Aging, sexuality and post-ageist ageism

In her talk, Barbara Marshall will explore recent media representations of aging bodies that suggest particular forms of sexual agency are central to positive aging. Drawing mostly from her current research on Zoomer, a glossy Canadian lifestyle magazine pitched at those in midlife and beyond, examples from advertisements, health advice, fashion spreads, editorial content and coverage of ‘celebrity agers’ illustrate new aspirational identities for ‘Third Agers’ which reinforce gendered, heteronormative and consumption-based forms of sexual agency. While in some ways these new representations suggest a positive trend, reversing earlier tendencies to portray older people as both undesiring and undesirable, the analysis here asks whether or not they may also act to discipline gender and sexuality in later life. While space is created for sex-positive ageing identities where conventional (and traditionally stigmatized) signifiers of old age might be re-signified, in its commercialized versions this re-signification is still largely premised on a fear of ageing. Building on critiques of post-feminism in the media, the concept of ‘post-ageist ageism’ is suggested to capture contradictory narratives of embodied aging in media-saturated consumer cultures.