On the rare occasion a young woman might ask me the post-Oprah question of how one develops self-esteem, my seemingly cavalier but serious reply is to forswear reading so-called “women’s” magazines, and to limit their TV watching to noncommercial cable shows.
Commercials seem to have degenerated from mind-numbing to irritatingly demeaning toward women, including one I just recently happened upon, which borders on the offensive.
I preface my comments by acknowledging that the actors in this commercial were simply mouthing words written by a copywriter of an ad agency.
The commercial is by the skincare product Olay. It starts off with the inexplicably popular Boy Abunda, asking self-assuredly, “Why do women lie about their age?”
Now, this was news to me, always having celebrated every 10-year milestone of my life for the past seven, and having just recently read in the Inquirer two pages heralding the former Miss Universe Margie Moran’s 60th birthday celebration and Tessie Prieto-Valdes’ plans to mark her 50th.
Lying about one’s age is clearly so 1950, but here the question is being asked in 2013. More inane than the question were the answers. An irritated and irritating young girl answers with, “because getting old means wrinkles and boring.”
Really? The copywriter of this ad must have been living under a rock, never having seen Jane Fonda (73), Tina Turner (73), Barbra Streisand (71), Helen Mirren (68), Meryl Streep (64), Diane Sawyer (63), Katie Couric (56), Martha Stewart (71).
By no stretch of the imagination would any of these women be called boring. Locally, we need look no farther than the above mentioned Margie Moran and Tessa Prieto-Valdes. Would they, for one second, ever consider changing places with the likes of, say, Lindsey Lohan or Miley Cyrus?
Generational conflict
Then there’s the next answer. “Because getting old means you’re past your prime.”
What exactly is meant by “prime?” Can one say that Diana Nyad was “past her prime” when, at age 64, she set a record swimming for 53 hours from Cuba to Florida? Would anyone say that Hillary Clinton is past her prime? Or that Angela Merkel, having just won her third term as Chancellor of Germany, is past her prime? Are Leila de Lima and Conchita Carpio Morales past their prime?
The final answer was, “because when you’re old, you’re replaced by the young and the new.” Does this have the ring of a threat?
It’s a subliminal threat that’s made toward women from adolescence, and continues to terrorize them into adulthood. It’s statements like these that incite generational conflict between younger and older women.
Artificial threat
It’s an artificial threat devised by men (who head most advertising agencies), encouraged by popular culture, and left unchallenged, if only because men probably do leave their wives for other women, while most women leave their husbands simply because they’ve turned out to be jerks.
Most divorces (66 percent) are actually initiated by the wives.
The terrorizing starts early, in pre-pubescence, and is at full bore by high school, resulting in alarming rates of bulimia and anorexia and other evidence of female adolescent anxiety and declining self-esteem.
And it continues beyond those years as corporations escalate their fear initiative with products that make women fear their dark skins and, horrors, their dark underarms—just about anything dark.
I don’t know if I’ve seen all the commercials that follow the “theme” of this commercial, but all the women interviewed are all so very white, or made to look so.
Demographics
If advertisers were to really look at world demographics, their tactics might shift toward males because in 2011, there were 1,000 males to 984 females worldwide, with more alarming ratios in countries such as India and China. One may, therefore, conclude that there will be increasing competition among men for the dwindling numbers of women, and not the other way around.
Corporate advertising should, therefore, be directed toward prepubescent boys to get them ready for the battles ahead, starting with the adolescent fear of acne, to a fear of wrinkles, drooping lids, baggy eyes, falling hair, bulging paunches and overactive bladders, all the time fearing that a better-looking, firmer young buck will steal their woman. Welcome to our world.
Mercifully, this world is swiftly changing. Women today are no longer as easily intimidated as they once were. They’re more educated (if the university where I teach is any indication, women outnumber men), better able to support themselves (Manila is reported to have more female executives than male), and have the financial resources and intellectual independence to control most aspects of their lives.
Marketing methods
I don’t mean to single out Olay, as it is clearly not unique in its marketing methods toward women. The products themselves are not the issue—it’s the way they’re marketed.
A product that might be particularly attractive to mature women (such as financial services) would surely not be marketed by disparaging young women as being empty-headed, irresponsible, self-absorbed, know-nothings. So why should it be acceptable to disparage older women as wrinkled, boring, past their prime and replaceable?
I suggest that it’s time for Olay to change its advertising from the current “7 Signs of Ageing” to these: Competence, Self-knowledge, Achievement, Self-confidence, Intellectual Independence, Self-respect, Personal Fulfillment.
It’s ironic that the president of the Global Beauty Group of Procter and Gamble (the owners of Olay) is a woman, who, by this ad’s inference, is past her prime, but who certainly looks neither wrinkled nor boring, nor easily replaced. Perhaps she, or someone like her, would be a more truthful and inspiring choice to be the modern face of Olay.