Bodacious Berry, Potency Wood and the Aging Monster: Gender and Age Relations in Anti-Aging Ads

Abstract

This paper situates age discrimination within a broader system of age relations that intersects with other inequalities, and then uses that framework to analyze internet advertisements for the anti-aging industry. Such ads reinforce age and gender relations by positing old people as worthwhile only to the extent that they look and act like those who are middle aged or younger, by defi ning manhood and womanhood in opposition to each other, and by defi ning old age as an unhealthy loss of gender identity. These ads promote a reversion to middle age and white, middle-class, heterosexual norms of male performance and female beauty. The analysis demonstrates the utility of understanding age discrimination in terms of intersecting relations of inequality rather than learned attitudes alone.

Queering Aging Futures

“…Individuals are increasingly seen as responsible for ensuring their 'success' through prudent management of bodily resources as a way of mitigating future risk [12]. Commercially, the notion of 'successful aging' has resonated with consumerist discourses that proffer an expanding horizon of anti-aging goods and services [13][14][15][16][17]. This 'successful aging assemblage' [3] underpins contemporary imaginaries of old age and later life, populating these with active, creative, flexible, 'sexy seniors' [18][19][20].…”

“…It thus aligns with other ways of recuperating successful aging futures through, for example, anti-aging culture's promotion of sexuo-pharmaceuticals and other 6 There is also clearly a reassertion of patriarchal linearity here, although this is beyond the scope of the present paper. biomedical means of restoring happy futures [13,50,51]. As Emily Wentzell [52] cautions, expansion of biomedical control over non-normative bodies risks deflecting attention away from the social interventions that could create the conditions for a diversity of more livable futures.…”

Age-friendly Advertising: A Qualitative Research on the Romanian Silver Consumers

“…In this case, the manner in which media advertising portrays ageing and the perspective of growing old has been largely investigated in media and ageing studies using both quantitative (Kay & Furnham 2013;Kohlbacher & Chéron 2012;Furnham & Paltzer 2010;Zhang, Harwood, Williams, Ylänne-McEwen, Wadleigh & Thimm, 2006;Miller, Leyell & Mazachek, 2004) and qualitative methodologies (Chen 2015;Marshall & Rahman, 2015;Loose & Ekström, 2014;Flatt, Settersten, Ponsaran & Fishman 2013;Brooks 2010;Calasanti 2007;Calasanti & King 2007). In all these approaches -whether qualitative or quantitative -the scholars have highlighted the inappropriate ways of portraying elders (i.e.…”

Queera livslopp : Att leva och åldras som lhbtq-person i en heteronormativ värld

“…Toni Calasanti (2007) har undersökt hur genus-och åldersrelationer samverkar i internetannonser från anti-åldrandeindustrin där bland annat hormoner, kosttillskott och kirurgi marknadsförs för att förhindra åldrande. Hon visar hur äldre personer i dessa annonser räknas endast om de ser ut, eller beter sig, som om de vore medelålders eller yngre.…”

“…Också sex ställs mot hög ålder, där åldrande för män innebär sjunkande testosteronnivåer och för kvinnor ett allt mer osexigt och oattraktivt utseende. Att bibehålla ett aktivt sexliv blir ett sätt att undvika att åldras, och det handlar för män om att (åter)ta en bestämd sexuell prestationsinriktad roll, medan kvinnor framförallt måste kunna presentera en attraktiv och sexuellt redo kropp (Calasanti, 2007). Utöver de heterosexuella normer Calasanti pekar på vill jag tillägga den cisnormativitet som är mycket central här och som förutsätter linjära kroppar.…”