Ageism And The Media Essay

Ageism and the Media

Women over forty are constantly being either ignored or belittled in the media. There are countless women in their twenties and early thirties all over television and the movies. In magazines, the models tend to be much younger. Many are under twenty.

Model Roxanne Daner is only 17, but her career will be over by the time she's 20. "I'm afraid to get old. I already feel old. I like to tell people that I'm 17, because 17 sounds young and they think that there is so much ahead for you. But 18, it's like there is not that much more - there's really only two more years." (Changing Face of Beauty: Illusions). According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 42% of Americans are fourty and older. In 1999, the Screen Actors Guild reported that only 1 in three roles went to performers over fourty. However, women over fourty fared worse than men of the same age. While 37% of male roles in television and film went to men fourty-years-old and

But nothing commensurate with the size, wealth, and media dedication of the older population.

From those top ten films, those older male characters are detectives, postal workers, criminals, wealthy CEOs, and teachers. The women are maids and wives. "...Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Sean Connery, Richard Dreyfuss, and other men in their fifties, sixties, and even seventies continue to work and get great parts while terrific actresses over the age of forty...search in vain for decent roles... "(Douglas 278). Older men can still hold positions of power and even have romances (particularly with younger women), but older women are almost always the sedentary character and it is very rare that they have younger male