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

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 defining manhood and womanhood in opposition to each other, and by defining 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.