Widely lauded for its attention to period-specific details, the AMC television series Mad Men has had its slips. The show’s “most egregious stumble” according to Benjamin Schwarz’s article in the November issue of The Atlantic, involves a lead character’s college career at Bryn Mawr.
Betty is depicted as a shallow sorority sister, Schwarz writes, “But of course Bryn Mawr has never had sororities. By far the brainiest of the Seven Sisters—cussed, straight-backed, high-minded, and feminist (its students, so the wags said, preferred the Ph.D. to the Mrs.)—Bryn Mawr was probably the least likely college that Betty Draper … would have attended.”