Tag Archives: Ageism in Hollywood

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

 

 

Flying By The Seat of One’s Puzzle

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There are things that puzzle me. First, I’m always amazed by writers who plot things out to the tiniest detail, you know, those authors who storyboard and collage and outline their tales. I’m not like that. I try to put any structure in place and my story disintegrates. I’m not a seat of the pants writer either. I lack the pants one usually flies from.

Truth be told, I am not a fan of pants (as in trousers, not knickers/panties/ full-coverage briefs). They are restricting, twist and bind the way collages and storyboards and outlines do when I try to do them. When it comes to writing, I have a box box in my head. It’s full of puzzle pieces made up of dialogue like this:

“We’re onto disguises now, are we?”
“You don’t like my hat?”
“You look better in the cowboy hat you wore on New Year’s Eve than in that ugly baseball cap.”
“You miss my cowboy hat.”
“Go on and think that if it makes you feel better.”
“I feel just fine.”
“Which is why you took your time getting here.”
“I was being thorough.”
“Thorough. Is that what you call chatting up Ms Goedenacht?”
“She was doing the chatting up. Weren’t you listening?”
“No. The earpiece stopped working when the discussion turned to marital aids and splinters.”

No speech tags, no description, just the two leads talking. They are always talking. And probably eating. There’s always food involved somewhere. Perhaps that’s one reason why True to Your Service took so long for me to write; I was always eating, as one tends to when one has a house full of visitors, or when one was on holiday someplace that may or may not become the setting for the next book in the series I didn’t realise was a series when the two characters started talking way back in 2011.

The other thing that puzzles me is that women over 40 are treated as a conundrum by publishing and Hollywood, both puzzling over how to structure a story with a woman over 40 as the lead, and scratching their heads over what a woman over 40 looks like as the lead.

It’s not that hard to show a woman over 40 as a whole human being, but Hollywood and publishing are anxious about that and stick to the sexist, ageist structure that has, well, worked for them . Film and fiction are risk averse. Film and fiction will stick to what makes them money; franchises make them money, and something new (well, actually, something older)  scares them because it’s different, it’s not what’s been selling, and what’s selling is what gets replicated or rebooted, or remade. Repeat sexist ageism and a lack diversity across the board…

I will concede one thing. I applaud the way Hollywood has grabbed onto the empowered badass-ass-kickin’ older woman we’ve seen lately onscreen. However, there is more to being an older, empowered, ass-kicking woman than we’ve seen. Being an older empowered arse-kicking woman with life baggage can be even more complex and exciting in telling a story, and it doesn’t mean an older woman has to be superimposed onto a male action hero narrative to be ‘acceptable,’ or adhere to the ageist and sexist stereotypes we are so used to seeing. I want more. Maybe you do too.

I’m all for showing ass-kicking-badassery, only I’m gonna do it like a middle aged woman would–with all that empowering, complex baggage and life experience, possibly slower, or maybe faster and with more ass-shaking like J-Lo at the Superbowl. The point is, there is MORE THAN ONE WAY to portray a powerful, attractive, capable, intelligent, sensual, sexual woman over 40, and it’s not simply making her an action lead, which is a start, but…

True to Your Service, the third of the In Service Series features a middle-aged female butler and the slightly younger middle-aged spy who loves her. It’s genre-blending and crossing with a good measure of meta, seasoned romance, sex, tulips, murder, danger, and true love.  It knocks ageist and sexist stereotypes on the head and places a woman well past 40 as the lead. It pokes fun at spies and mysteries and crime stories. And it all came from a box of puzzle pieces in my head.

You can pre-odrer True to Your Service from your favourite e-tailer here and from Amazon

 

Ageism, (the sly ‘ism’ we’ve ALL been conditioned to accept) Is Inherently Sexist

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Happy New Year!

Now, with that out of the the way I’ll try to make this short and tart because I’m kind of both and I have a deadline.

This morning, smart cookie and Ageism crusader Ashton Applewhite, author of the This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism (go read it NOW), flagged an article by Jacynth, the founder of The Bias Cut– Shopping With Attitude – Where Ageism Is Never In Style. Love that tag line, don’t you? Anyhow, I  like to think my nose is pretty good at rooting up articles on women and ageism, but I missed Jacynth’s l’il gem from last July.

Maybe it’s all the Star Trek I watched growing up (Star Trek is a very multicultural TV series that tried to be inclusive and stamp out ‘isms,’ ICYMI), or maybe i’m merely über naive and idealistic, but it’s 2020 and I am über annoyed that we’re still not embracing diversity and equity in society. Nope, nope, nope. We’re still wrestling with racism, xenophobia, sexism, and ageism.

You know I’ve spent a long time talking about ageism in film, genre fiction, and the publishing industry, especially the romance fiction industry (and we know how things are, and have been, in Romancelandia). Ageism is particularly heavy-handed in romance fiction where men are ‘silver foxes’ who get their own trope, while women of the same silvery age are hags, grannies, evil stepmothers, cougars, raging lunatics, old — or invisible. Stereotypes of age and sexist ageism are so rampant in romance fiction you’d think someone would have pointed this or out done a study of it.

Oh, wait. I did.

Go look if you want to. The links to my academic works are up on the menu under Other Writing. The results of my studies weren’t startling, didn’t tell women over the age of 40 something they didn’t already know, but the study did support how a bias operates in the romance fiction industry. And if you didn’t know, ageism, like so many other ‘ism’ biases, doesn’t care about race, culture, gender (more on that in a moment), sexual identity, disabilities. Women of all colours and ethnicities get the fuzzy end of the ageist lollipop — but did you know ageism hits woman of colour even harder?

I am in no way suggesting that ageism does not have an impact on men. It does. In the workforce, men are passed over for promotions in favour of someone younger, they are viewed as dinosaurs with outdated ideas, however, as Jacynth she notes,

“the difficulties these [white] men face may seem to them more pronounced because they haven’t experienced other prejudices in their life.”

Interestingly, the impact of a man experiencing ageism for the first time might work as a tool to open the eyes of old white guys entrenched in sexist practices, or –and here’s where my idealism creeps in– open their eyes to all the other biased practices they’ve never noticed. Pointing out and challenging biases might function better if one has actually experienced the brunt of a bias. Nothing opens one’s eyes quite like ridicule or exclusion.

As I said, I’m keeping this sweet because I’m trying to finish writing True to Your Service, the final book in my trilogy about the middle-aged female butler and slightly younger spy who loves her (Hey, look! A book cover!), and dammit, they get a happy ever after, just like their younger counterparts, just as, I am hoping, silver fox James Bond does in the upcoming No Time to Die — except, in the film trailer, the woman Bond seems to be living his life with is half his age and really should have been Monica Bellucci’s underused, age-appropriate character from SPECTRE.

Yes, I’m still pissed off about that.

 

Jacynth. (2019). The Bias Cut. Ageism, Is Inherently Sexist- This is Why. 12 July.

 

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.

The Imitative and Conformist Business Practice That Ignores You

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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

 

 

Ageist, Muther-effin’ Punchline

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I try to keep on top of the movies that come out that feature women over the age of 40 in starring roles—the ones that don’t star Meryl Streep or Diane Keaton, which, if you want to see a movie featuring a woman aged 40+ in a starring role, pretty much means you’re gonna get Meryl or Diane. I’ve been trying to catch Julianne Moore in the eponymous free-spirit, dance-loving-gets-a new-boyfriend-romantic Gloria Bell, but the show times have been during the day, when I am at the office, or after 9p.m., when I’m in bed. So, I went to see Poms—starring Diane Keaton—instead.

Contrary to what some Australian readers might think, Poms is not about English people, or the nickname Aussies have for the British. In this case Poms refers to a cheerleading squad.

What was it I made note of in my post the other day?

Oh, yes. I remember. Cindy Gallop said that there is “little nuance in the way age is portrayed…” that we get “ridiculously comical parodies and caricatures of older people.”  And then I said that advertising aimed at people aged over 40 is so often about retirement communities, that age ceases to be a mere characteristic of a character as the focus shifts to stereotypes of decline and disease, on things older people ‘don’t do’ anymore. The thing is, age is a characteristic, not an attribute that defines a person. Except it totally is in Poms, like it was in Book Club.

Okay, okay, we get it, we know stereotypes are a shorthand route to creating a character, a super one-dimensional character, the like kind you find in Poms. Personally, I see it as sloppy and unimaginative writing, but the spectre of age stereotypes, that shorthand, convenient way to contextualise accomplishments and standardise expectations, that reductive, faulty, fixed-with-bullshit meanings hits Diane and her similarly aged female cheerleading costars (side note, I LOVE Pam Grier and I will watch anything with her in it but…) hard and fast—and with NO muther effin’ cheer.

I very nearly walked out of Poms. The thing was, I’d paid way too much for a bucket of popcorn that I didn’t want to leave behind or take with me when I did the grocery shopping after, and for a moment, I considered asking the couple in the seats behind me if they wanted my popcorn, but I stayed, and ate that salty goodness because it was the best thing about the ripe with possibilities but utterly disappointing and craptastic missed opportunity that was Poms.

My teeth are on edge just thinking about it. Is it really that hard to write women beyond the age of 40 as realistic, whole, intelligent, attractive, and complex? I think Hollywood isn’t looking in the right places because…well, Jude Dry’s review of Poms on IndieWire, sums up things nicely.

“The characters in Poms are far from reality—not only of such acting legends but of any woman of a certain age—it’s easy to wonder if the writers have actually met anyone over the age of 65…what they see are these one-dimensional characters, long past their prime and waiting to die. There is not a single character who does not doubt herself or her ability… It seems that older women must apologize not only for wanting to feel good, but for wanting screen time. The central conflict of the movie—women in a retirement community have to fight for their right to cheerlead—is based on the premise that such a desire is totally out of character for anyone over the age of 18.”

There, right there, that’s the irksome problem. The film, like so many works of fiction with older or seasoned characters, focuses on the stereotypes of decline and disease, on things older people ‘don’t do’ anymore. But, as Dry and I both noticed, besides the whole retirement community thing and the ‘you’re too old to even think about wanting to do that,’ and the comical parodies and caricatures of older people, was the stereotyped, muther-effin’ line of dialogue that shifted the standard good luck line “break a leg” to “break a hip.” That ageist punchline reduced the entire film to an insult.

I can’t fault Diane or Pam or the rest of the cast. It’s wonderful that these women are working actors; we need MORE films and books that feature older women as the leads, but not as the leads in this kind of insulting stale outing that missed a real money-making opportunity.

I blame producers and writers who rehash and persist on the bullshit ageist stereotypes. The sad thing is, when a book, or film with older females leads like Poms, misfires and doesn’t make money, Hollywood, like the publishing world, takes that to mean that no one wants to see films or read books about older women.

Dear Hollywood,

I have a book series for you. The In Service series stars a middle-aged female butler and the spy who loves her. There’re no jokes about erectile dysfunction, and it’s not set in a retirement community.

 

 

 

Dry, J. (2019). ‘Poms’ Review: Diane Keaton’s Lifeless Retirement Community Cheerleader Movie Needs a Pep Talk.https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/poms-review-diane-keaton-cheerleader-movie-1202132593/

Old Habits

Posted in Mature Content Stockpile, romance fiction by

Since our perceptions about ‘old’ and growing older change, and we clue in to just how much bullshit is wrapped up in advertising ‘selling us a dream’ and telling us, women over the age of 40 in particular, that we ‘no longer matter,’ isn’t it time to challenge what we perceive as ‘old’ and how we depict age and ageing, to remove the stigma and fear? We, all of us, need to challenge, to change, to knockout negative depictions of aging in advertising, in films, television, fiction, all very powerful forces in shaping culture, that are utterly ageist because ageism is detrimental to us all, even more so if you are female.

Why is it so many of us fear getting older? Often, we treat antiques as items of great value and take care to look after them, yet rather than treat older people as valuable, we have come to ridicule and devalue them, older women in particular. Adding fire to fear is how we see ageing as a disease to combat. Girls and young women are bombarded by the message that getting older is a horrible road paved with ugliness and decline. As a result, we’re too afraid to face the skewed reality we’ve been told is true, when it’s nothing but a con.

If our primary goal in life is to, well, STAY ALIVE, seemingly as long as possible, why then do we see living a long life that changes our faces and bodies along the way as something shameful, ugly, and diseased?

Habit. Laziness. Because the stereotypes of age and ageism are so pervasive and accepted.

I often discuss stereotypes of women and age. I fully understand that stereotypes are a shorthand route to creating a character. I say dumb blonde Barbie or redneck and I bet it conjures up very specific images. The shorthand of stereotypes are a convenient way to contextualise accomplishments and standardise expectations, but the shorthand is reductive, usually faulty, and often comes with fixed meanings that people assign to it, which causes us to reduce people to labels like dumb blonde Barbie, redneck, or old coot. Age is a characteristic, not an attribute that defines a person. The depiction of older people as decrepit, pathetic, useless, as a crone, old coot, or geezer isn’t something that connects us with our future selves; it creates dread and denial of a natural process of life, it creates a multi-billion dollar industry that bombards us with reminders to fear and fight ageing, which in turn serves to devalue and dread our future selves.

When it comes to advertising, Cindy Gallop notes, “little nuance in the way age is portrayed,” there’s an either or with “beautiful blonde-haired, white-haired, blue-haired, gorgeous older people walking on the beach in the sunset…or ridiculously comical parodies and caricatures of older people.” There’s not a lot of ethnic or cultural diversity, not a great deal of products aimed directly at men the way anti-ageing products target women, nothing geared toward the older LGBTIQ community. Older people have the income, have the money to spend, but there is little to reflect this in advertising the products aimed at adults growing older. It’s about retirement communities, arthritis pain relief, funeral insurance, anti-ageing creams.

When it comes to films and television shows depicting older people, change is slow, particularly in romance fiction. I write about that often. I rant about it often. There have been some changes in Hollywood, even a little bit in romance fiction with the growing visibility of Seasoned Romance, and thank heaven for that. However, something I’ve noticed is that a number of films and TV shows with older leads, still treat being older as a joke, or treat ageing almost like another character present in the room. Invariably, someone points out that age is in the room with a well-timed, “really, at your age?” or there’s a scene with erectile dysfunction and Viagra, like in Book Club, where older women reading Fifty Shades of Grey is subversive and changes their lives. Age ceases to be a mere characteristic of a character as the focus shifts to stereotypes of decline and disease, on things older people ‘don’t do’ anymore, rather than keeping the spotlight on the story-telling of say, two older people finding love and sex again later in life, as in Our Souls At Night, which showed the romantic awkwardness and expectations of two people who just happened to be older—the awkwardness and expectations not really so different to younger people.

This could just be my bugbear, a thing that disappoints me, but it is something I’ve noticed and something that can spoil a story for me. I may even be guilty of it myself because I am so hellbent at making sure readers know my heroines are older, but I think, and I could be wrong here, that I don’t use a sledge hammer to do it, and I don’t make age a character in the room. I’ve written two books where I never specifically state the heroine’s age. Willa, in For Your Eyes Only and Mae the butler of my In Service series are both 50-ish—okay, Mae’s age is revealed—in one short statement that appears in Italian, but I chose to keep the exact ages of those heroines hidden. My characters get on with the story without bumping into those age stereotypes or jokes. Age is a characteristic of my leads, not an attribute that defines them.

Is it so hard to tell a tale without having arrows constantly pointing to the chronological age? No, it’s not. Stories unfold and develop with all kinds of characteristics becoming an unnecessary factor to the story-telling. When a story is well-written and executed, age, like a character’s eye color, fades into the background; we no longer notice the bright blue eyes, unless they are bright blue for some very important reason that impacts the story. What do you think?

Am I miles off base? Is age REALLY that important to tell a story?

 

 

 

Return of A Little Help From My Romance Reading Friends: The Lazily-titled Sequel

Posted in Mature Content Stockpile, Uncategorized by

It’s coming up on two years since I put out my plea for your help.  Back in February of 2016, I penned a post titled A Little Help From My Romance Reading Friends. Once again,  I come to you, Dear Reader, you with your finger on the pulse of romance, your eyes on the words and covers and spines of books of paper, screen, and audio. I come to you asking for your help, asking you to tell me about the Romance novels you have read where the heroine is aged OVER 40. That is, the heroine is 40, 50, 60 and beyond.  It’s time to update my list and I need YOU to do this because I am only one tiny woman with a TBR pile and books to edit and books to write so I can add to this list of mine.

I’m very specific here. I want representation of women over 40. Why 40? Because, like in Hollywood 40 is some kind of invisible line for women. Women under 40 get roles, but hit 40 and they dry up. Plus, I’m tired (aren’t you) of the sexist, ageist older man-younger pairing that is the staple of Hollywood and, let’s face it, most kinds of fiction.

Let me be even more specific. I’m after Romance, not Women’s Fiction. In Women’s Fiction there’s often an element of romance, but the lovey-dovey stuff isn’t the primary focus. In ROMANCE the story is driven by a couple on a journey to find love, rather than, as you frequently find in Women’s Fiction, a woman’s journey of self discovery or tale of women’s friendship and/or relationship with friends and family. Call it Adult Contemporary Romance, MidRom, Seasoned Romance, Older Romance,  MatRom, Vintage Rom, (I’ll bite you if you call it HenRom, GrannyRom or HagRom), I want all the romance, I want two people falling for each other and all the glorious, complex, baggage-filled mess that goes with it, the Big Misunderstanding, the (however much I despise them) Secret Baby, Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, the Marriage of Convience, I want all those familiar tropes you love and maybe even hate, but I want them to feature heroines aged 40 and over.

My aim, if it’s not clear, is to present women of a certain age in the genre of fiction that is and always has been female-focussed. I want to draw attention that there are older romance readers who are so damn ready to see themselves reflected in the genre they love. It’s about visibility. Older women deserve and need to be written back into the narrative of life and fictional tales. Because of it’s position as a vanguard for women and social change, Romance fiction holds the power to make older women visible.  However, there are impediments still in place, sticky impediments. With this list as proof of a growing market and subgenre (not a niche, dammit),  I want to clear way the cobwebs that still obscure some publishers minds, and show them the vibrancy of older women.  The Romance publishers who are open to older heroines, but limit the ‘field of older’ to between the ages of 35 to 45 because, as one editor said to me, “No one wants to read about granny sex,” need to understand that this limit perpetuates the ageist and sexist attitude that older women aren’t attractive, sexual, or interested in sex, which implies women over 45 are lesser, other, unworthy of love, and their hideousness must continue to be hidden or kept out of the narrative–you see how ridiculous that practice is.

Have a gander at the list I already have. I know since 2016 there have been titles released by traditional and indie publishers (I’m looking at you, Maggie Wells), but as any author will tell you DISCOVERABILITY IS KEY to readers finding new authors and titles.  I want to add books to my list of romance fiction featuring heroines over 40!  Give ’em to me. Shoot those titles my way! Help me add to the list and help these books be discovered! Let’s wipe out sexist ageism one Romance novel at a time!

PLEASE Leave your book recommendation as a comment!

I’m Getting Bored With This

Posted in Mature Content Stockpile, romance fiction, Uncategorized by

You’ve heard it all before. It’s not new. It’s the same story, over and over. Nothing changes. There’s a gap in pay and a gap in age. Women get, as Marilyn Monroe says in Some Like It Hot, “The fuzzy end of the lollipop,” or, if you’re a woman over 40, no lollipop at all.

News items, like Anita Singh’s article in  The Independent,  Hollywood Gender Pay Gap Laid Bare as Rich list of Stars is Filled by Men, highlight the gender pay gap that exists between male and female stars in Hollywood, as well as the rampant ageism toward older actresses.

The pay gap can be attributed to the dominance of action blockbusters and to a dearth of opportunities for older women. In the list of top 10 actresses, the oldest woman is Julia Roberts (49). All but three of the male top 10 are aged 50 or over.

No big surprise there. While I applaud the reporting of the ongoing disparity, this news is now tedious and commonplace. Story after story indicates that, despite all the reporting of the gap, nothing has changed, that there’s still a “dearth of opportunities for older women,” and it is boring. So very boring. We know about the disparity.

Some of us are trying to alter the pay gap and and the age gap. We are telling stories about women of a certain age, in case Hollywood and the Romance fiction industry haven’t noticed. Writers like me are trying to be proactive and smart. We SEE the audience the industry doesn’t. We want  to ensure that both men and women are afforded the same opportunity to have a lollipop that isn’t fuzzy–or a just a damned lollipop.

 

 

Singh, A. (2017). Hollywood gender pay gap laid bare as rich list of stars is filled by men. The Independent. 24 August. http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/hollywood-gender-pay-gap-laid-bare-as-rich-list-of-stars-is-filled-by-men-36060056.html .