Gendered discourses on the ‘problem’ of ageing: consumerized solutions

Abstract

Contemporary consumer culture sees the body as the crucial indicator of the self and apparent bodily ageing as problematic. All bodies age, but how is evidence of ageing culturally interpreted? This article develops a critical-pragmatic analysis of consumerized body discourses, with particular focus on the semiotics of the visibly ageing face, in the context of lifestyle magazine features and advertisements on skin care. Such texts work to equate ageing with the look of ageing, problematize ageing appearance, and offer marketized solutions to the ‘problem’ of ageing, using markedly gendered strategies. Texts aimed at a female market project skin care as a serious issue, pathologize the look of ageing, offer highly technologized solutions, and naturalize surgical intervention. The (newer) male market is being discursively engaged by strategies designed to normalize male investment in products and processes traditionally seen as in the domain of female bodily grooming. Consumerized male narcissism is enabled by ironic, ‘uncommitted’ discourses, the use of highly masculinized images and text, and, more recently, discourses which draw attention to the salience of the female appraising gaze.