Beauty Redefined – The Case of the Disappearing Woman Over 40 !
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: September 2, 2014
WUNRN
4-22-2013 – In local or national media news and programs, people over 40 are
drastically underrepresented in all forms of media, despite the fact that they
make up the majority of the population.
In fact, 62 percent of the female population of the U.S. is over 40.
BUT, older men appear as much as
10 times more frequently than older women in media (1).
Even when film depictions of relationships feature older men, their girlfriends
and wives are most often decades younger (for more evidence, see this cool
piece on how leading men age, but their ladies
do not, including graphs documenting age differences). Men in all forms of
media are featured well into their 70s while women tend to start becoming
invisible in media right around age 40. Academics
even have a name for this egregious level of under-representation: symbolic annihilation. Unfortunately, the effects of that annihilation on women’s
body image, feelings of self-worth and bank accounts aren’t so symbolic.
Thankfully, most people have the ability to see a variety of females
face-to-face to disprove those laughable media myths of women
disappearing with age or perpetual teenage faces and bodies. Unfortunately,
that ability to see reality hasn’t put a dent in the anti-aging industries that
sell extreme appearance anxiety for record profits each year. But still, that’s what we want to focus on here: reality.
Most notably, we want to emphasize how shockingly different reality looks from
the ever-present and powerful media world, and how that impacts real, aging
people. Once we recognize the effects of the anti-female-aging phenomenon
that what we’re buying into by the billions, we can fight back!
A 2009 Oil of Olay eye cream ad featuring Twiggy — one
of the world’s biggest modeling/fashion icons for more than a decade, now she’s
relegated to the unglamorous realm of photoshopping disasters for beauty
industries lies. Straight-up lies. Amazingly, this ad was banned by the UK’s
advertising watchdog after more than 700 complaints were gathered for a
campaign against airbrushing in ads by the Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson. The
ad was deemed to be misleading.
With an extremely low number of women over 40
represented in media at all, the WAY they’re represented becomes especially
important. And once again, the news isn’t good. Headline #1: Older
Women are Portrayed in
Much More Often than Men. Think of the wise, funny, intelligent, “sexy” image
represented by men in media well into their 50s, 60s and even later – Harrison
Ford, Sean Connery, Richard Gere, Tom Cruise, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan,
Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood – it isn’t hard to think of a
list of examples from past or present. Trying to come up with female
equivalents is much more difficult. It’s rare to think of really
positive portrayals of women over 40 – NOT the neurotic, crazy, evil,
out-of-touch-with-reality characters that are most prominent. Betty White is
one notable exception to this rule, as a truly funny, relatable, positive
character in her many roles who isn’t simply the butt of jokes or the
domineering mother-in-law.
Studies show the vast majority of any older mom,
grandma, aunt, boss, teacher, queen or extraneous female character over 40 in
any media fits a negative stereotype (2). And that sucks. The
largest segment of the population is not seeing themselves represented, and
when they do, it’s in negative ways*. What’s more, that information is only
about white women. We don’t have any accurate information about how
older women from other races are represented. Why? Because there aren’t
enough examples to generate any significant findings. One study
examined 835 TV characters and found only four African American
characters over the age of 60. I’m no math whiz, but 4 out of 835 is a sad
statistic. Interestingly, the most popular older woman of color in media
happens to be played by a 42-year-old black man, Tyler Perry, as the much-loved
“Madea.”
But aside from the huge oversight in
under-representing and misrepresenting older women, mainstream media knows exactly
what it is doing when it comes to that huge, money-packing demographic. Excellent
business decision #1: Convince women their value entirely depends on their
appearance, and that aging is the worst thing that could happen to their
appearance. And don’t forget, older women are THE WORST
– gross cougars, not hot, totally out of touch with the real world, neurotic …
OR age-defying wonders! Then, convince them it’s possible to entirely stop
aging and look 15 years younger with these products. Since people over
age 50 own 70 percent of the total net worth of American
households (4), targeting this powerful demographic is a strategic move —
especially considering that women over 40 influence 80 percent of the
purchasing decisions in the U.S. (5). I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the age-old
“fountain of youth,” which has long been fabled to stop the aging process
entirely, has been discovered! It’s being marketed and sold to women in the U.S. and raking in billions for several different industries
each year. You can see it in countless magazines, billboards, commercials, TV
shows or movies – you know, the 55+ year-old women with zero signs of
aging. No lines or wrinkles, tight skin all over, no signs of silver hair
sparkling through their thick, flowing brunette and blonde heads of hair.
We rarely see an older woman in media, but when we do, she generally fits that
description. These women have obviously partaken of the fountain of youth, but
what did the trick?!
Media’s totally normal-appearing ageless
older women are the product of two tricks: cosmetic procedures and digital
alteration. Whether we like it or
not, we start to look different as we age. For men, those changes are most
often** depicted as looking “distinguished” and aren’t something for men to be ashamed
of. For women, those changes are to be immediately stopped, reversed and
hidden at all costs. Seriously, ALL costs – financially, time-wise and
health-wise. Because you’re worth it.
Let’s talk about Botox, baby. Plastic surgery is the most profitable industry
in the U.S., and Botox is the No. 1 cosmetic treatment. That means,
last year about 5.7 million people had Botulinum Toxin injected into their
facial muscles in order to paralyze them and conceal the appearance of
wrinkles, which must be repeated every 3-6 months. About 92 percent
of those who got Botox were women. The next most popular procedures were all
also for “anti-aging,” including soft tissue fillers, hyaluronic acid and
chemical peels. All of those procedures were up between 5 and 9 percent from
2011 to 2010 (6) for women young and old, making those frozen faces a
universal pressure for females of all ages.
In just the last decade, there has been a
446 percent increase in cosmetic procedures in the U.S., which raked in $12 billion in 2010 alone.
The AmericanAcademy of Plastic Surgeons called laser de-wrinkling procedures “recession proof.” It’s a little startling that
in the toughest economic times in decades, women are still sacrificing
thousands of dollars for painful and temporary procedures to prevent the
appearance of aging.
Back in 2006, Nora Ephron, a successful
screenwriter who passed away in June 2012, taught my naïve 20-something
self a sad fact about body anxiety when I saw her on Oprah. I had
no idea older women felt bad about their necks. She was
discussing her smash hit book, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other
Thoughts on Being a Woman,” which quickly became a New York Times
bestseller. What I’ve learned since then is that Nora’s humorous
acknowledgment that she was embarrassed about the way her neck looked struck a
major chord with women all over the world because it’s a hugely common
feeling. The skin in our necks (and everywhere) loses elasticity as we
age, but despite the painful plethora of procedures available for concealing
age on faces, hands and everywhere else, there aren’t any quick fixes for
making necks look younger than they are.
But that brings us to the other fountain
of youth trick: Digital Alteration.
If a woman isn’t outrageously gorgeous, thin and young-looking for her
age, she’s almost always either Photoshopped to look that way or is
completely invisible in mainstream media. This DOES have an effect. These
pervasive, nearly inescapably and strikingly consistent images of young-looking
older women create not just a new ideal for female beauty, but a new normal for
us.
Our Photoshop Phoniness Hall of
Shame sheds some light on the extreme abnormality of
those images by pairing before-and-after alteration shots. A couple of epic
age-defying examples are Faith Hill on the cover of Redbook and Twiggy in
Olay’s eye cream ads.
There are daily deliberate
decisions by media powerholders who profit from female anxiety about our faces
and bodies. They claim to sell the keys to the fountain of youth at every drug
store in the nation, but the only real solution to aging lies in the hands
of their photo editors. Ever noticed the stark difference in the way men’s faces
are portrayed compared to women’s faces in mass media — whether it’s the cover
of GQ or a Chanel ad? Here’s an extremely telling example we pieced together,
featuring about as comparable of a pairing as you could ever find: similar age,
both major celebrities, both in ads for the same company from the same year.
Just one major difference: one is a human face and one is a cartoon.
Wonder why you never see women with gray
hair featured positively in any sort of mainstream media? Because gray hair doesn’t make anyone any money.
A very telling example from the must-read “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf is of
a fashion magazine in the ’90s that featured a spread of beautiful
gray-haired older women in all the latest fashions. Despite positive feedback
from readers, one of the magazine’s main advertisers, Clairol, threatened to
pull all its advertising support if gray-haired women were ever featured
positively again. Thus, no gray-haired women are ever featured positively
in any magazine that depends on beauty advertising dollars (hint: all of them).
One scary fact is that those great lengths women
are going to in order to achieve a youthful ideal are not limited to surgical
procedures and magic creams — they also include disordered eating of all types.
Our friend Michelle Konstantinovsky
at HelloGiggles reported
on a study from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine,
which found that in their sample of 1,900 women 50 and older, more than 60
percent of women said their body weight or shape negatively affected their
lives and 13 percent admitted to having an eating disorder. We agree
with Michelle in saying “duh” to the “surprising” new finding that older
women also suffer from disordered eating.
But enough with the depressing stuff
already. Let’s get to some solutions!
What can be done to break these body image issues?
Importantly but not surprisingly, the researcher agrees with everything
we preach at Beauty Redefined: The lead researcher’s main
solution is to help women get themselves out of this “appearance
focus.” She recommends instead of looking for flaws, women work on
focusing on something positive about themselves — a characteristic that will
endure long after their looks fade. Easier said than done, right? We can
help you start with this list of totally doable strategies,
including going on a media fast, complimenting others on
more than their looks, shutting down negative thoughts, and many more. Please
choose even just one, and start right now to change the way you perceive your
own face and body. This isn’t an individual fight with individual effects. The
way we feel about ourselves and treat our bodies has real influence on those
around us, even if we aren’t aware of it.
Please consider your influence on the
reality of the girls, women, boys and men in your life.
What would happen if confident, happy, beautiful
women decided to forego painful and expensive anti-aging procedures, breast
lifts and enhancements, liposuction, all-over hair removal or tanning regimens?
How could that change the way their daughters, students, friends, nieces and
coworkers perceived themselves and their own “flawed,” lined, real
faces? How could simply owning (and treating kindly and speaking nicely
about) our so-called “imperfect” bodies affect not only our own lives, but
those over whom we have influence? Is it possible to slowly but deliberately
change the perception of these “flaws” as something to shame, hide and fix at
any cost to something acceptable and embraceable in all their human, womanly
real-ness? We say yes.
Yes, maybe every 50-year-old woman on TV or
movies has a wrinkle-free, perfectly injected and lifted face that appears
ageless. The pressure to Photoshop ourselves
into hopeful conformity with beauty ideals is intense, and backlash against
female aging is unbelievable. At 27, I frankly don’t yet grasp the real pain
and anxiety that accompanies aging and its effects on female faces and bodies
that become invisible and worthless in some ways to a society that
prizes youthful beauty above all else. Embracing your own
beautiful reality and owning it for the others
in your life is the epitome of redefining beauty. Media will continue
to symbolically annihilate women who don’t fit money-making beauty ideals, but
WE do not have to annihilate our own faces and bodies to fit those unreal
standards. What we COULD annihilate is our allegiance to the idea that women
have to look young forever, and that women who don’t look young forever aren’t
worthwhile or beautiful. I promise that will be much more empowering
and less painful.
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