The show’s writers chose to hide January Jones’ pregnancy through a completely different type of physical transformation because they were unwilling to add another child to a plot already full of domestic complications. Jones was dressed in an oversized suit. Camera angles were taken into consideration by makeup artists. At least one scene was handled by a body double. The actress was pregnant, but the character put on weight. From a logistical standpoint, it was a fairly clever workaround.
It’s another matter entirely whether it was a wise creative choice. The show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, presented the Betty plot as more than just a pregnancy workaround. He claimed that it spoke to a genuine aspect of the character, such as her discontent and the quiet collapse of her self-worth beneath a second marriage that provided her security but not fulfillment. The third episode of season five, “Tea Leaves,” which introduced us to this new Betty, gives the impression that weight is more about stagnation than it is about eating. She goes to the doctor in the hopes of getting diet pills. Instead, he discovers a lump in her neck after refusing. She truly thinks she may have cancer for a few days.
What comes next is unexpectedly poignant. When Betty calls her ex-husband, Don, who gaslighted and neglected her for years, he gently helps her get through it, which is why the show never fully moved on from that marriage. She starts to consider her legacy and whether her kids would even be able to grieve her healthily. It turns out that the lump is harmless. After that, she sits in Henry’s arms and describes herself as nothing more than a depressed, overweight housewife. It’s one of the most exposed and vulnerable moments she’s ever experienced on the show.
On the execution, critics were sharply divided. Some believed that the story’s emotional honesty was compromised by the fat suit itself, and that it was bad faith to cover a size-zero actress in latex and call it a character study. There is some validity to the cultural criticism. Hollywood has a long and uncomfortable history with fat suits, which are typically used for cheap visual contrast rather than true empathy. On some level, the audience is always aware of the thinness of the person underneath. Where the story needs intimacy, that knowledge creates distance.
The writing surrounding Betty’s weight, according to others, was more pointed than it initially seemed. The story doesn’t make fun of her. Fear, interiority, and a sort of damaged dignity have been permitted. Depending on your perspective, the ice cream scenes can be interpreted as either depressing, human, or both. It’s possible that the show made an unsuccessful attempt at a complex theme about how invisible middle-aged women can become, even in their own homes.
Betty was progressively losing weight by the beginning of Season 6. Like all stories, the plot progressed. However, in a way that more well-known Mad Men moments occasionally haven’t, something about that season-and-a-half arc stuck. Perhaps because it touched on a genuine aspect of how television views women aging, or rather, how it finds it difficult to do so. Betty Draper’s weight gain turned into a Rorschach test to see if the audience wanted the show to be a precise social document or something messier and more relatable. In the end, it was both awkward and honest at the same time.
