Tag Archives: Ageism and advertising

Ignored and Misrepresented: Enough Already

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Age persists as one element of diversity that advertisers and romance fiction continue to ignore. Olders, to use the phrase coined by anti-ageism activist, Ashton Applewhite, are consumers of all sorts of products, from cars to food, to films, to romance novels. However, olders are typically ignored or misrepresented, and as Martha Boudreau, AARP’s chief of marketing and communications officer notes, are seldom valued as a marketing demographic. When they are included in marketing, they are frequently shown as absent-minded, out-of-touch, tech illiterate, frail, haggy, cantankerous, frumpy, sexless, senile, isolated, passive, and unfuckable, all stereotypes associated with ageing and older people.

In the broad world of entertainment, stereotypes of age begin far earlier for women (usually around the age of 40) than for men. It’s the double-standard of ageing, whereby ageing men are allowed to continue to maintain a certain status that casts them in mainstream entertainment roles as distinguished gentlemen, silver foxes, and Liam Neeson action heroes, while women of the same age begin to fall into a handful of acceptable representations, such as mother, grandmother, and the occasional ball-buster like Miranda in The Devil Wears Prada. Ageing women in film and fiction skirt the edge of negative stereotypes until they are sucked into the vortex of being devalued, demeaned, ignored, and rendered invisible. While this double standard has been easy to see in film and fiction, there has been some small creeping change occurring in Hollywood, with the representation of older women in TV series, such as The Chair, Grace and Frankie, and Big Little Lies. A TV series on Netflix, is, and perhaps I presume incorrectly, cheaper to produce than a Marvel blockbuster. It is clear that, like most products, TV, film, and fiction are big businesses with the goal of making money, but a Liam Neeson movie can’t be a blockbuster without an audience. And a product, any product is nothing without the consumer.

The entertainment industry works hard to attract consumers to their products. Advertising is all about getting the right consumer to buy the product—be it a film, a book, a video game, a clothing line, juice boxes, the licensed likeness of a Liam Neeson action figure, or retirement living. Whatever the product, the bottom line is to make money. When you examine entertainment and advertising practice, attracting the youth demographic is regarded as the key to making lots of money. Except that it is women, not youth, who are the consumers that actually drive the majority of purchases. However, here is where the sexist double standard begins to fall away. In advertising, olders, both men and women, cease to be a target demographic, despite the fact they are consumers with money to spend. Advertising becomes an equal opportunist that treats ageing men and women with similar disdain. Instead of focusing on attracting olders as consumers to a vast array of products like youngers (another Ashton Applewhite coinage) are, the products that don’t ignore olders, the ones actaully aimed at the older demographic, tend to be age stereotypes—adult diapers, retirement communities for over 50s, funeral insurance. And in ads that do feature olders, they are more often than not portrayed as absent-minded, out-of-touch, tech illiterate, frail, cantankerous, sexless, senile, and unfuckable stereotypes. Advertising forgets that their goal is to attract a consumer and make money. Olders, from 40 and beyond, are still consumers of all sorts of products, from cars to food, to films, to romance novels, just like youngers. So why are olders misrepresented and overlooked as a demographic? As I mentioned at the start, it’s age, that element of diversity that marketers and romance fiction continue to ignore.

When Forbes Contributor Paul Talbot, interviewed Boudreau, AARP’s chief of marketing and communications officer about ageism in advertising, I read the article (Marketers Take A New Look At An Older Skewing Demographic) and nodded furiously, and then got furious and up on my soapbox because there is so much Boudreau said about advertising and ageism, like this:

Ageism in advertising has been present since the beginning of the marketing industry. It is driven by many factors including implicit bias against older people as a meaningful, consumption-oriented segment worth targeting.

This seems so odd when one considers that there is money to be made by marketing across demographics. Basically, because I write in a genre that has an implicit bias against women over the age of 40 being cast as romantic leads, I’d like to point out that advertising treats olders like an invisible middle-aged woman, right down to the stereotypes I mentioned earlier. Boudreau backs up my theory, stating that,

Somehow 100+ million consumers over the age of 50 are ignored and misrepresented by the vast majority of marketers and creatives.

The marketing creatives, Boudreau mentions, have an average age of 28, but that’s another issue of ageism and employment and replacing old with new, which is too often though of a ‘fresh’ and better than experience. To use age as a demarcation for the end of creativity, spending power, interest in life or sex or love, to misrepresent and stereotype, to use as a target of humour and scorn is in fact NOT the way to make money, but that’s clearly how far too many products aimed at olders are marketed. Boudreau draws attention to this:

The marketing industry would never use humor to stereotype gender, race or ethnicity let alone disability or sexual identity. But age persists as one element of diversity that marketers both ignore and degrade through attempts at humor driven by outdated stereotypes.

Gee. Look how far diversity hasn’t come. As an anti-ageism crusader who tries to lead by example, I write books with main characters who are aged 40 and beyond, with a particular emphasis on a female protagonist who is not a stereotype. On this blog and on social media I bang on and on about ageism and sexism in genre fiction, especially in romance fiction, which itself is stereotyped and degraded, yet the romance fiction industry, like advertising, continues to ignore, stereotype, degrade and exclude older people, especially older women, from the narrative.

Yes, publishing is a business. Yes, the goal is for books to make money. What sells well will be replicated like a Marvel superhero franchise. Small town and Australian rural romance, for example, sell well, so there is a lot of it and, yep, they’re money makers. Something new is risky. Advertising a product to an overlooked demographic is risky because it’s new and different (probably since being older makes falling in love different because sex), doesn’t fit the pattern of what has sold, doesn’t fit the marketing brief, and what has sold is stories about younger people (especially younger women) falling in love. Why change what isn’t broken, right? Why take a risk on something that won’t sell?

‘Older won’t sell’ is a common thing authors who write older romantic leads hear. There’s a persistent idea in romance publishing that older women have no place in the genre, that they belong in Women’s Fiction, or in a handful of secondary roles: the mother, grandmother, the comedy relief, or some other stereotype. The notion ‘older doesn’t sell’ comes from a place of ageism and a lack of knowing how to alter the marketing brief to include an older demographic of readers. Rather than chasing the youth dollar, adhering to the notion that younger readers matter more than older readers, or that older readers like a certain kind of romance and are loyal to that subgenre, this is what romance publishers and advertisers need to pay attention to: Readers want to see themselves reflected in what they consume, whatever age, ethnicity, gender identity, and so forth. To reiterate, age persists as one element of diversity that marketers and romance fiction both ignore. And this is to their financial detriment because, as Boudreau indicates,

Image matters. Consumers 50-plus do notice how they’re presented in advertising, or if they show up at all. We also found 62% of adults 50-plus would switch to a brand that shows people their age in its ads.

It’s not a stretch to assume that 62% of adults would see films or read romance novels or switch to a brand (for example, Coke No Sugar rather than incontinence pads, a recliner that helps you stand, or Medic Alert braclets) that features people their own age in the advertising, is it? It is lazy and short-sighted to focus mostly on younger consumers, to insist that consumers are perpetually ‘brand loyal’. Brand loyalty may work with items like tampons and soft drinks, (for the record, I’m Coke No Sugar, not Pepsi Max) but as Boudreau notes, “it makes no sense for a marketer to turn their backs on the money, brand adoption and opportunity that rests with this [older] group.”

It both infuriates and disappoints me that the romance genre continues to turn its back on what many of us refer to as ‘seasoned romance’ or ‘later in life romance’, because the marketing brief can’t be altered to be inclusive of age. Several authors of seasoned romance have told me that their publisher passed on their book with older leads because another author’s book with older leads, one the pub ‘took a chance on,’ didn’t sell. I’ll suggest that the book the publisher took a risk on didn’t sell because the company had no idea how to market it, or did little to no marketing for it because, as Boudreau noted, ad agencies rarely receive briefs that focus on the older demographic. What this means is that advertisers and marketing departments have no idea how to pitch deodorant to a fifty-something or how to pitch a romance novel featuring older leads, or, heaven help us, an older female lead who has sex. As a result, romance fiction continues to be seen and marketed as a tale for youngers. From cars to coffee to romance fiction, as with so many products that ignore a sizeable demographic, never altering from the course is myopic and a missed money-making opportunity.

I can see the missed opportunity in romance fiction industry. I’ve been writing about this for years. As a student undertaking a MA, as doctoral candidate, and as an author, I’ve interviewed romance editors and authors and readers about the inclusion of older women as romance heroines. I’ve joined discussions on diversity, equity, and inclusion. I chair Australian Romance Writers of Australia DEI subcommittee. I push back against ageism, I make sure ageism is included in discussions of DEI and romance writing, and I call out ageism when I see it. Nowhere is ageism as massive as in advertising and romance publishing.

Until advertising agencies alter their thinking and open their eyes to the money-making potential of olders, until consumers and readers become more vocal about what they want to see in the entertainment they consume, until the romance fiction genre accepts that age is an issue of diversity, until an agency or a publisher or a film or TV series makes a crap-ton of money, the negative typecasting of olders will persist, and age as will remain an element of diversity that marketers and romance fiction continue to ignore or misrepresent.

 

Talbot,.P. (2021). Marketers take a new look at an older skewing demographic. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultalbot/2021/10/24/marketers-take-a-new-look-at-an-older-skewing-demographic/?sh=a468cb51f96a

 

 

Ageism, Publishing, and the Notion of Reading Down

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During the recent Romance Writers of Australia conference, this year titled Love in Isolation, I had to opportunity to ask Liz Pelletier, Editor and CEO of Entangled Publishing, how the company’s August imprint was going. August, if you are not aware, is an imprint aimed at Gen-Xers, with “older characters in their 40s”. It was launched in 2018. Kudos galore to Entangled for launching this line when other publishers outright ignore the consumer base of Gen-Xers, Boomers, and those beyond in favour of adhering to the stagnant tradition of keeping female leads young whilst courting younger readers. Hooray for an imprint that is specifically aimed at 40-somethings. Hooray for a publisher picking up on readers looking for Seasoned Romance. However, As happy as Entangled’s August made me when it launched, there were several troubling things that Liz mentioned in her reply to my question about how the line fared in 2020. The August imprint does not, as Liz said, “release many titles.” She also said that there “aren’t that many authors who want to write older characters,” but then she followed up that statement by emphasising that August books “don’t sell as well as predicted based on the number of authors who were begging for this genre because, it turns out, everybody still kind of reads down,” meaning readers read younger characters.

First, I’ll unpack the “everybody still kind of reads down” statement. Romance (and most genre fiction) readers read ‘down’ for one huge reason: the overwhelming number of lead characters in romance are in their twenties. The vast majority of romance novels produced and published every year feature heroines who are young, as in 39 and under. It’s hard to find a romance novel where this is not the norm. The norm means people are going to read down since the young heroine is what continues to be produced and published.

Next, any author will tell you discovery is hard. There are times discovery is tricky for readers too. Romance readers looking for older main characters often find it frustrating when there is no clear keyword to use when searching for the books they want. Search terms like older couples, older women and romance, middle-aged women and romance, and silver fox women seldom lead to romance novels with seasoned main characters. BISAC codes, that is the standard coding system used by many companies, such as Amazon, to categorise books based on topical content uses this classification for romance fiction with older main characters : FIC027380 FICTION / Romance / Later in Life, but that code seldom leads directly to wwhat you want or to what you expect, when you do a book search on Amazon. More vexing is how an imprint like August says it’s targeting Gen X readers, yet doesn’t release many titles. Since its 2018 launch, there have been 10 August titles, but only 9 are listed on the website, but are not easy to find if you aren’t aware of Entangled and its August line. Have you heard of August? I bet you haven’t. There hasn’t been much mention of the imprint anywhere since it’s launch, except for my occasional mention of it in various posts made here, and in comments after I did guest bits on review sites like All About Romance.

Finally, yes, I admit there are authors who have been begging, and continue to beg, for an imprint like August, authors, besides me, who have been pushing for Seasoned Romance, mature romance, later in life romance, whatever you want to call it, because we know there isn an audience. Many romance authors who “are begging” for more imprints like August are also romance READERS who are tired of not seeing themselves represented in fiction, tired of being shut out of a beloved genre, tired of reading down. What I really fail to understand is why a publisher would use the number of authors begging for the genre as a demographic for predicting how well an imprint would sell when it is the readers who matter?

Remember how I asked if you’ve heard of August? I ran a poll on the Seasoned Romance Facebook reader group, which has a 3K+ membership. I asked reader members if they were aware of the Entangled’s August line. The response was a rather resounding “nope.”

I am not a professional in market research and advertising, but I am not blind to the practice or blind to the population base that is trickle-fed crumbs, or more often completely overlooked as even being a demographic. Case in point, the readers of the Seasoned Romance Facebook group are a ready-made test group for market research, yet romance publishers do not appear to include the group in any sort of market research. Companies, tend to seek out the youth market. They see anything outside the young dollar as a risk. This is the mindset of marketing, of so much advertising, and why August releases so few titles with the excuse –-and it is an excuse—that readers read down.

I take umbrage with being told I read down. If you have read my posts before, I have suggested that publishers deceive themselves by only courting younger readers without realising those younger will one day be older readers. The belief in the tradition of presenting younger main characters is just that, a tradition. It is vital to note, that, whether you are a Millennial pushing 40, Gen X, a Boomer, or a Silent Gen reader, whether you read science fiction, crime, mystery, or romance novels it is readers who need to let publishers know what they want or else nothing will ever change. Cis, het, white romance with young heroines will remain the staple, the tradition. We can discuss how we need diverse romance, talk about inclusion, and still leave age representation and ageism out of the conversation since romance has a tradition of romance being a younger woman’s tale. Traditions can be lovely, but they can also be rabidly prescriptive and immeasurably narrow-minded. Some traditions, like keeping romance heroines young, can lead to and perpetuate age stereotypes and lack of representation, to the impression that people over the age of 40 do not have sex, that women over 40, especially women who happen to have grandchildren, do not have sex, and even if they did no one would want to read about them because granny sex is gross. Do you want to let a publisher decide for you, to allow a publisher cling to a notion that is set in stone and denies you representation? Is it really reasonable when a publisher suggests you read down,? Are you happy to accept the misconception that there are not many authors writing older lead couples in romance or writing older female leads in other genres?

I write older leads; my books have female protagonists who are aged 40+ and they are paired with men of a similar age. My romantic suspense spy thriller mystery In Service series, is indie published. I chose to go indie for several reasons, but what really kicked me into deciding to go indie with the books was an agent rejection I received saying the forty-something hero was great, but a heroine just 5 years older than the hero, wasn’t ideal for romantic suspense, ideal meaning she was ‘too old’. I had enough of the sexist ageism. Authors struggle with embedded ageism when they submit seasoned romance novels to publishers of romance, they are turned away, told to make their heroines younger, told they won’t sell well. How can they sell well. or sell at all, when It’s a struggle to get released even by an imprint which is aimed 40-somethings, an imprint that gets little to no marketing push because most readers “read down” meaning it’s not worth the attention. The International Institute for Analytics’ Robert Morison talks about the need to keep ageism out of analytics. Morison states:

“Ageist stereotypes hold that older Americans don’t spend their money, they’re brand loyal, and they’re interested in a limited number of products, services, and experiences…

The point of mentioning this is that readers read down because romance has always been about younger people, especially younger women, and there is a misconception that no one wants to read about older women with an array of life experiences. Except they do, and publishers need to tune into in remembering, and understanding, that older romance readers are still consumers who want to see themselves reflected in the books they read. If it seems like I am picking on Entangled’s August imprint, I most certainly am. There is such exciting potential being squandered. Morison goes on to say,

“Brands need to be talking to them authentically and, insofar as possible, individually. Cursory attempts to reach the older market, and to reach it en masse, are guaranteed to fail.”

As a reader, and as an author, August feels like an absolute cursory attempt. As I mentioned, since its launch in 2018, there have been a total of 10 books released (although only 9 show on the August website), with little or no fanfare, and a modicum of advertising and promotion that stemmed from what individual authors have done themselves. August, with its 10 titles, appears doomed, which is tragic because its failure will be seen as just one more reason to say that romance fiction with older leads won’t sell, that older heroines won’t sell, that readers read down, that younger is better and more lucrative. Sadly, the pursuit of the youth market has become a fixed mindset. It’s risk aversion; a bit of the old if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, a little of the we’ve always done it this way, a whole lot of the is the standard practice. This is, as Morrison notes,

“ageism by omission. The antidote is to have more age diversity across the board: on product and service development teams, marketing teams, and focus and test-market groups. Older consumers may be much more interested in your offerings than you imagine, and new offerings aimed at them can drive business growth.”

Part of doing what Morison suggests means that, once you have an offering that can drive business growth, make the product visible. I am here to tell you, as a reader, as a consumer, as a women over 40 who wants to see women like me reflected in advertising, film and all kinds of genre fiction, especially romance, older consumers are interested in more than a cursory attempt to gain our custom. Prove that you see us. Be authentic. Don’t hide your product away or tell us the same old bullshit about how we’re supposed to think that younger is better and older won’t sell.

Are you listening, Entangled?

If you’re keen on reading romance novels with older, ‘seasoned’ main characters, aside from my books, try The July Guy by Natasha Moore, (an August author), Karen Booth’s Bring Me Back, and The Love Game by Maggie Wells.

 

References

Morison, R. (2020). Keep ageism out of your analytics. The International Institute for Analytics. https://www.iianalytics.com/blog/2020/8/19/keep-ageism-out-of-your-analytics?fbclid=IwAR1-SAmzcBX-1yXvCtIQHP-FRZzpUjKjSNv7AQE3Xdp6ZXBY28sKGq4_MMI

 

 

Visibility, Invisibility: Grey Hair Breaking Down the Wall

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Karen Booth, the author, advocate for Seasoned Romance, and co-founder of the Seasoned Romance Facebook group has a new book coming out in February, and it is an important book. Have a look as the title and cover and you may understand why—if you are over the age of 40, you may, at last, feel seen.

Visibility and invisibility slot together with discussions about inclusion and diversity, which boil down to the need to be seen. In Karen’s upcoming seasoned romance, Gray Hair Don’t Care, visibility and invisibility hinge upon a full head of hair. For some women, grey hair is fraught with meaning that is usually not positive. In our society, many equate grey hair with with decline, particularly if you’re female. Women are told in subtle and not so subtle ways that grey hair signals the decline of not merely youth, but of desirability, of their worth as a human being.

Grey hair is a human being’s badge of successful living, a sure sign of age and ageing well. I say ‘ageing well’ because growing older, that is, not dying at a young age, is what humans seek. We search for ways we can exercise better to maintain our bodies, eat foods that may help us live longer. If you are female living longer, going grey, a perfectly natural aspect that comes with bypassing that early grave, is signposted as something ugly, as something shameful, as something to deny, cover up, to erase. I don’t know about you, but  I’m sick of that directive. While there is a growing backlash against covering one’s grey, the message that grey hair must be denied and dyed is powerful, deeply embedded in our culture, and it continues to, along with the plethora of anti-ageing products aimed at women, reinforce the notion that women and ageing do not go together. Sexism, ageism, and sexist, ageist practice is embedded in society and runs deep, so deep may people fail to notice it at all. This is why seeing a cover like Karen’s is so important. Many women will, at last, feel seen.

If you haven’t noticed how deep ageist practices go when it comes to women and grey hair, allow me to point out that you have most likely been indoctrinated to accept that a woman who has managed not to die and continues to live a long life is not a necessary depiction in advertising, on screen, or between the pages of a novel. Especially if she has grey or white hair. When an older ‘grey’ woman is represented it is in roles that cast her as secondary character, such as mother or grandmother, or, more often than not, as an ageist stereotype, such as cougar, lunatic, harpy, menopausal comic relief, or as sexless crone. Without realising, you have witnessed the regular ageist practice against women in advertising, film, and fiction, especially in romance fiction where older women are seldom seen, or not seen at all. You may not even notice that a male lead, the hero, is allowed to be the silver or grey fox, with distinguished grey temples, while a woman the same age, combined with the perceived ugliness of her grey hair, leads to devaluing and outright erasure.

Perhaps you are aware of this all because you are a woman who’s wondered why you no longer see other women like you in films, on TV, or in books. You may be a person of colour, or Muslim, or disabled, or fat and you want to see women who are like you, and you long to be represented. In this case, representation, visibility and invisibility comes down to the few hairs I’m splitting here, as you, if you read my pieces on ageism and romance fiction, would expect me to.

Karen and I share a few things. We are advocates for seasoned romance and women over the age of 40, and we have both written books that feature older women with grey or white hair as leads in romance fiction. The older female protagonist, or, as the genre prefers to call her, an older heroine, remains an anomaly in the genre. Still. I’ve been writing and studying older heroines in romance fiction for nearly two decades. Seven years ago, my second book, For Your Eyes Only, was published. It had taken me close to ten years to find a publisher who didn’t tell me I had to make my heroine younger. I was thrilled and so grateful that I had found an editor and a publishing house who were open to the idea of an older woman positioned as the heroine rather than as a secondary character or as a stereotype of a woman of a ‘certain age’. The silver foxy heroine in Karen’s Gray Hair Don’t Care is 47. The heroine in For Your Eyes Only is 50 and has white hair. Karen’s cover is gloriously representative of her heroine’s age. My cover is…well, as you can see, the victim of my publisher’s concern about my heroine’s advanced age. The cover model is 15 years younger and blonde rather than white-haired.

I should have fought harder for a different cover. I should have pushed and clawed for an image that conveyed that a white-haired, middle-aged woman was worthy of being a heroine on the cover, but there were a few things happening that prevented me from doing so. I was a new author, I had no clout, and, as I mentioned, my publisher was the only publisher willing to take a risk on a new author writing a heroine who sat outside the age norms of romance fiction.

Karen and I, as well as many other authors who have submitted books to romance fiction publishers, have faced the ageism and the ageist brick wall that exists within the industry. The brick wall often came—and still comes—in the form of statements such as, ‘we’re not sure how to market this book’ or ‘we don’t think there’s an audience for this book’ or ‘this book won’t sell unless you make the heroine younger’ or my favourite, ‘no one wants to read granny sex’. The way our culture has been conditioned to accept ageist practices as normal, feeds ongoing publishing concerns that putting a more ‘mature-aged’ woman on the cover would turn off readers, that a book featuring an image of woman with grey or white hair would not sell. Of course, any business would be apprehensive about a product that might not sell. No one wants to lose money. As I have said so many times before, film and fiction are actually losing out on making money by ignoring a specific population with money to spend. Being ignored as a consumer is one more form of invisibility.

Visibility and invisibility. Cover art comes and goes, from Fabio’s flowing tresses and drooping bodices to the current illustrated trend in romance fiction. If you didn’t know, many publishes use stock images to create cover designs, and this is where I admit I am not a huge fan of the illustrated cover. I’m also not a fan of a bare chest, the floating head shot over a country background, or the genre’s iconic clinch cover, yet it is obvious the illustrated cover solves issues that publishers find insurmountable, such as finding stock cover images to present curvy or fat heroines, disabled heroines, heroines of colour, heroines from non-western cultures, older heroines. It’s sad. It’s shameful in the way grey hair is not. It’s exasperating as hell. Things have changed a little in the last 2 years, but what’s out there is merely OK. It needs to be better. While silver foxy men are a cinch to find, peruse stock image companies for older women and you’ll find lots of attractive middle-aged women touching their faces. Search for mature couples and you’ll see lots of picnics.

As Karen notes in her cover reveal for Gray Hair, Don’t Care, rather than face the frustration of wrestling with the ingrained preconception romance fiction editors and CEOs have about grey-haired women, or trying to find a decent stock image, she decided to indie publish Gray Hair Don’t Care and commission a cover artist. That was one smart move. While Karen addresses, directly, the embedded ageist notions represented by a woman with grey hair, I went in a different direction when it came to choosing cover images for my indie releases, the In Service series about a middle-aged female butler and the spy who loves her. I decided to lean into the vector silhouette images one might find in spy fiction because of how incredibly difficult it is to find stock images of middle-aged women. I knew what I was up against. Then again, so did indie author Maggie Christensen. Publishers who adhere to the notion that a woman aged 40+ has no business being on a cover have their arses squarely kicked by Maggie, a Scotswoman living in Australia. When it comes to her seasoned romance covers and heroines, she knows her audience, writes fabulous romance fiction featuring women 40+, and Maggie puts those more grown-up women on her book covers, using the same style as romance novels featuring women in their 20s.

Maggie, like Karen, Natasha Moore, Maggie Wells, Kristen Ashley and I sell books and garner great reviews from readers who have sought out seasoned romance with more grown up heroines, older female leads, mature female protagonists whatever you want to call women over 40 who are the main characters.

What makes me most cranky about this ongoing struggle with sexist ageism is that publishers are ignoring readers. Readers responding to Karen’s cover reveal ought to be evidence enough that older women want to see themselves reflected in the books they read. Visibility and invisibility. There are two things at stake here: the inclusion and representation of women of all ages on book covers and between the pages, whatever colour their hair might be, and instead of publishers telling authors that books with grey-haired women on the cover won’t sell, perhaps it’s time to take note of how readers have been ignored for far too long. I say this because, at the online Romance Writers of Australia (RWAus) conference I attended last weekend, the same editor who once told me that no one wanted to read granny sex also stated that authors were the ones pushing for seasoned romance. I believe, wholeheartedly, that this editor is wrong. As an author and as a reader, I’d like to point out that readers are driving the call for older heroines, for seasoned romance. Readers make up the overwhelming majority of the 3K+ Seasoned Romance Facebook group, as well as the nearly 2K membership of Romance In Her Prime. It is readers who are searching for heroines who look like they do—women with greying or grey hair, crow’s feet, with lines on their faces, life experience and the baggage that comes with it. It comes down to visibility and invisibility, to representation and inclusion. It’s obvious that publisher demographic studies, like so much advertising market research, fails to include older people, especially older women in their investigations or even take them into account as consumers—unless it’s for cruises, funeral insurance, or osteoarthritis relief. In their endeavour to make money, companies seek out the next generation of consumers, dropping the consumers they may already have, which in this case are readers. Romance readers, the editor at last weekend’s RWAus conference said, read down, meaning they read about younger characters, but this is only so because there are so few books like Karen’s, like mine, that offer older readers, grey-haired or not, the visibility they crave.

My books with silver, white, & grey haired heroines are available here and here. Karen Booth’s Gray Hair Don’t Care is out in February 2021. It’s now available for preorder. It’s going to be huge, the book that breaks through and breaks down the wall for seasoned romance.

And it’ll be because of flowing grey hair.

Why Is Your Younger Self Perceived As Your Better Self?

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Last night, as part of the upcoming online Romance Writers of Australia conference, I sat on a panel of romance authors and editors who were also academics and scholars in romance fiction. We talked about our experiences as doctoral students and the challenges some of us faced when we submitted proposals to critically investigate romance fiction, a genre that was, for far too long, not taken seriously or considered less-than worthy of study. Things have gotten better in academia. We academic types and scholars studying the genre are being taken seriously now, more seriously than women over the age of 40 appearing as lead characters in romance novels are.

Reminiscing with the panel, and my frustration with the ongoing sexist ageism in the romance genre, reminded me of a conversation I once had with another romance fiction author about my romance novels being taken seriously. We talked at a conference for writers, back when I was a fledgling grad student and author on the cusp of being published. Our discussion focused on the age of romance heroines and how they have traditionally been young women, usually under 35. At the time, this author assured me that my writing was good, but she was adamant about two things: romance readers wanted to read about younger women because the springtime womanhood bloom of love was an essential part to the fantasy of romance, and a fundamental part of the traditional structure of romance fiction. She said that, if I was serious about being published, if I wanted to sell lots of books, I’d need to make my heroines younger.

The idea that younger women were essential to the romance fantasy, the ‘springtime’ issue of a female’s fertility being fundamental to falling in love (sorry for the alliteration), was an issue I addressed in my masters and doctoral work. I’m still addressing that notion now. We know fertility is not fundamental to falling in love. The only fundamental here is risk-averse publishers telling authors that books outside the ‘traditional’ parameters of romance “won’t sell”, or that no one wants to read granny sex, y, or z.

The panel, recollecting what that author and a few romance fiction editors have said about younger being essential to the romance novel, reminded me about a blog post I once ready by author Fay Weldon, best known perhaps for her novel The Life and Loves of a She Devil.

Have you ever seen She Devil, the Meryl Streep/Roseanne Barr adaptation? It’s kind of fun and at the same time not fun. It’s basically a story of revenge. What’s fun and not fun for me in the film, is how Meryl is a pink-wearing romance novelist prone to flouncing and histrionics—you know, that glorious Barbara Cartland-eque stereotype of romance novels and writers that still gets volleyed about, which, of course, adds to the genre not being taken seriously. Meryl, as usual, does a stellar job and makes a shallow, self-absorbed, horrid woman more than a caricature in frothy pink, but back to Weldon and all the recollecting. I went and dragged out my resource files, also known as Ageist Shit That Pissed Me Off and I Will Write About Someday.

Obviously, that someday is today.

Weldon, who teaches creative writing, has a section on her website that offers writing tips for authors. One particular post asks What Age Are You Characters? The piece mentions that if you want to be publishable it is important to keep the age of your characters in mind because, as Weldon states,

“readers come in all sizes, sexes, shapes and ages, but all prefer their novels to feature young women rather than old.”

ALL? Really? Ooooh! I love a good sweeping generalisation as much as I love flouncy pink-clad stereotypes of romance authors, don’t you? Stereotypes and generalisations always seem to go hand in hand with ageism and romance fiction, don’t they? Weldon also gives this advice:

“Get your juvenile lead on the front page: lure the reader in. 25 works better than 35, 35 than 45 – after 50, forget it.”

Which is quite similar to what the author said to me at the writers’ conference, but the thing in Weldon’s post that really chaps my hide is how she believes readers…

“…prefer to identify with themselves when young, not as they are now, in the days when they were sexually active, agile of limb, and not afraid of adventure.”

Okay then. I prefer to see myself as I am, to identify with characters who are of a similar age to me, not younger than me. Personally, I am affronted by the notion which assumes that, as I age, I will no longer be adventurous or that I will be afraid of something new. I fully expect to still be curious and adventurous about a range of things as I get along in years, despite how poorly ageing is portrayed and presented in advertising, film, and fiction that favours younger people as better. Why, I continue to wonder, is your younger self perceived to be your better self? I don’t want to be 25, I don’t want to watch or read about characters who are 20 very often, and I don’t think my 20s were my best days—they were far from my best anything. This notion that gold-plates your 20s also shoves down our throats the notion that women over 40 have ‘seen better days,’ that her best days are behind her. Might this be because, as Weldon notes,

“Publishers, who these days tend to turn away novels by middle aged women about middle aged women on the grounds that they are depressing, are probably wise to do so.”

Are older women depressing? Are their stories depressing? Or are women middle-aged and older just written that way? Frankly, when you read a lot of books and watch a lot of films and TV, you notice that older women are absolutely written that way. Younger women are viewed happy and as essential, while older women are constantly cast and represented in roles that are negative, that are depressing, frightening, secondary, non-essential.

If a young heroine is seen by many as an essential aspect in romance, and, as Weldon suggests, other forms of genre fiction as well, I’m gonna throw this a random thought. Could it be that, perhaps, one reason romance fiction may not have been taken seriously is not only because it is often written by women, and therefore a lesser form of writing, but it is also due to heroines having a long history of being overwhelmingly young women? Young women are often not taken seriously due their perceived lack of life experience. At the same time, older women cease to be taken seriously due to their experience, end of fertility, and depressing natures. Ageism swings both ways when you are female.

I understand fledgling writers want advice, fledgling writers take creative writing courses, undertake postgraduate degrees, attend conferences, search the web for guidance, and take heed of what successful writers and writer-teachers have to say. And lots of author-teachers have stuff to say. Here’s where I mention that, in my undergrad days, I had a creative writing teacher who had a one very successful book that lots of high school kids had to read and had been made into a well-received film. His big serious advice was to tell us all A writer must to suffer to write well.

I withdrew from his class because I wasn’t into suffering as much as I was using my imagination to tell a story.

My point is, it’s time to toss out shitty advice like suffering to be a good writer, time to retire ageist advice that demeans, time to take women of all ages seriously—as we have finally begun to take seriously the romance genre and the academic-scholar types who choose to study it.

Thank you to PhD candidate, Rachel Bailey, Dr Laurie Ormond, Dr Amy T Matthews, and Dr Michelle Douglas for inspiring this ranty post.

 

Weldon, F. (2020).What age are your characters? https://fayweldon.co.uk/writing-tip/what-age-are-your-characters/ Retrieved 21 July, 2020.

 

 

 

The Notion of Leading by Example

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Wielding my Shield of Smartass

Consider this a follow-up to an earlier post, the one where I got ranty about how believing your youth is the “Best Time of Your Life” and how that belief keeps you from living your best life. The ‘younger is better’ thing is a notion that has congealed into the psyche of the media—that’s advertising, film, and fiction. The ‘younger is better’ perception is especially hard-set within the romance fiction industry, which functions under two common mistakes: younger is better, and older people, specifically older female romance readers who are past their springtime-youthful-fertile prime, yearn to be young again and find reading about younger romance heroines as a way to ‘recapture that glow of youth.’

As Glinda the Good Witch says in the Wizard of Oz, “Oh, rubbish!”

While the yen to recapture one’s youth may be true for some, the majority of older people, especially women over 40, do not feel this way, and maintaining a very persistent, very mistaken, nearsighted vision that touts ageist and sexist folderol within the romance fiction industry, a genre that is written mostly by and for women, is, as I have been saying for years, essentially shooting the romance publishing industry in the foot. There is a ready-made audience overlooked in favour of millennials, and it is made up of readers who are NOT just boomers, as the media would have you believe, but also often-overlooked Gen X and Xennials and there is money to be made by taking these readers seriously, rather than solely trying to figure out how to capture the millennial market.

“But what about millennials?” publishers cry, “how can we attract them as readers of romance?”

Guess what? Millennials are going to grow up to be older people one day. Doesn’t it make sense to have in place books that are aspirational to people who are younger now, books that paint an image of a future where being older does not mean blue hair, walkers, dementia or an end to love and sex, as the utterly wrong, completely cliched and ageist aspirations the advertising and entertainment industry has relentlessly shown us?

Advertising’s job is to make something attractive so that people will buy a product. HOW IS THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY MISSING THIS POINT? Maybe because advertising is doing such a crap job of paying attention to older people.

There is money to be made here. If advertisers (and film, and fiction) took the time to talk to older people and made them the primary target, rather than a stereotyped caricature of decrepit and worthless, we GenXers, Xennials, and Boomers would spend up. Older people know what matters in life, have experience with life and relationships and know how to express their individuality—all things younger people aspire to. As Cindy Gallop points out, if advertisers “Lead with what’s aspirational about being older,” that is, if they give us role models, portray older people, especially older women, as the confident, vibrant, attractive, sensual, sexual, intelligent, whole human beings they are, younger people, as in those worrisome millennials, will notice, they will see what they can aspire to, and follow.

Yes, there are a few of you, one publisher in particular (yes, again I am looking at Entangled’s August imprint) that could lead by example but, and this is important, little has been done to garner attention, next to no time has been taken to MARKET to readers who want to be your primary target, readers who want to read what we’ve come to call–not that you or any other publisher has noticed–Seasoned Romance. Come on romance publishing. Get off your arse. Pull your finger out. Pay ATTENTION. Include age as an issue of diversity in the discussion. Latch on to the Seasoned Romance subgenre many of us are reading and writing, and include it on editor wish lists when looking for fresh new voices and fresh new stories. Make something attractive to older readers already looking, and they will buy a product.

I’ve said it here often, but in case you’ve forgotten, there’s money to be made.

 

 

Seen Better Days Says Who?

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A few weeks ago, while I sat in a cafe with my coffee, I picked up The Sunshine Coast Daily newspaper and read a story about a local author who’s had success with writing YA. I was happy for her, fascinated by her journey as a writer. She spoke a bit about reading and writing as forms of escapism. She mentioned that stepping back into one’s days of youth was cathartic and the ultimate form of escapism, much like using a time machine.

Of course, the idea of escaping into youth and it being the cathartic form of ultimate escapism immediately chapped my hide because it suggests, it buys into the absurdist notion that your younger self is the only self worth a damn, it plays right into the hands of the media, into advertisers hawking anti-aging products, into fear-mongering about growing older, into the bullshit idea that getting older means your best days are in your past because your future is nothing but wrinkles, adult diapers, and dementia. Or, if you’re a woman over 40, a future of invisibility.

I’d like to believe that the smartypants who came up with the thought that the best days of one’s life are the days of one’s youth is related to the asshat who decided that a woman over 40 is too old to be an attractive romantic lead and has “seen better days,” kind of like these shoes here. But women, as we know, aren’t shoes.

I’m pretty sure there are a few of things happening with this ‘younger days were better’ thing, which equates to the ‘younger IS better’ concept that is so prevalent in society. First, the harkening back to the days of one’s youth and romanticising that youth—in spite of acne, awkward social encounters, and the associated anxiety of being a teen—has been around since the year dot. Next, thanks to advertising, giant corporations who want your money, and the media who also want your money, the natural process of ageing has been medicalised and treated as a disease to fear. We seldom take into account that life expectancy has steadily increased from ‘old age’ being somewhere around 30 to now pushing over the line of 80. Oddly, very oddly, instead of drawing attention to this fact, that 80-something life expectancy is overlooked. The portrayal of a dismal future is where this idea that ‘escaping’ to your youth comes into play, regardless of the numerous studies that show older people are healthier, happier, more satisfied with life, and still have another potential 40 years of life still left to live.

I prefer to focus on that 80-something life expectancy, despite what advertising and books and films continue to push about life after 40, especially when it comes to a woman’s life after forty. I write novels about older characters who live in the now, in their present age the same way younger people do, without looking back to or escaping to their days of youth. These characters have a lot of living to do, a lot of mistakes to make, a lot of shit to get done in whatever escapist ‘fantasy’ I happen to shove them in, like a middle-aged female butler fighting off the assassin sent to kill the spy she loves in my romantic suspense-cosy-spy-thriller-mystery In Service series (yes, it’s a book plug, kids).

There have been some changes in a little bit of what we have seen on screen, some movement away from the ageist, sexist structures that have kept women over the age of 40 stuck in the same roles. However, advertising, the majority of media, films, and fiction persist in forecasting an ageist, gloomy image of life after 40, especially for women, after the bloom of youth ends at 40. Older women in particular continue to be cast in the stereotyped roles of grandmother, witch, cougar, while now and then appearing in ‘acceptable’ roles as amateur sleuths like Miss Marple, Mrs Pollifax, and Agatha Raisin, with occasional lauded ‘literary’ roles that still fit the grumpy old woman stereotype, such as Olive Kitteridge.

It may take 40 years to get past ‘youth,’ but how about putting a focus on how there’s another potential 40 years of living, a focus on a life after 40 that remains full of exciting possibilities and experiences that can excite us the way new possibilities did as when we were in our youth? How about we see a future crammed with new things we’ve never explored, rather than believing one needs to escape into one’s past to enjoy the present? Escapist stories have their place, I love a good popcorn movie or a book about spies and their beloved housekeepers (see what I did there?), but isn’t presenting people, and by people I mean women who happen to be older than 40, in a variety of roles other than mother, grandmother, cougar, granny, harpy, lunatic, Feminazi, or badass-ass-kicking copies of male action heroes, the ultimate form of escapism?

 

As an aside, if you’re interested and in Australia, tonight’s Q&A on the ABC features Ageism activist Ashton Applewhite, , , ,  and host . Tonight at 9.35pm AEDT is about gender inequality, ageism, sexism, feminism, violence against women, and #MeToo.

You can bet I’ll be watching.  If you missed it, you can watch Q&A Broadside here.

Diversity and the Hidden Value of Ageism: A Weird Theory? Maybe.

Posted in Mature Content Stockpile, romance fiction by

Last weekend, I attended the Romance Writers of Australia conference in Melbourne, Australia. To be honest, I didn’t attend this conference with the intention of participating in workshops or sessions that would help me further my career as an author as much as I did to be present at a panel session about Diversity. This session was a long time coming and, frankly, well overdue. The author-panel was made up of a Queer woman, a Black woman, an Asian woman, while the moderator was a white woman who happens to be Chair of the Writers Board of South Australia, as well as an academic currently examining intersections of race and gender in historical romance.

I sat right up front. The panellists were all romance writers, and I was interested in what it was, or is, like for those members of the panel to be, or have been, overlooked as a leads, incorrectly portrayed, rendered to stereotypes or rendered invisible.

If you follow the ranty Sandra Soapbox Mature Content Stockpile stuff I usually post here, what the panel discussed may sound rather like what I ranty Sandra Soapbox about. That’s because being overlooked as a lead, incorrectly portrayed, rendered to stereotypes or rendered invisible it is exactly what I ranty Sandra Soapbox about. All the time.

Imagine then, how pleased I was when, at the start of the panel, slides popped up to INCLUDE AGE AS AN ISSUE OF DIVERSITY! My research and the Seasoned Romance subgenre got a little shout out. I kinda wanted to jump up and down when I saw the slides. I wanted to jump up and down—while simultaneously hiding under my chair because I’m an introvert and everyone was looking at me. But holy shit, there was a nod to my research (Thank you, Amy), and a slide that mentioned my work on the sexist ageism entrenched in the romance fiction industry, and the quote included that line I keep repeating on this blog, the “no one wants to read granny sex,” comment that shows how the industry overlooks, incorrectly portrays, renders to stereotypes or renders invisible.

I felt so validated, yet at the same time, I admit, if that nod hadn’t happened, despite my introversion, I was quite prepared to stand up on a chair (because I am short) and make sure that the room full of people knew WHY it was important to include age in the discussion of diversity, but I didn’t want to hijack the panel. It was vital to hear Renee Dahlia, Nicole Hurley-Moore and MV Ellis convey their experiences, give their opinions, give a history lesson on whitewashing and yellow face, on being portrayed as victims and villains, of having history erased—and then leave room for questions, to generate discussion from the floor, to open eyes and get RWAus authors to think about how they write whole real, human characters of colour, characters of different ethnicities, LGBTQ+ characters when the author is none of those things.

Some people just don’t quite get it, and an hour-long panel discussion plus a short Q&A isn’t enough to educate or have that lightbulb moment. However, I am not under a time constraint here. I can take more time to explain and offer a theory to those who still don’t get why this is important, to those who believe they can’t empathise or identify with or see their life reflected in a Black, Asian, or Queer hero or heroine. It’s because you are a cis, straight, white woman and have never experienced what it is like to be anything other than what you are since you have never—or rarely—seen anything other than what you have been conditioned to see because you have never been excluded from having your story, your truth, your life portrayed. This is what you need to know: One day, perhaps sooner than you think, you are probably going to experience ageism. You are going to experience what it is like to suddenly be seen as “other” and fade into the background or be erased from your own future. If you cannot fathom what it is like to be excluded or erased on the basis of your ethnicity, your skin colour, your gender identity, or your sexual identity, Ageism is there to help you understand.

Wielding my Shield of Smartass

I’m going to make a bold statement and say I have a theory. I believe the key to understanding the need for diversity and inclusion may lie within the framework of ageism—the last acceptable prejudice. Ageism affects everyone. Why? Regardless if you are Black, Asian, White, Queer, Straight, Transgender, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, male, female, transgender, non-binary, ageism is an equal opportunity prejudice. Ageism excludes, renders to stereotypes, and erases. Ageism has a greater, often more obvious impact on women than men; after a certain age, women are more quickly stereotyped, side-lined, devalued as human beings, and rendered invisible. Sound familiar? Do you see the connection?

Ageing is an inescapable fact of life. I am getting older. So are you. You have seldom seen anything other than what you have been conditioned to see. I whole-heartedly believe we need to change what has always been presented as the norm because in reality it IS NOT the norm. Life is not all one colour, ethnicity, or one sex. It never has been. If you don’t think change is necessary, if you don’t want a better reflection of actual humanity, then keep reading your young, cis, het, white leads, the ones you say you can empathise and identify with, and will probably escape back to when you see your older self incorrectly portrayed, rendered to stereotypes or rendered invisible.

Let me know how that works for you.

 

The Imitative and Conformist Business Practice That Ignores You

Posted in Mature Content Stockpile, romance fiction by

It won’t surprise you to learn I follow a number of writers, websites, and professionals in various industries (Tech, fashion, health & heauty, marketing & advertising). I like Forbes, Ashton Applewhite (see her website Yo, Is this Ageist and her totally bitchin’ book This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism), Next Avenue, and MarketingWeek.com to name a few. Much of what I follow discusses discrimination on the basis of age—that is sexism, ageism, ageist practices and how it all has an effect on how we view getting older.

This follows on to yesterday’s post about discrimination, ageism and the romance fiction industry. The Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman (smart man, Bob, he was once named one of the world’s most influential marketing and advertising blogs by Business Insider) had a recent post titled The Stupidity of Ignoring Older People . Click on the link there o check it out. It’s a short clip from his presentation at the NextM conference in Copenhagen.

If you don’t have the time (or inclination) to watch it, Bob takes umbrage with statements such as “young people are more creative” and people, like Mark Zuckerberg, to task for saying something as dumbass as, “Young people are just smarter.” In the clip, Bob turns the ‘younger people are more creative’ schtick on its head by pointing those who won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature and Pulitzer prizes poetry, drama, and history were all over the age of 50. Bob also mentions that the female actors nominated for Oscars in 2017 were all over 50, which, if you know much about Hollywood’s obsession with younger women (like the world of Romance fiction) was something of a spectacular first, however the observation does hammer home his point about creativity being viewed as something only young people possess.

Bob gives a few other noteworthy facts that might be a little eye-opening. I’ll break them down:

 “In the US, people over 50 are responsible for over HALF of all consumer spending… [including entertainment]…”

 “[people over 50] account for 50% of all consumer package goods, they outspend other adults…”

[people over 50] are only the target of FIVE PERCENT of marketing activity…

Based on those few stats, s Bob says,“Do you REALLY think it’s a good idea to ignore these people?”

Bob goes on to mention that advertising and marketing ignores older people “because we hate them,” and that advertising is an “imitative and conformist business” that is difficult, or dangerous, to challenge because, and this is my take on it—OH DEAR GOD, WHAT IF IT FAILS. Or rather, as some authors might think, what if I FAIL?

Challenging the status quo is always a challenge and yes, there is a danger of failure. Fear is a powerful motivator. Fear motivates some people to keep things exactly as they are because change is scary and what you’ve always known is easy and, works. The status quo makes you money. If you’re a big company that publishes romance novels that feature younger women as the heroines and those books sell, have always sold, and you make money, why change what ain’t broke? Except that it is broke and, as Bob so amusingly suggests, not challenging the current status quo that hates older people is going to send you broke.

I, for one, see fear as powerful motivator FOR CHANGE. With the books I write, my In Service series (obligatory book plug!) about the middle aged female butler and the middle aged spy who loves her, I am challenging the status quo and facing the fear. Yes, I face the fear. I’ve given public presentations, the kind with slides and stats like Bob offers in his presentations—and I’m an introvert. Do you know how hard it is for me to face a room full of people, how terrifying that is? In terms of companies, like romance fiction publishers, the status quo means they simply can’t build a sexy marketing strategy based on the ingrained perception about older people, especially older women—you know the entrenched notion that women over 40 cease to be attractive or intelligent or useful because they are grandmas who don’t have sex. This is similar to what Bob calls “the boredom of middle age” or, as I like to put it, how can a marketing department in a romance fiction publishing house build a campaign with the status quo that presents ageing as something horrifying that reminds us of our impending death, because who wants a death fantasy as part of their romance fantasy?

They could take another look at the facts, at the demographics that Bob Hoffman presents. Reframe the fantasy of living, the fantasy of falling in love–the one fantasy that doesn’t ever change just because you’re over 40 or 50 or 60 or beyond.  Quit ignoring what is all cashed up right in front of you. Imitate what is THERE. Or keep doing what you’re doing publishing world, because it’s really workin’ for ya, innit?

I keep saying there is money to be made. Romance fiction could be, once again, at the forefront of social change for women, like it has been in the past. And be a front runner of better advertising to people of a certain age.

 

Hoffman, B. (2019). The stupidity of ignoring older people. Lecture. Copenhagen, Denmark. Retrieved from http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-stupidity-of-ignoring-older-people.html

 

 

Discrimination, Squandering Experience, Missing Opportunities

Posted in Mature Content Stockpile, romance fiction by
Wielding my Shield of Smartass

If you haven’t noticed already, let me tell you something you may or may not choose to take on board.  Experience is worth nothing. And by nothing I mean experience is worth nothing financially. This begins to happen once you cross the line into your 40s, but your experience is devalued even more once you hit 50. You know this is true because you’ve seen the ads, the movies that point out what matters, what’s worthy is being younger.

According to Ryan Wallman at Marketing Week, Ad land’s obsession with youth will come at a cost.  Wallman notes the discriminatory practice of hiring younger employees while ignoring older, more experiences employees,
“A paucity of older people in advertising leads to a poorer output and a missed opportunity for brands.”
I’m not in marketing or advertising but I am ‘of a certain age,’  and I am savvy enough to know that entertainment, advertising, and marketing that is aimed in my direction frequently MISSES the mark (see My previous post about the film POMS). It also misses an opportunity. How many studies do there have to be to demonstrate the spending power of people over 50?  As a consumer, a writer, and author in an industry that does not at all favour women who are over the age of 40 (some will say 30), I get pretty cheesed off by anything that imprisons me with a fate I must dread after turning 40, and then dread my existence even more after 50 because, rather than putting the goddamned spotlight on LIVING, life after 50 is nothing but constant decline–dentures, wrinkles, walkers, adult diapers, and the inevitably of death.
The missed opportunity of gearing products to me and others middle-aged and beyond, products that tell me–to borrow and twist a line from from The Shawshank Redemption–to “get busy dyin”’ rather than to “get busy livin’ ” is also a slap in the face that utterly devalues my actual life experience.
In another Marketing Week article (the publication is often spot on with its studies of ageism and sexism in advertising and beyond), Sarah Vizard notes that,
“78% of those aged 50 or over feel under-represented or misrepresented by advertising, with 49% saying they actively avoid brands who ignore them. Plus 69% suggest they would be more receptive to brands if their advertising represented over-50s more accurately.”
Yeah, the paucity of older people, missing opportunity, and  feeling under- and misrepresented as a stereotype is EXACTLY what I have been saying about the romance publishing industry shutting out older female leads, refusing to see them as viable main characters, and ignoring the older (or even younger) reader who WANTS to see better representation of themselves across an age spectrum. If our life experience counts for nothing, then our power to spend is a loss to big businesses, like the struggling publishing industry.
I quite like Waller’s article cautioning the advertising industry. If you didn’t read it, it’s about the younger age demographic of those employed in the tone-deaf, one denture-wearing, diapered older person-with-a-walker-and-funeral-insurance fits all advertising industry, which, he says doesn’t value the experience of older employees any more than it values the older consumer.
“The demographic make-up of the advertising industry sends a pretty clear message to people who have the gall to a) stay alive and b) keep working past the age of 30. And that message is: ‘Fuck you and the mobility scooter you rode in on.'”

Waller’s quote makes me want to say, “Wake the fuck up to this mother-fucking GOLD MINE”  to the historically female-centric romance fiction industry. Women over 40 have money to spend and the world of romance fiction is, with very few exceptions, ignoring them and their money. Readers are saying they are receptive to romance novels that represent over-40s (and beyond) more accurately, as LEAD characters. Yet, as with advertising, these readers are still getting a  “Fuck you and the mobility scooter you rode in on” from an industry that employs mostly women who will one day be over the age of 40, 50 and beyond.

 

Vizard, S. (2019). Brands should stop seeing age as a defining feature of the over-50s. Marketing Week. https://bit.ly/2yI0JgA 

Wallman, R. (2019). Adland’s obsession with youth will come at a cost. Marketing Week. https://bit.ly/2XajNz6