ANNIE, WOMEN AND AGING – GO NUDE OR GO HOME? Interview by Sue Van Der Hout
The debate on whether there is beauty after 50, 60 and beyond got a huge boost when Dove asked celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz to take tasteful nude pictures of women with some decades behind them. Looming over Times Square, plastered in ads in women´s magazines, available on the web, these photographs challenged us to think about "the rules". To better understand aging, Dove consulted Canadian Sociologist Dr. Susan McDaniel. So did Girlphyte. Here Dr. McDaniel explains worldwide perspectives on women and aging.
Does age matter anymore?
Yes and no. This is a question that has been posed by such disparate folks as the popular media and the Law Commission of Canada. Popular media ask how age can matter when everyone is young! Music, TV and fashion as well as most movies act as if life ends at around 35, sometimes younger (particularly in fashion!).
And aging is gendered too. Men can get older. It is called ‘developing character,’ and character is more developed if the older men are either rich or powerful (preferably both!) Does anyone remember when Ronald Reagen – at age 70 at least – was deemed ‘sexy’ in some kind of poll, by women! How many women at 70 are seen as sexy? Well, Yoko Ono at 73 just posed for the cameras for her new CD in high heel open shoes, a short dress, and sexy sunglasses. She is one ‘hot chick.’
But is that because she doesn’t look her age?
Check these numbers on Academy Awards given from 1927- 1990:
Older men and younger women dominated the best actor and actress categories.
Men over age 39 = 67% of best-actor winners
Women under age 35 = 64% best-actress winners
(A Boston University study)
Yes, age matters. But, you say, things have changed recently. True too.
A piece in the news, "Old Flames" Leanne Delap Globe and Mail Saturday, February 10, 2007 p. L1, says this:
"They´re over 60. they have crow´s feet. And they´re HOT. Ever since the seniors swept the Golden Globes, everyone´s talking about power wrinkles. Forget Botox; Helen Mirren [at 61] is a queen without it, thank you very much. Meanwhile, Yoko Ono [at nearly 74] has a new album…"
And she goes on to add, "Young fashion plates… look cryogenic!"
These are pretty sexy oldsters too…
But they are the exception – the big exception, by Hollywood rules. Many women actors over age 40 cannot get roles anymore, or if they do, the plum lead roles are not what they get.
So, what about that Law Commission of Canada’s interest in whether age matters? Well, about three years ago, they asked that very question with respect to laws and policies. Does age matter any more? The answer was ‘yes and no.’ Age matters for some entitlements such as driving or drinking (hopefully not both at the same time!) where society would generally not want to toss out age criteria. Imagine a 5 year old driving a Hummer? Maybe not! Or a 10 year old sucking back the booze? Age does still matter.
On the other hand, the LCC as it is affectionately called, thought that age was way overplayed in some realms. For example, if we live a much longer time now – women well past 80 now and men almost to age 80 in Canada, does it make sense to force people into retirement at age 65, if they want to continue working. No, said the LCC, age shouldn’t matter in that situation. There is nothing magic about age 65. In fact, here’s a kicker: Age 65 was set in stone a long time ago by a German named Bismarck, who cleverly thought that if you set retirement age very high – 65 was a very old age in the 19th century! – then most people will not live long enough to collect their pensions, and the government would save all that money!
Is North America different than other places in relation to age? Is it harder to grow old in the glare of the Hollywood spotlight?
Yup, on both counts. North America is a bit hung up on age actually. In the 2006 Dove global study, Beauty Comes of Age (by Dr. Robert Butler, International Longevity Study, Dr. Nancy Etcoff, Harvard University, and Dr. Susie Orbach, London School of Economics, along with Heidi D’Agostino of StrategyOne), women 50-65 from 9 countries were asked what they thought the ideal age of beauty was for women. For the U.S., it was late 20s. But in France, women were seen as reaching their peak beauty at age 35, and in Japan, at age 36.
If you’re seen as ‘over the hill’ by the time you are 30 in the U.S., there are a lot, a lot of years to live on the other side of that hill.
It is MUCH harder to grow old in the glare of Hollywood! Hollywood says: youth good, age bad. Anti-aging messages and agendas are everywhere. Our youth-centred culture, to which Hollywood definitely contributes hugely, tends to see (and still sees) growing older, particularly for women, as a challenge, something to rail against … or even a tragedy. "Look at her," we say, "poor thing, she looks so old and tired. Too bad she doesn’t take better care of herself."
Oscar Wilde summed this up with his usual sharp insight:
"A man’s face is his autobiography; a woman’s her greatest work of fiction."
Women have been taught to pursue actively the fictional face and body, to deny aging or hide it or themselves away. It has been called the Unattainable Venus.
And it seems that Hollywood, and Bollywood as well, hold our this unattainable venus as something we should all strive for.
Why do we need to have a skyscraper picture of a nude woman of mature years to spark a positive discussion about the lusciousness of women in the second half of adulthood?
Wish it wasn’t so, but it seems that a campaign like this gets people talking about the way they see women, women in advertising, women over age 50 and how they see beauty. I was in New York City in Times Square not long ago where one of the skyscraper billboards is. It was spectacular and lovely but caught the crowds attention precisely because it is not what they usually see on skyscraper billboards! Catching attention is making people think and rethink. Some would agree with you, Ms. Interviewer, that these women are luscious. Others seem to be horrified by the imperfections of aging, the fact that these women are in ‘all their glory’ and – egads – are over age 50. For some young people, it may be like seeing your mother as sexy and on a billboard. But the women in the ads have children – at least some of them do – and their children LIKE the images.
In my view, Dove’s PRO- AGE campaign is timely and very, very welcome. Women in the Beauty Comes of Age global survey found some spectacularly interesting, path-breaking findings. One is that women take huge pride in their age but feel misrepresented by popular culture. A full 91% of women interviewed in 9 countries thought it was high time for society to change its attitudes toward women and aging. And – get this! – 97% thought that society is less accepting of the appearance of women over age 50 than of younger women. Guess they haven’t seen Yoko Ono, Helen Mirren or Judi Dench! In Canada, 87% of women thought that aging is hidden and not celebrated.
Dialogue about women, aging and beauty, is being sparked by the Dove PRO-AGE. Truly, beauty has no age limits, as the Dove PRO-Age campaign says, and the campaign is making people talk and think.
Sociologically speaking, what is it about the Dove campaign that is sparking a cultural debate about age and beauty?
The Dove PRO-AGE campaign has done two things, maybe more, that are sociologically important. The first is that the Beauty Comes of Age survey is the first global study to ask women 50+ their perspectives on aging and beauty, what their needs are, and how they feel about themselves and how society sees them. Other studies have asked some of the same kinds of questions but not in such depth, and not in ways that allow for international comparisons. The findings are very interesting and provide texture to our knowledge about women and aging.
The second thing the Dove PRO-AGE campaign has done which is sociologically important is exactly what your question says, sparking a cultural debate about aging and beauty, that previously had been confined to images of beauty among young women. Dove had a role in that earlier debate as well, with their Campaign for Real Beauty which like the Pro-Age campaign, questioned the ways we and society see beauty and don’t see it. That campaign included billboards of real women – young women – of various shapes, sizes and colours, in their underwear. It sparked huge discussion about beauty and how the «beauty industry» portrays and distorts women to fit a completely unreal image of beauty. Naomi Wolf’s highly popular book of the early 1990s, The Beauty Myth, revolutionized the ways young women see themselves. One comment on that book sums up the revolution that occurred at the time:
"I won’t soon forget Wolf’s vision of those privileged young women,
dulled and apathetic, moving like death camp zombies across the
grassy quadrangles, followers of the cult of hunger in the midst of
intellectual and material plenty."
Michelle Landsberg, Toronto Star columnist
In research I was doing in the 1990s with colleague, Sharon Abu-Laban of the University of Alberta, on beauty and aging, we found a young girl of about 12, who wrote to Sassy magazine. She said that she had just heard about airbrushing and inquired about whether she could do it at home! The beauty ideal has a long reach, and makes most girls and women want to take up airbrushing.
How can women get to a place of confidence about aging and beauty without the benefit of a photo shoot with Annie Leibowitz? What should we be saying to our mirrors?
The Beauty Comes of Age research finds that women have an ongoing battle with perceptions of aging which results in a paradox. On the one hand, the majority of women 50+ from all over the world take pride in their age. Many report that they have never tried to hide their age. But -- and it’s a big, big but – a majority also feel that aging is hidden in society rather than celebrated. This was most often noted in Canada and the U.S., not surprising in light of what I noted earlier about North America’s hang-up about age. Nearly all the women surveyed said it made them feel good when someone tells them they look younger. This opens a real riddle since in order to be complimented on not looking your age, your age must be known.
Here, in sum, is the paradox of aging from the Beauty Comes of Age survey:
The Dove survey findings are in line with other research on aging that finds that happiness and life satisfaction do not decline with age, but increase! Here is the big dilemma – between images of aging as decline, decrepitude and loss versus the reality that people themselves are happy with aging.
Here’s one woman’s view on how very important aging is to her:
• If I had just one wish, I would live my life in reverse. I´d start out at 85, but as I grew younger I´d get better looking. I´d have a mid-life crisis, switch jobs and start a family with kids who were born at 85 too.
But, we are taught by society that aging is something negative, something we ought to work hard against.
"See your mother on holidays, not every time you look into the mirror."
An ad for an anti-aging transdermal skin patch
Ms. Magazine (1997)
These are heavy lessons and lessons some women take in all too well. Yet, despite those lessons, women in the Beauty Comes of Age survey resist the image of aging as to be avoided. They think that society’s attitude ought to get with the new realities and change pronto!
And movements are afoot to take back the image of aging as negative. There are Red Hatters, for example:
The statement of purpose of the Red Hat Society is "…a few women deciding to greet middle age with verve, humour and elan."
The Dove PRO-AGE campaign and the beautiful ladies in the photos by Annie Leibowitz could be seen as part of the ‘take back’ the image of beauty as a monopoly of skinny young girls. Their images on billboards and television say to the viewer, "Hey, I am happy. I am beautiful. Life is great. Look at my self-esteem beaming from me. I don’t need to accept society’s images of aging as negative. It isn’t. It’s great. I embrace it and want to live life fully." Leibowitz’s photos capture all this beautifully. But….
Our own mirrors of ourselves can do exactly that too. We can say, and are saying when we listen to women 50+ from nine countries in Beauty Comes of Age:
I look pretty good, particularly when I am happy with myself.
I am alive, vibrant and wiser than I used to be.
Life is good with a few years on it.
Society is nuts not to see aging as good, and aging women as beautiful.
And they would be right! Think of it this way:
Successful aging seems to be (if media images are accepted), coping with the impossible burden of growing older without aging, of living with age without aging.
It isn’t going to work really because age we must, unless we die young, a prospect few of us would greet with glee!
• "The only thing worse than aging," the sage Mark Twain reminds us, "is not aging."
Yes, we should eat well, exercise, not smoke and laugh a lot in the company of those we value but…We do these in order TO age, NOT in order to avoid aging. If we measure success in a life as "Not being disappointed in yourself," as recently deceased June Callwood wisely said, then… there is both comedy and tragedy:
• The comedy comes in the preposterousness of our denials of aging while we work out, eat carefully and well, etc.
• The tragedy is that in aiming toward living with age, WITHOUT aging, we set ourselves up for profound disappointment…. AND, paradoxically, can become deeply disappointed by our very success in aging!
To trip the light fantastic as we live with age, we need to giggle at ourselves and at the world, and not use labels of aging against ourselves
[Witness the Dalai Lama (68) and Desmond Tutu (82) together in Vancouver at UBC a few years ago, giggling like schoolboys]
And we need to be active and happy not only for ourselves as aging women, but active with others in many generations to embrace living with aging, not as a metaphor for staying young, BUT as a means of making a world where more, many more, can enjoy the luxury of living with age, in aging societies.
• "We’re here. We’re not Britney Spears. Get used to it!"
Chris Hewett (2004) "Middle-aged actors dare to bare lived-in bodies," Edmonton Journal 2 January.
Here’s a homework assignment to conclude. Go to www.youtube.com
And search for ‘the zimmers.’ You will love the love of life in it!
Age beautifully out there!
25.06.2007
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Dr. Susan McDaniel, FRSC was for 15 years Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta where she was awarded the honorific lifetime title of Distinguished University Professor. Prior to that, she was on faculty at the University of Waterloo. She is a widely published sociologist, well known in Canada and internationally. Recipient of many awards and recognitions for her path-breaking research on aging, women’s health, family, demographic change, and social aspects of innovation, she was the first ever winner of the Therese Casgrain Fellowship for research on women’s issues in Canada. She was Woman of the Year (Professional) in Kitchener-Waterloo. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the highest honour Canada bestows for outstanding research contributions. She is Vice-President Publications of the International Sociological Association (which she represented at the United Nations in New York), and appointed to the National Statistics Council by five successive federal governments to advise on data collection. She served as Editor of The Canadian Journal of Sociology and of the international journal, Current Sociology, the oldest and most widely cited sociology journal in the world. She is in demand as an advisor on social policy by governments in Canada and elsewhere, and is a frequent keynote speaker at major conferences, including the U.S./Canada Forum on Women’s Health where she shared the podium with the U.S. Secretary of Health and Social Services in the Clinton Government, Donna Shalala (now President of the University of Miami) and the former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards. She was, for 9 years, Chair of the Expert Advisory Committee on Science and Technology Statistics, appointed by the Chief Statistician of Canada. The Committee developed a conceptual framework for the collection of statistics on science, technology and innovation, which became the model used in various parts of the world including in the U.S. and Australia. And she has two recipes in a Zonta women’s fraternity cookbook, Recipes of Distinguished Canadian Women! Dr. McDaniel is at present Professor of Sociology at the University of Windsor, where she was recruited as that University’s first Vice-President Research
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