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"Anti-Aging" Magazine Advertising and the War on Nature
Kim Golombisky
University of South Florida
Contact:
Kim Golombisky, assistant professor
School of Mass Communications CIS1040
University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Ave.
Tampa, FL 33620
813-974-9400 (voice mail)
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"Anti-Aging" Magazine Advertising and the War on Nature
Kim Golombisky, University of South Florida
Abstract
This essay examines "anti-aging" skincare advertising in women's
magazines to wonder about the representational politics of midlife
women. If culture defines beauty as a woman's greatest asset and
defines beauty by youth, then it is no surprise that anti-aging
advertising consists of a battle cry to wage a high-tech war on
aging. But the impulse to counter-argue that aging is natural is no
less problematic, for our understanding of nature depends on the same
scientific discourses that align the feminine with nature and also
position science to control both women and nature.
Key Words: aging, advertising, feminism, magazines, women
"Anti-Aging" Magazine Advertising and the War on Nature
Abstract
This essay examines "anti-aging" skincare advertising in women's
magazines to wonder about the representational politics of midlife
women. If culture defines beauty as a woman's greatest asset and
defines beauty by youth, then it is no surprise that anti-aging
advertising consists of a battle cry to wage a high-tech war on
aging. But the impulse to counter-argue that aging is natural is no
less problematic, for our understanding of nature depends on the same
scientific discourses that align the feminine with nature and also
position science to control both women and nature.
Introduction
In 1978 Williamson twisted the ideological lid off an Oil of Olay
magazine advertisement that read, "Your age is no secret if your skin
lets you down" (p. 68). Williamson (1978) pointed out that, first,
the ad poised the reader in literal face-off that commodified her
skin. Second, the young model with flawless skin in the ad's visual
was positioned as a mirror for the reader. The Olay ad addressed the
reader as "mature" but still possessing the "possibility" to be
"attractive" with the help of Oil of Olay. The Olay ad suggested time
betrays the reader because it "takes with it the youthful moisture
that makes young skin young." In the narrative of this advertisement,
women's own faces collude with time to rob women of their youth, thus
beauty. But Oil of Olay—with its "blend of tropical moist oils that
almost exactly duplicate our skin's own natural lubrication"—enlisted
nature to save the reader's face from "wrinkle dryness."
Today's Oil of Olay, along with Olay's competitors, in many ways
echoes this advertising story about the negative effects of time and
the secrets women keep to hide their age. What is different today,
however, is the lucrative demographic of aging boomer women this
product category targets. Today's oeuvre is also more blatant and
insistent in its "anti-aging" discourse, and the beautiful young
model as a Lacanian mirror is less prevalent in current advertising
for "mature" skincare. Additionally, while the 1978 version partners
cosmetic products with a scientifically enhanced nature (Williamson,
1978), the 2004 version enlists biomedical technology in a war on nature.
If culture defines beauty as a women's greatest asset, and if our
culture defines beauty as youth, then it should come as no surprise
that the rhetoric of skincare advertising that targets female boomers
consists of a battle cry to wage war against aging. This essay
examines the rhetorical magic of anti-aging skincare advertising to
wonder about the representational politics of middle-aged women.
Contemporary "anti-aging" advertising exists at the nexus of a
cultural aversion to aging in general and aging women specifically
and a commercial enterprise hoping to cash in on the considerable
spending power of an aging female baby boomer population.
For the moment, however, this commercial enterprise seems to be at
something of a loss as to how to represent female middle age visually
in advertising imagery. In this study of contemporary magazine
advertising for "mature" skincare products, I find an ironic emphasis
on the "visible signs of aging" for a consumer demographic for which
there are few visual conventions. As Sefcovic (1996, p. 2) observes,
"American popular culture typically excises the woman who shows her
age." Kitch (2003), however, notes that, as contemporary magazines
have begun to sell female baby boomer consumers to advertisers, these
advertisers are merely reproducing the same myths of youthful beauty
sold to younger consumers. I have argued "that this absence of visual
representations of female middle age reflects a contemporary cultural
question mark on the subject of middle-aged women living in a visual
society" (XXXX, 2004).
In what follows I first note that middle age is underrepresented in
both popular culture and the literature, while "anti-aging"
discourses grow. Second I provide a theoretical setup for analyzing
these "anti-aging" discourses. Next I describe mature skincare
advertisements taken from 17 magazine titles in 2004. Then I offer my
critical analysis of this advertising. Finally, I conclude with
ambivalent remarks regarding the difficulties of resisting
"anti-aging" without returning to equally problematic discourses of
nature and the natural.
Middle-Aged Women Missing in Action
Sefcovic (1996) writes, "There is little place in American—perhaps
Western—consciousness for a middle-aged woman" (p. 2). She argues
that the power of recognition for U.S. women hinges on youth and
beauty and that "middle age seems to be the point at which females
are deleted from public representations" (Sefcovic, 1996, pp.2, 4).
While middle-aged women may be invisible, the aged woman is
stereotypically unappealing. Arguing the need "to distinguish
carefully between biological aging and aging that is produced by
culture" ("encoded daily in the stories and advertisements of mass
media"), Woodward (1999, pp. 5-9) writes, "It is thus not an accident
that many women around age fifty experience aging…By experiencing
aging, I am referring primarily to the internalization of our
culture's denial and distaste for aging, which is understood in terms
of decline, not in terms of growth and change." Indeed, little in
popular culture—or academic theory—prepares women to interpret aging,
except in terms of the visible physical as "caricature"
(Cristofovici, 1999) or "disease" (Woodward, 1999).
Studies on media representations middle-aged women are virtually
non-existent and studies of elderly women find them under-represented
and depicted negatively (McConatha, Schnell, & McKenna, 1999; Miller,
Miller, McKibben, & Pettys, 1999; Nett, 1991; Robinson & Skill, 1995;
Vasil & Wass, 1993; Vernon, Williams, Phillips, & Wilson, 1990).
Mediated representations of menopause also are depicted negatively as
a disease (Gannon & Stevens, 1998; Hust & Andsager, 2003;
Marcus-Newhall et al., 2001; Rostosky & Travis, 1996; Sefcovic,
1996). Hust and Andsager (2003, p. 103) write, "Although women in
their fifties are certainly not elderly, they are practically
invisible in media imagery." In the absence of research on mediated
depictions, representations, and portrayals of female middle age,
including in advertising, it goes without saying that issues of
representing race, ethnicity, class, or sexual orientation among this
group remain unexplored as well. Kitch (2003), however, finds a new
interest in boomer women among magazines and their advertisers: "What
is new…lies not in how magazines are sold to readers but in how
readers are sold to advertisers." Kitch (2003) writes, "(T)hese
publications have replicated for older women the same kinds of
unattainable ideals long presented to younger audiences."
In sum, middle-aged women represent a significant U.S. demographic,
whose presence has been less well represented in popular media and
media studies. Nonetheless, as Kitch (2003) hints, we may be
witnessing the media industries' attempts to articulate a "'new'
middle age" reflecting "a profoundly commercial vision based on the
fear of aging rather than its celebration." Offering credence to this
observation is the surging popularity of reality and fiction
television focusing on makeovers, plastic surgery, and even plastic
surgeons, such as ABC's Extreme Makeover, Fox's The Swam, TLC's 10
Years Younger and Plastic Surgery Beverly Hills, FX's Nip/Tuck, and
BRAVO's Miami Slice. If the advertising industry is just beginning to
develop conventions for representing the "'new' middle age," then
"anti-aging" advertising targeting middle-aged women with "the beauty
myth" (Wolf, 1991) should tell us something about our cultural
interpretation of contemporary mid-life womanhood.
Like a Natural Woman
Williamson (1978) argued that advertising represents an ideology
wherein we are encouraged to produce ourselves by consuming the
products advertised to us. In the case of cosmetic advertising, she
writes, "In the mirror, your external appearance, your face, already
has the status of an object; so it can easily become an object that
is the property of the manufacturers—but one held up as purchasable"
(Williamson, 1978, p. 68). This commercial ideology participates in a
larger cultural psychology of individualism and self-help that
encourages us constantly to work on and improve ourselves (Dow, 1996;
Payne, 1989, 1991, 1992; White, 1992). In the instance of cosmetics,
self-help psychology is a gendered formula that encourages women to
make a lifelong project of their appearance.
If Williamson unravels advertising as ideology, Burke (1931/1968,
1941/1967) suggests that such pervasive ideological discourses may
function as "equipment for living"—"a kind of problem-solving
folklore that motivates audiences to adopt particular attitudes
toward apprehending everyday life" (Golombisky, 2001, p. 70).
Commonsense folklore creates the meanings we impose upon our material
worlds (Burke, 1931/1968, 1941/1967, 1961/1970). Hence, our
understanding of the "natural" order of things, such as
self-improvement, is driven by human "logology," rather than
"nature." In the present case, anti-aging discourses assume a
commonsense wisdom assuring us that it is only natural both to want
to look younger and to consume scientifically fortified products that
promise to return us to our more natural youthful selves.
A commonsense critique may be tempted to counter argue that aging is
the natural process, and that mediated discourses, even scientific
ones, that exhort us to resist aging are unnatural. Haraway (1991),
however, might disagree. Interested in histories of scientific
discourses and sex/gender politics, Haraway (1991) argues that
"nature," thus what is "natural," is a moving target in a Western
exercise/exorcism to distinguish the limits of self/Other. Haraway,
like Burke, emphasizes the ways we use language to order the
"natural" world, often in arbitrary ways. Haraway, however, goes
further to show how we use language to label what may count as
"nature" and the "natural" world. Tracing the ways our understanding
of "nature" parallels the trajectory of science along with the
metaphors science appropriates, Haraway (1991, p. 42) writes, "In a
strict sense, science is our myth." But even this myth is an evolving
one, following the course of human scientific endeavor itself, from
sociobiology as capitalist market machine to genetics and immunology
as information systems and problems of mis/communication. So
Haraway's (1991) work, first, cautions us against assumptions about
what is natural, and, second, encourages us to recognize the
scientific analogies and metaphors that anti-aging advertising
appropriates. Additionally, as a feminist, Haraway urges us to locate
the hierarchical binaries and sex/gender politics inherent in science
narratives, whether academic or commercial.
Moving from the natural to the empirical, if the symbolic order
functions as a lens through which we view the world, then our eyes
may deceive us, according to Phelan (1993). Interested in embodiment
and performance, Phelan is suspicious of visibility politics.
Reminding us that "representations" are not "real truths" (p. 2), she
theorizes an "unmarked" subjectivity that "cannot be reproduced
within the ideology of the visible" (p. 1). The unmarked becomes
more, rather than less, elusive the harder one tries to envision it.
The usefulness of the unmarked lies in unsettling binaries and
resisting equivalence to a visual real, thus upsetting our
too-comfortable reliance on "seeing is believing." If U.S. media lack
the visual vernacular for representing female middle age, then
perhaps mid-life female boomers embody an example of an unmarked
presence that remains a force—for the moment—outside formulae that
equate visual representation with reality.
Middle age is problematic within a symbolic order dependent on
binary opposites such as young/old and definitions of age/aging that
depend on visual recognition. Thus female middle age is indeed an
awkward age difficult to associate with stereotypical correspondences
to young or old, attractive or unattractive (to sexual partners), or
reproductive or un(re)productive. Furthermore, if the "visible signs
of aging" can be retarded, erased, and reversed, as "anti-aging"
skincare advertising promises, then what we see in terms of the
"visible signs of aging" is no longer necessarily what we get.
Nevertheless, it is significant that without the visual conventions
of some middle ground, women's choices are to appear as either young
or old, and since looking old aligns with negative cultural meanings,
middle age must align with youth. Put simply, no product is going to
succeed by encouraging middle-aged women to expend time and money to
make themselves look no different than they are today—or to look
older. To visualize or embody old age is to acknowledge mortality,
which renders consumption moot. Thus, as Burke and Williamson both
point out, we cast magical discursive spells to mystify what we
literally cannot face. In Haraway's terms, the form of the
incantation is science. Even as the rhetoric of "anti-aging"
advertising encourages us to consume products aligned with science in
order to fight the nature of our aging faces, this "rhetorical
technology" (Payne, 1989, 1991) cannot show us, visualize for us,
visibly represent the very thing its continued existence economically
depends upon: imagery of the aging female face.
Anti-Aging Advertising as Special Ops
This essay resulted from another study in which I asked, "What do
middle-aged women look like in magazine advertising?" (XXXX, 2004).
Advertisements for the first study were collected from 22 magazines
with cover dates ranging from February to March 2004.[1] The original
study pulled every advertisement containing at least one photograph
or illustration of a middle-aged or older human figure, which, of
course, became a series of judgment calls. Since few ads specifically
note their models' or characters' ages, I was forced to consider the
"visual" markers by which I might judge or misjudge age. However, a
group of advertisements promising to "de-crease" the "visible signs
of aging," already had catalogued those visual symptoms for me. That
group of ads, with their fascinating language of "anti-aging," is the
subject of this essay. (See figures 1 and 2.)
Below I outline themes that emerged from the advertisements,
including anti-aging; visible signs of aging; secrets, lies, and
hiding; time compression and reversal; the war against aging;
high-tech science meets medicine; and the vocabulary of renewal. I
also will show that these themes spill over into related and
not-so-related advertising. Last I describe the visuals used in these
ads, including the use of celebrity models, and a formula I call
"cropped, chopped, and dropped." Following this thematic overview of
the ads, I offer my analysis and discussion.
Anti-Aging
Among the skincare ads pulled for the original study, a rhetoric of
"anti-aging" is unmistakable, particularly among products targeting
"mid-life skin" (Estee Lauder), "mature skin" (Clarins and Lancome),
and even "30-something skin" (L'Oreal). Often the names of the
products tell the story, such as Neutrogena's Anti-Wrinkle Cream,
Lancome's Anti-Age Spot Serum, and Roc's Age-Diminishing Daily
Moisturizer. L'Oreal's Winkle De-Crease product is billed as an
"anti-wrinkle" treatment with "anti-aging action," and StriVectin SD
advertises itself as an "anti-aging" "breakthrough." Bee-Alive
describes its Bee-Moisturized product as an "anti-wrinkle cream,"
while Correctionist Crème promises an "age-defying treatment."
Visible Signs of Aging
Age is written upon a woman's face, according to this kind of
advertising, which catalogues the "visible signs of aging" for
readers. The phrase "visible signs of aging" appears in advertising
for Clarins, and "visible aging" appears in Estee Lauder's ad. Olay
Total Effects 7x offers a list of "the seven signs of aging": "fine
lines and wrinkles, age spots, texture, tone, dullness, dryness,
pores." The other advertisers echo one or more of these and similar
"signs" of aging.
A number of these ads also promise visible results. L'Oreal
Wrinkle-Decrease Eye promises to "visibly correct lines." Another
L'Oreal ad promises that users will "start seeing results in less
than one hour." L'Oreal also reports that users "saw" fewer of those
"signs" after use. Roc will "visibly reduce brown spots." Estee
Lauder will "repair" "the appearance of deep lines and wrinkles and
promises "you'll see" results. Clarins advertises "spectacular
results," including skin that is "visibly smoother" and
"youthful-looking." StriVection will "visibly reduce" the signs of
aging. Bee-Alive, a product for "looking younger," also "reduces the
appearance" of aging on the face, and those who use Neutrogena's
"Visibly Firm Night Cream" will "see results." Olay's Total Effects
7x provides "an overall more youthful appearance," and the "skin's
appearance is visibly lifted and brightened" by using Olay's
Regenerist Eye, although people will want to "peek" into users'
medicine cabinets to see what product is generating these visible results.
Secrets, Lies, and Hiding
The notion of women lying about their age is not new, and two
advertisers make use of themes of secrets, lies, and hiding. Olay
headlines read: "Lie about your age. Hide the evidence" and "Lie
about your age. Bury the evidence." Olay's Total Effects 7x warns
readers, "Don't hide it (the product) in your medicine cabinet";
"your secret's not safe" there because of those curious peekers. But
"so what if you're not really 28. Your secret's safe with Olay Total
Effects Night Firming Cream." Less selfish than Olay, Bee-Alive's
founder shares her "secret" to "looking younger."
Time Compression and Reversal
Ultimately, anti-aging skincare is about reversing the effects of
time, as some of the advertisements promise. Worth noting, however,
is the way the reversal of one's lifetime is compressed into quick
results. Furthermore, some of the language states that these
treatments "correct" and "repair" the implied mistakes of aging.
"Stop the clock," Correctionist tells readers in a headline
positioned under a visual that replaces the right side of a model's
face with an analog clock. A product that "repairs skin damage,"
Correctionist states, "Erase time one line at a time with six
clinically-proven wrinkle reversing agents in as little as four
weeks." Neutrogena advertises "results in two weeks." L'Oreal
"accelerates the natural rate skin repairs itself by up to 90%."
L'Oreal promises results in an hour, but the full effect of its
"wrinkle corrector" takes one to four weeks, so the ads states.
Clarins' results are "confirmed after 6 weeks of use." CosmoDerm &
CosmoPlast promise "no downtime" and "immediate results." "Leading us
into the ageless future," Estee Lauder's Resilience Lift
Extra-Firming Mask promises "New lift, new life. In just 10 minutes,"
and Estee Lauder's new DermSolutions is a treatment to "repair"
damaged skin "6 times faster" than its "previous formulas."
The War Against Aging
If these advertisements incline toward "anti-aging," then "fighting"
aging requires an organized war effort. A Neutrogena headline reads,
"Don't just fight wrinkles. Fight gravity." A Roc headline reads
similarly: "The fight against aging doesn't stop at wrinkles." Olay
Total Effects 7x copy reads, "Powerfully fights seven signs of
aging." Olay's Total Effects Intensive Restoration Treatment
"miraculously fights past damage."
But this war is more like the high-tech precision strike of a special
operations team or an underground insurgency than a traditional
battlefield confrontation. Olay's Regenerist Eye serum targets "three
zones"; the line art in the ad's visual literally targets spots
around the Olay model's eye in a way connoting Star Wars satellite
imagery. L'Oreal also "directly" and "precisely" "targets expression
lines," providing "instant intervention." Correctionist employs "the
six most revolutionary wrinkle fighters." Estee Lauder builds the
skin's "resistance" to aging. Lancome, placing its body copy on a
map-like grid "delivers concentrated action through a unique Mela-NO
Complex and a powerful bio-network."
High-Tech Meets Medicine
In this high-tech war against aging, science and biotechnology are
always allies, even if cosmetic surgery is not. StriVectin, claiming
to be "better than Botox," snidely coins a new term for cosmetic
dermatology—"cosmeceuticals." Bee-Alive employs a testimonial
claiming its product is "like a facelift in a bottle." Olay offers
results "without drastic measures." One of Neutrogena's
advertisements argues, "There is another way" besides "injections"
and "chemical peels." Estee Lauder's DermSolutions repairs "without
acids or dermabrasion" and is "a wise choice when preparing for and
rebounding from an invasive cosmetic procedure." Estee Lauder's
"Advanced Night Repair Protective Recovery Complex" is "a coveted
serum" containing "patented technology." One of L'Oreal's headlines
reads, "Surgery can wait!" thanks to its new ingredient "Boswelox."
Like L'Oreal's Boswelox and Lancome's Mela-NO Complex, many of the
advertisers boast similarly bewildering technical names for their
products' ingredients.
The Vocabulary of Renewal
Not surprisingly, advertisers describe the post-war face using a
language of spring-like renewal, suggesting these products replace
the middle-aged woman's face or return it to its younger version. The
vocabulary of postwar success includes verbs such as: refinish (Estee
Lauder), regenerate (Neutrogena, Olay), rejuvenate (L'Oreal), renew
(Clarins), replenish (Bee-Alive, Clarins, Neutrogena), restore
(Clarins, Olay), resurface (Correctionist), and revitalize (Clarins, Roc).
Thematic Spillover
An interesting spillover of these themes appears in another group of
ads from the original study. Two advertisements for the Proactiv acne
product line use actors for testimonials—one uses actor Vanessa
Williams (the only woman of color represented among the ads in this
study) and other, actor Judith Light. Both ads describe the women's
"fight" against acne, the "terrible secret" of "hiding" acne, the
visible signs of acne, and the products' ability to "attack" acne and
"renew" skin using "prescription-grade ingredients." Crest
Whitestrips promise to "take off 14 years in 7 days." Cascade Crystal
Clear, showing images of glass stemware leaning on canes, wrapped in
shawls, and sitting in rocking chairs, will "protect your glasses
from the harsh effects of time." Here the visible signs of aging are
etching, spots, and film.
Most interesting, however, is a group of products falling under the
dubious heading of "neutraceuticals." Symbiotropin, manufactured by
Nutraceutics, runs this headline: "You'll say you're 29…they'll
believe you." Symbiotropin's copy reads, "It's no secret,
Symbiotropin is at the forefront in anti-aging." Garden of Life's
Living Multi vitamin urges the reader to "fight back" against
"premature aging." Rutozym's headline reads, "Be age-smart.
Rejuvenate your heart." Rutozym's lead begins, "Red not only looks
good on your lips, it's the component in blood that gives your skin
its radiant appearance." Olay also now offers a vitamin line that
promises health and beauty: "Total Effects Beauty and Wellness
Nutrients." Last, Essence Formulas promise to "improve skin
appearance…and more" with a growth hormone formula. In these
advertisements, facial beauty remains the goal in the fight against
aging, but beauty depends upon what you ingest, not what you apply.
Visual Imagery: Celebrity, Cropped, Chopped, and Dropped
Williamson (1978) pointed out that cosmetic industry advertising
tends to position a closeup photograph of the model's face parallel
to the reader's eyes to represent a mirror of the reader's new and
improved face after applying beauty products. But an interesting
dilemma arises in "anti-aging" advertising focusing on the "visible
signs of aging." How does an advertiser visually represent those
"visible signs of aging" and visually prove the product's
effectiveness at "visible improvement"? Before and after pictures
would seem to solve the problem, except that the convention of before
and after photos in women's advertising has associations with
less-than-glamorous "quick and dirty" weight loss and breast
enhancement advertising. Additionally, what does a closeup of a
middle-aged woman look like? We have no visual conventions for such a
shot; nor do we have the cultural equipment for decoding it.
Furthermore, I suspect middle-aged women may not be inclined to
identify with glamour shots of their peers because that mirror may
reflect a little too much reality for buying into the scientific
magic of anti-aging product results.
In this study's particular group of ads, the solutions have been to
use extraordinarily attractive aging celebrities with name
recognition; to tightly crop the models' faces in extreme close-ups;
to chop the models' faces into a series of eyes, nose, and mouth
shots; or to drop female models from the ad altogether. For example,
similar to Proactiv's use of Vanessa Williams and Judith Light,
Neutrogena and L'Oreal pose celebrity models Connie Nielsen and
Claudia Schiffer, respectively, and then print the models' names
under their photos. Likewise spillover ads for L'Oreal's
hair-coloring products Excellence Crème and Superior Preference
employ and label actors Andie MacDowell and Heather Locklear,
respectively. Bee-Alive's only visual except for a cutout photo of
the product is a tiny inset photo of the company's president,
Madeline Balleta. I would like to suggest that in this group of ads,
the recognizable celebrity or expert spokesperson invites testimonial
recognition rather than fantasy identification.
In the "cropped" strategy, models' faces are tightly cropped,
obscuring the background context of the photographs, such as the Olay
Regenerist Eye ad alluding to satellite imagery, which reduces the
face to topographic geography. Conversely, one of Estee Lauder's
three ads in this study pulls its model back to a medium shot that
reduces the size of her head to the point that makes scrutinizing her
"visible signs of aging" impossible. Many of the "cropped" ads also
use small inset photos of "chopped" up facial features, including
tiny "cropped" before and after shots. The Claudia Schiffer ad, along
with CosmoDerm & CosmoPlast and Roc use this strategy. Tightly
"cropped" and "chopped" faces are less personal, less like flattering
portraits or Lacanian mirrors. Williamson may argue that such a
technique further transforms the reader's face into a foreign object
to be battled rather than embraced. In a second version of the
StriVectin SD ad, for example, the only visual other than the
product, is a grid-like series of small extreme close-up photographs
of eyes, nose, and mouth—all cut off from the faces that would invite
mirror-like identification—like so many of Jean Kilbourne's
objectified body parts. Another Olay Regenerist ad as well as the
Correctionist ad literally cut the model's face in half vertically.
Finally, the "dropped" strategy avoids human models altogether. Two
Olay Total Effects 7x ads represent the exemplars in this category by
placing the product into a narrative landscape devoid of human
characters, which, as Williamson (1978) argues, invites the reader to
insert herself into the photographic landscape with the use of signs
pointing to where the reader is meant to be. Both ads place the
product in the foreground of background boudoir shots. Similarly,
Clinique shows a close-up of the product rather than a stand-in model
for the reader, and the product is framed by a close-up of the lens
of a pair of eyeglasses, as if to invite close-up scrutiny of the
product, rather than a middle-aged woman's before or after face.
Lancome substitutes a large visual of a rose for the female model,
and then bisects the rose (in the same way Olay Regenerist and
Correctionist bisect the faces of their human models) to demonstrate
a kind of before and after image. Ads in the "dropped" group may be
the most effective technique because they obscure "visual reality"
and leave the fantasy of a younger-looking face to each reader's own
imagination. The ads in the present study, then, offer few visual
clues with which to construct a representation of a middle-aged
woman's face. The ads clearly hail a middle-aged reader whom
advertisers assume is present, but her presence is a visual absence.
The spillover ads suggest themes of anti-aging are not isolated to
skincare products. Nor is anti-aging a new phenomenon. Popular
culture tells us that women hid and lied about their age long before
boomer women reached mid life. Of interest to me personally in these
ads is the collision of visual culture with female baby boomer middle
age and a disconnection between the inevitability of aging women and
the cultural exhortation toward youthful beauty.
Figure 1
Magazines Represented in the Present Study
1. Better Homes & Gardens March 2004
2. Bon Appetit March 2004
3. Country Home March 2004
4. Family Circle February 17, 2004
5. House Beautiful March 2004
6. House &Garden February 2004
7. InStyle February 2004
8. Ladies Home Journal February 2004
9. Lifetime February 2004
10. O February 2004
11. Marie Claire March 2004
12. Martha Stewart Living February 2004
13. More February 2004
14. Psychology Today February 2004
15. Real Simple March 2004
16. Redbook February 2004
17. Woman's Day February 17, 2004
Figure 2
Advertisers & Number of Insertions in the Present Study
1. Bee-Alive Bee-Moisturized (Woman's Day)
2. Cascade Crystal Clear (Country Home, Woman's Day, Redbook)
3. Clarins
Supra Serum (More)
Total Double Serum (InStyle)
4. Clinique All About Eyes (Real Simple)
5. Correctionist Crème (Lifetime)
6. CosmoDerm & CosmoPlast (More)
7. Crest White Strips
(Better Homes & Gardens, Bon Appetit, Family Circle, InStyle,
Ladies Home Journal, O)
8. Essence Formulas Natural Growth Hormone (Psychology Today)
9. Estee Lauder
DermSolutions (O, Real Simple)
Resilience Lift & Extra Firming Revitalizing Mask (More)
10. Garden of Life Daily Multi (O)
11. Lancome Anti-Age Spot Serum (Martha Stewart Living)
12. L'Oreal
Wrinkle De-Crease (InStyle, Ladies Home Journal, Real Simple)
Excellence Crème (Real Simple)
Superior Preference (InStyle,Redbook)
13. Neutrogena
Anti-Wrinkle Cream (Real Simple)
Visibly Firm Night Cream (O, More)
14. Olay
Regenerist Eye (Better Homes & Gardens, Marie Claire)
Regenerist Serum (Ladies Home Journal, Redbook)
Total Effects 7x (House & Garden, House Beautiful, O)
Total Effects Intensive Restoration Treatment (Family Circle)
Vitamins (Country Home, Family Circle, Redbook)
15. Proactiv (Ladie Home Journal, Marie Claire)
16. Roc Age Dimishing Daily Moisturizer
(Bon Appetit, Ladies Home Journal, More, Redbook)
17. Rutozym (Psychology Today)
18. StriVectin-SD (Ladies Home Journal, Marie Claire, More)
19. Symbiotropin Dietary Supplement (Psychology Today)
Cosmetic Magic, the War on Nature, and Commercial Cyborgs
In gendered terms, anti-aging advertising urges "mature" women to
consume in order to recreate youth; in this logic, youth signifies
female beauty or attractiveness (meaning literally to attract), and
female beauty signifies women's social value. Steeping this narrative
in Burke (1961/1970), we find the "visible signs of aging" as a kind
of pollution, the assignment of guilt to time and the aging woman's
face (an enemy if not within at least adhered atop), a purification
or self-mortification ritual involving an increasingly complex
anti-aging skincare regimen to "fight" the visible signs of aging,
and rebirth and redemption in the reduction or reversal of those
"visible signs of aging." The result is a rhetorical magic promising
a cosmetic magic, a transformed face that has been "renewed,"
"rejuvenated," and "regenerated."
What is significant about this otherwise easy reading is the "natural
order" implied by the logic: that time is an enemy, that women should
be at odds with their faces, that the visible signs of maturity
equate with personal pollution—a logic too easily lost in the desire
to look at an improved version of ourselves in the mirror. This
self-improvement myth is founded on an ideal white heterosexual
feminine beauty that is synonymous with youth, and, as a female
"characterology" (Payne, 1991), utterly dependent on the visual. As
an increasingly common, insistent, and, as Williamson's (1978) Olay
ad demonstrates, time-tested advertising formula, this women's
"equipment for living" (Burke, 1931/1968, 1941/1967) equates female
worth with beauty and womanly visibility, and it functions as an
"active rhetorical technology" (Payne, 1989, 1991) urging women to
improve their appearance rather than their character. In other words,
surface impressions become more important than deeper physical or
metaphysical health.
Haraway's (1991) description of the "biopolitics of postmodern
bodies" makes an eerily similar observation. She argues a fundamental
shift in the discursive medicalization of bodies between the late
19th and late 20 centuries, a shift that among other things moves
from metaphors of "depth, integrity" to those of "surface, boundary"
(p. 209). The postmodern body, exemplified by a converged scientific,
medical, mythical-heroic, and, I would add, consumer discourse of the
immune system, is primarily concerned with envisioning the body/self
as a territory subject to clandestine invasion by an Other disguised
as self: "That is, the immune system is a plan for meaningful action
to construct and maintain the boundaries for what may count as self
and other in the crucial realms of the normal and the pathological"
(p. 204). Indeed, Haraway argues, "The body is conceived as a
strategic system, highly militarized in key arenas of imagery and
practice" (p. 211).
Exactly 10 years after the publication of Simian, Cyborgs, and Women,
9/11 and a new national preoccupation with terrorism, biological
warfare, homeland security, and profiling and screening systems for
identifying alien threats both domestic and abroad makes Haraway's
(1991) thesis even more eerie. While immune system discourses
associated with HIV/AIDS and their similarity to discourses of
patriotism/terrorism certainly trivialize the "fine lines and
wrinkles" associated with female mid life, my point is that what is
discernibly different between Williamson's 1978 Olay advertisement
and the 2004 version is way the women's faces became an enemy Other
disguised as self. Williamson's Olay advert aligned with "nature,"
albeit a new and improved version of nature. "Anti-aging"
(anti-terror, antibiotic, antiviral, antibody) in 2004 faces off
against nature. It reads like high-tech warfare on the "visible signs
of aging" by mobilizing biomedical science into covert
search-and-destroy operations that may lie, hide, and now even bury
the evidence of its top-secret missions.
Truly, the product-as-hero's activity reads nearly criminal. Post
Iran-Contra cover-up and Gulf War bunker busting, and amid a newly
insurgent war in Iraq, the thematic concoction of guerrilla warfare,
technology, and secrecy in anti-aging advertising is noteworthy. One
could argue the discursive distance traveled from mid 20th century
Nuremberg to early 21st century Abu Ghraib, much as Haraway (1991)
argued a similar discursive distance between World War II and Star
Wars. If women's faces have become a militarized zone on domestic
soil, then upon scrutiny the new homeland security's tactical strikes
against aging bear an uncomfortable resemblance to illicit activity.
Apparently, the visible end result of beauty justifies the ugly means
of war (any means necessary).
What I find most fascinating about these "anti-aging" advertisements,
however, is the interplay between visibility and invisibility: The
"signs of aging" are visible, which, according to the advertising
rhetoric of this product category, is precisely the problem for
women. Yet the visual rhetoric of this kind of advertising contains
no visual representation of female middle age. Anti-aging advertisers
offer Francophile crèmes and serums that disappear once on the skin,
but the results of using the products are purportedly visible.
Consuming women are encouraged to hide the evidence of using these
products, which, in turn, hide the visible evidence of consumers'
ages. Williamson (1978, p. 68) wrote of the "thin masking layer of
chemicals," which "coat" the face so that "the surface you see in the
mirror may well be 'theirs', not 'yours'." While this observation is
valid, Williamson was referring to Olay lotion in terms of a
cosmetic, such as makeup. Today's "anti-aging" products, although in
truth probably little more than cosmetics, promise far more than
temporary makeup adhering to the facial skin. "Anti-aging" products
advertise their ability to transform a woman's face. The consumer
becomes one with the product, a reversal twice over. First, the
product promises to reverse the visible facial changes time has
wrought—facial changes that devalue a woman, according to culture. We
must take this promise on faith, however, because these products not
only are invisible once applied to the skin but also do their work
sight-unseen at the minute microscopic cellular level, so they tell
us. Second, the consumer trades her own natural face, cast as an
invader in these ads, for a technologically enhanced one in which
manufactured products become allies. Thus, these high-tech products
literally yet invisibly become us.
In a themed issue of Communication Theory, Guest Editor Jennifer
Daryl Slack (2005, p. 8) argues that "the biotechnological body
matters" because "the hybrid body" has "been an undertheorized
presence shaping bodily practice for some time" and because "the very
permeability of body boundaries means that bodies are likely to be
given shape in highly politicized contexts." At this point, Burke's
(1954/1984) gargoyle flaps its wings, and Haraway's (1991) cyborg
rears its prosthesis.
The cyborg evokes metaphors of "regeneration after injury, such as
the loss of a limb, involves regrowth of structure and restoration of
function with the constant possibility of twinning or other odd
topographical productions at the site of former injury" (Haraway,
1991, p. 181). But Haraway's (1991) feminist cyborg is premised on
rejecting essentialist alignments between women and nature that are
dependent on metaphors of reproduction. Perhaps Williamson's (1978)
observation about advertising discourses that "cook nature" to
improve it are based on her belief that nature is natural and need
not be cooked. Nevertheless, while contemporary "anti-aging"
advertising, promising to "regenerate" new younger skin, may seem to
manifest the cyborg, "anti-aging" technologies merely promise to
return women to their natural state of youthful beauty, a therefore
somewhat contradictory logic given this advertising genre's war on
nature. Nor is restoring nature and returning women to their natural
beauty what Haraway had in mind with the cyborg as a strategic
feminist politics.
The appeal and power of the cyborg metaphor as a political tactic
lies in terrifying couplings that undo taken-for-granted territorial
borders—between nature and technology, for example—and create new and
strategically unstable coalitions. The cyborg functions as a specific
instance of Burke's gargoyle, two unlike things sutured together both
to shock and to reclassify or realign schema ("allies become
enemies…as enemies become allies," writes Burke, 1954/1984, p. 113).
Despite some similarity to the cyborg, "anti-aging" advertising
taking advantage of an ideology of womanly beauty is not scary
enough, although with its militaristic tropes it should be. Nor is
the technologically enhanced more youthful, thus more attractive,
woman radical enough to be a cyborg embodiment. The problem is
two-fold. First, and most obvious, this coupling is invisible. The
transitional gargoyle-ness of contemporary "anti-aging" advertising
is not apparent or shocking enough to function as a useful
transitional tactic. We cannot see the cyborg's alien-ness; the
gargoyle is transparent. Second, and most important, this particular
cyborg's politics are white, capitalist, and patriarchal.
One could argue that envisioning the aging woman as Russo's
(1986/1995) "female grotesque," the "senile pregnant hag" with her
"open, protruding, extended, secreting body, the body of becoming,
process and change" (1986, p. 219), comes closer to cyborgs and
gargoyles in their revolutionary power than younger-looking skin, but
only so long as there is no assumption that the "unattractive" aging
female is natural. Russo's "image of the pregnant hag is more than
ambivalent": "It is loaded with all the connotations of fear and
loathing associated with the biological processes of reproduction and
of aging" (Russo, 1986, p. 219). Yet Russo's females grotesques, as
excess, do bear remarkable similarity to Phelan's (1993) notion
unmarked, not only in Phelan's discussion of the unmarked as an
excess that resists the visual but also in her example of the
pregnant body as unmarked because it cannot be fixed clearly as
either one or two.
Or one could argue that maintaining a mysteriously youthful
appearance as a prosthetic mask, or feminine masquerade, may have its
tactical uses—either in Riviere's (1929) sense of masquerade as a
disguise for nothingness or in Phelan's (1993) sense of masquerade as
the "unmarked" surplus that resists the grasp of the camera, the
negative, visual re/production and consumption, or equations of the
visible as real. This leads to the observation that "anti-aging"
advertising imagery seems hesitant to show us female middle age or to
mark age upon the female body. If "anti-aging" advertising exhibits
tensions between what we see and what we don't see, the greatest
tension is the visual absence of the middle-aged female readers these
ads hail. Burke (1954/1984) might call the inability to imagine the
middle-aged woman's visage a "trained incapacity." Perhaps,
anti-aging advertising is a case of an "accidental" politics of the
unmarked, in which middle-aged women, for the moment at least, elude
the tyranny of the visual (XXXX, 2004). From my perspective as a
middle-aged white heterosexual woman with feminist politics, I find
that possibility appealing as somehow also accidentally resistant. As
Haraway says, "I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess" (1991, p.181).
Golden Guerrilla Girls
In the case of female baby boomers reaching middle age at the height
of their spending power, consumer culture seems to have painted
itself into a corner with visual conventions that portray womanhood
as either young and attractive (read as sexually available and
reproductive as in the vocabulary of renewal) or old and unattractive
(read as asexual and unreproductive). How to represent female midlife
in advertising imagery? How to show the effectiveness of
age-reversing products without alienating the target market with
implausibly ideal youth or insulting stereotypes of the aged? And,
while a rhetoric that locates a woman's worth in her beauty and
exhorts women to wage covert war on their own faces via consumption
is repugnant, instinctive counter-arguments that deploy "natural"
aging are overly romantic. The notion of "natural" aging is
questionable (although dignified aging has merit). Additionally,
reframing "natural" aging as beautiful not only repeats the logic
that values women for their beauty but also remains dependent on the
visual. Like the gargoyle or cyborg, there may be something resistant
and subversive for women in the possibility of masquerade and
façade—camouflage, if you will. In this case, for example,
appropriating the master's proverbial anti-aging tools for women's
own purposes. But the danger there lies in popular culture as market
machine and its tendency toward re-appropriation and co-optation.
Advertising's rhetorical magic makes our crucial role in maintaining
these rhythms of production and consumption disappear (Williamson, 1978).
Personally, I find Phelan's (1993) difficult-to-imagine "unmarked"
subjectivity, embodied and performed, the more revolutionary move
precisely because it does not translate into imagery. Phelan writes,
"By refusing to participate in the visibility-is-currency economy,"
we "resist…fetishization" (p. 19). The unmarked is so radical that
Phelan has difficulty showing us examples. I'm thinking here of the
Guerrilla Girls, the art world's anonymous feminist critics who wear
gorilla masks to do their public culture work. "By resisting visible
identities, the Guerrilla Girls mark the failure of the gaze to
posses, and arrest" (p. 19). The increasing fame of, thus the
market's desire to commodify, the Guerrilla Girls, however, points to
the limits of masquerade as well as the difficulties of grasping the
unmarked, both intellectually and as political practice. Still, I
would like to suggest these difficulties are both the result of
visual culture and the way out of it. Phelan herself seems to agree:
"Similarly, those concerned with understanding the relation between
the real and the representational must also recognize that our
failing eyes may be insufficient organs for measuring the terms and
meanings of the transformative alchemy between them" (1993, p. 180).
Within the context of advertising's visual rhetoric and a discussion
of aging women, Phelan's (1993) insight is humorous: if we depend on
the visual to define the real, our aging eyes inevitably will fail us.
Because female baby boomers symbolize profit, it will be interesting
to follow the evolution of female middle age in advertising, the
bellwether for consumerism and popular culture. For the moment the
middle-aged woman retains some force as accidentally unmarked, which
offers an accidentally resistant standpoint with exciting
possibilities from this feminist's point of view. But I do not hold
out much hope the situation will last.
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9
Notes
[1] The original 22 magazines represent classic and contemporary
titles targeting mostly women. I first included the seven sisters
(minus the now-defunct McCall's/Rosie)—Better Homes & Gardens, Family
Circle, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, and Women's
Day—as well as newer magazines such as InStyle, Lifetime, O, Martha
Stewart Living, More, and Real Simple. All these titles were
prevalent at the checkout counters of a local Super Target store.
Also prevalent at the Super Target and so included in the study were
Country Home, House Beautiful, House & Garden, and Marie Claire.
Additionally, I had predetermined to include Ebony, Essence, and
Latina magazines, which required a trip to my local newsstand, where
I also located Architectural Digest, Bon Appetit, and Psychology
Today because they index well for older female readers. It is worth
noting that the issues of Ebony, Essence, Latina, Good Housekeeping,
and Architectural Digest included in the original study contained no
anti-aging skincare advertising, thus are not represented in the current essay.
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