Well Aged: What Aging Means for Men

     It is often said that men age better than women- that whereas older women's wrinkles are unsightly, older men's wrinkles are badges of honor.  In our increasingly more media-saturated society, however, it seems that increasingly, men are subject to similar ideals about youth as women.  On the connection to youth and beauty, Roger Scruton writes that "there is hardly a person alive who is not moved by the beauty of the perfectly formed child," (Scruton 53) but concedes that there exists "the beauty of an aged face, which has emerged, as it were, from a life of moral trials," (Scruton 54).  Thus, a paradox appears: we want to preserve our youth for as long as possible and (after a certain age milestone) to look younger than our true age, but we also hold a certain reverence for those who we decided have aged well.  We want to stay as close to the image of "the perfectly formed child" for as long as possible, but we also admire beautiful older people.  For my final journal, I want to explore why we think that men supposedly age better than women and what the limitations on male aging are.
     For stars like Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Helen Mirren, George Clooney, Denzel Washington and John Slattery (Roger Sterling on Mad Men), their age becomes part of their selling point.  However, while George Clooney and Denzel Washington have both graced the cover of Esquire, one would be hard pressed to find a woman over 45 who graces the cover of a mainstream fashion magazine.  On the surface, this seems to send the message that men of a certain age are still desirable while women are not.
     Perhaps, however, it is not that men are allowed to age and still be attractive, but that the ways in which men and women are allowed to age are different.  In a study on age and gender in anti-aging advertisements, Toni Calasanti notes that anti-aging products marketed to women focus on perfecting and rejuvenating the body to attract or remain attractive to men (Calasanti 344), men's anti-aging products are marketed to men with a focus on staying "young by enacting a masculinity that involves performance in areas of physical strength and sex," (Calasanti 345).  Even if men are allowed to display their crow's feet and laugh lines, they are expected to perform athletically and sexually like younger men.  Stars like Brad Pitt may be aging, but as long as they remain in shape and do not use (or do not admit to using) Viagra, they are still sexy.  By extension, normal men who maintain their muscles and their manhood can still be sexy, too.  It is worth noting that maintaining physical strength does relate to appearance, as exercising changes the way a body looks.
     The images that define men in the media heavily influence the dialogue around men's aging.  According to Richard Dyer, "the typical portrayal of men," is "images of men doing something," (Dutton 339) and that even when they appear relaxed, male models pose in such away that "the muscles are emphasised, hence drawing attention to the body's potential for action," which means that "the body quality most promoted in the objectified male body is musclarity," (Dutton 339).  That men in images always appear to have the potential for action translates to power- the power to accomplish feats of strength and the power to move and to act.  This gives men in images much more power than women in images, for whom "being looked at" signifies "powerlessness (or at least passivity)" (Dutton 335).  While men may be objectified in certain images, "the exposed male body is... an inescapable affirmation of... masculinity and patriarchy," (Dutton 335).  Thus, the benchmark by which men's attractiveness is measured is power- physically and sexually.  The loss of muscle mass and erectile disfunction that come with old age represent a loss of male power- a loss of masculinity and a loss of attractiveness.
     Increasingly, men are subject to the same scrutiny in appearance when it comes to wrinkles and other signs of aging.  In the documentary Youth Knows No Pain, the audience is introduced to several male characters who actively fight the signs of aging, most notably, a plastic surgeon who regularly uses Botox on himself and a man who underwent cosmetic surgery and now gets acting gigs and is often mistaken for Jack Nicholson.  That these men undergo cosmetic procedures with the same casual attitude about it as women demonstrates a shift in the way that men approach aging.  Men's media sources such as Askmen.com are beginning to run articles on how to prevent wrinkles and companies like Nivea now offer wrinkle creams just for men.
     Images of aging males are also the victims of photoshop.  Whereas images of aging women are either noticeably photoshopped, such as this image of an entirely wrinkle-free Twiggy:

this one of Sarah Jessica Parker:

or the Burlesque poster in which Cher and Christina Aguilera appear to be the same age despite a 30-plus year age difference:

or not pictured at all, images of aging men are digitally altered in specific ways that allow them to show some signs of aging.  

For example, this is George Clooney at an awards show:

He clearly shows signs of aging such as forehead wrinkles, crow's feet around the eyes and graying hair.  However, on the cover of the April 2010 Indian GQ, George Clooney looked like this:

Here, his wrinkles have been smoothed out, but not entirely and his face has been lit in such away that it makes his skin appear brighter and younger.  On this magazine cover, he is the very definition of aging gracefully.

This is Brad Pitt, allegedly without any digital alteration, on the cover of W:

Here's Brad Pitt on a 2009 cover of Esquire:

It is clear that the second picture has been altered, but like George Clooney's magazine cover, it has been altered to reduce signs of aging, not to eliminate them.  That women's signs of aging are entirely eliminated while men's are merely reduced sends the message that women are not allowed to age.  This, combined with the obviousness of the digital alterations in aging women's images, contribute to the idea that women do not age well and therefore need significant digital (and cosmetic surgery) enhancements to look good in their old age.  Men are perceived to age better than women because they appear to not need photoshop and are allowed to age (but only to a certain extent).  The reality is, of course, that all people age and some do it more gracefully than others, regardless of gender.  

     These images are harmful because digital alteration is applied not only to models and the celebrities seen above, but also athletes, political figures and even "ordinary" citizens (Wheeler 182).  Even though as consumers, "we are used to unreal images," (Wheeler 182), they "diminish the self-esteem of impressionable readers," (Wheeler 185).  We internalize these images, either as what we should look like or as what we want to look like, and we can never measure up.  Images of aging men are particularly dangerous because they look more realistic; for the viewer, it is harder to see the digital alteration in George Clooney's GQ cover than Cher's Burlesque poster.  Despite the fact that these photographs "constitute visual fiction," (Wheeler 181), it appears that these men just age extremely well, which raises the standard for all older men in the same way that a flawless model on the cover of Vogue raises the beauty standard for all women.  

     No longer are men's standards of aging confined to maintaining physical strength and sexual ability; men are more and more becoming subject to similar image-based standards as women.  As the media we consume become part of our "extended nervous systems" (McLuhan 57), we are inundated with images and advertisements all dictating how to look, what to wear and even how to age.  For its part, technology has allowed women and men to slow down the aging process through cosmetic procedures, digital photo enhancements, pills for medical conditions and all sorts of skin products that allegedly reduce wrinkles.  We have become "differently human," in the sense that technology "allows us to bypass some of our most fundamental physical absolutes," (Dyens) such as aging.  As for the question of if men age better than women, it appears that it is not that men age better, but rather that society views men's aging as different from women's.  Men are allowed to show wrinkles, so long as they are not too deep, so long as they stay physically fit and so long as they are still able to have sex.  However, standards are changing and men are starting to combat the same signs of aging that women combat.  

Works Cited

Calasanti, Toni M. "Bodacious Berry, Potency Wood and the Aging Monster: Gender and Age Relations in Anti-Aging Ads." Social Forces 86.1 (2007): 335-55. Project Muse. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.

Dutton, Kenneth R. "The Body Observed." The Perfectible Body: the Western Ideal of Male Physical Development. New York: Continuum, 1995. 321-55. Print.

Dyens, Ollivier. "The Crater in the Yucatan." Metal Flesh and the Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over. Print.

McLuhan, Marshall. "Media as Translators." Understanding Media; the Extensions of Man,. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. 56-61. Print.

Scruton, Roger. "Human Beauty." Beauty. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Wheeler, Tom. "Cosmetic Retouching: Skin Deep?" Phototruth or Photofiction?: Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. Print.

Youth Knows No Pain. Dir. Mitch McCabe. HBO, 2009.

Liz Lemoning: the Media's Beautiful "Ugly" Women

It should come as no surprise that the media promotes unattainable beauty standards.  Magazines, advertisements, movies and television shows all portray models and celebrities with beyond-perfect pilates-sculpted and airbrushed bodies.  As the beauty ideal becomes less and less achievable (though cosmetic and fitness companies will tell you otherwise), even the most beautiful of actresses cannot compare to her two-dimensional counterpart.  Despite our culture's obsession with beauty, the role of the ugly woman still exists.  But what happens when even the ugly woman is exceedingly beautiful?

An article on Feministing coins the term "Liz Lemoning" to describe the practice of casting a beautiful woman as an ugly person (Chloe).  While I am unfamiliar with the character Liz Lemon (I don’t watch 30 Rock), the article mentions two other examples that I would like to examine: Rachel Berry from Glee and Betty Suarez from Ugly Betty.

Rachel Berry, Glee

Rachel Berry, of the musical dramedy Glee is the show's resident ugly girl.  She is a nerd who dresses in clothes more appropriate for a third-grader, but aside from that, Ms. Berry is pretty representative of the idealized beauty.  She is white and slender with long, shiny hair and full lips.  Still, Rachel Berry is called various names that disparage her looks such as Stubbles and Man-hands.  In episode 15 of Glee's first season, "The Power of Madonna," one of the first scenes involves another character drawing a highly distorted sketch of Rachel:

In last week's episode, "The Rocky Horror Glee Show," Rachel is quoted as saying " I don’t look like Brittany or Santana, but you still think I look hot right?"  The problem, of course, is that Rachel does look like Brittany and Santana- they are all conventionally beautiful.  

Betty Suarez, Ugly Betty

Betty Suarez is an interesting character because the actress who portrays her, America Ferrera, did have to alter her appearance (through glasses, fake bushy eyebrows, a wig and fake braces) during filming to play the role, even if the alterations only lasted until the end of the day on set.  Whereas the others simply don frumpy outfits and/or rely on jokes to build the perception that that character is ugly, Betty Suarez is farther from the beauty ideal.  Still, as the series progresses, Betty gets slimmer, experiments with make-up, and while her outfits remain garish, they do become more figure flattering.  Despite Betty’s transformation, however, the jokes about her appearance do not stop.  In season four, episode 18 of Ugly Betty (the third to last episode of the series), for example, Betty is about to tip the bellhop at a hotel in London.  She tells him to hold on while she looks for a few extra pounds in her purse and her coworker, Amanda, starts pointing to all the places on Betty’s body where she may carry a few “extra pounds”.  

Aside from the jokes disparaging her appearance, it is consistently emphasized that Betty is only beautiful on the inside.  In the episode “Queens For A Day” in the series’ first season, when Betty feels insecure due to her looks, her father tells her that her “big heart” is what matters.  In an episode in season three, Amanda confides in Betty that “when someone falls in love with [Betty], it's real,” while Amanda is never sure if she is loved for who she is or “because [she’s] so pretty.”

Why does this all matter?

    If the media’s job is to sell “a particular body aesthetic,” (Wykes 97) or beauty ideal, it seems obvious why actual ugly women would not be cast in ugly women’s roles.  Then why write roles based on ugly women at all?  Perhaps these so-called “ugly” characters are meant to be relatable or representational.  This is problematic for two reasons.

In his book History of Beauty, Umberto Eco describes how different women came to represent different ideals of beauty.  Eco says that

“in the same years the cinema offered the model of the ‘femme fatale’ as represented by

Greta Garbo and Rita Hayworth, and that of the ‘girl next door’ as played by Claudette

Colbert or Doris Day... the svelte Audrey Hepburn constituted a model for those women

who could not compete with the full-bosomed Anita Ekberg,” (Eco 425).  

    Thus, in the same way that Audrey Hepburn was supposed to represent thin women or Kate Moss is supposed to represent women who are not supermodel tall, the characters Rachel Berry and Betty Suarez are supposed to represent the ugly girls.  However, it is important to note that these images are not meant to be purely representational but are also supposed to be aspirational.  Virginia L. Blum says that these images “represent for us both what we are and what... we long to be,” (Blum 147).  In the Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf describes how “advertising aimed at women works by lowering our self-esteem,” (Wolf 276) to sell the products advertised.  By buying the products advertised at the commercial break, women believe they may be able to achieve the beauty of the stars they see on television.  Maggie Wykes elaborates that a woman “attempts to make herself in the image of womanhood presented by billboards, newspapers, magazines and television,” (Wykes 72) and that this practice is “the means of signifying self-worth, identity and subjectivity,” (Wykes 73).  That is to say that a woman’s self-worth is based on her ability to achieve the beauty ideals put forth by the media.  

This cycle of lowering women’s self esteem by promoting certain beauty ideals to encourage them to buy products (quite a mouthful, isn’t it?) leads to the second problem with using beautiful women to portray ugly women: media images are never attainable.  In her essay “Untouchable Bodies,” Virginia L. Blum warns that women identify two much with perfect media images, “thereby narrowing (at times even disrupting) the distinction between the human and the two-dimensional,” (Blum 61).  Women actually believe that it is possible to look like the heavily made-up, photoshopped and airbrushed women idealized by the media.  Since the photoshopped woman has become the new ideal and any woman whose features stray even ever-so-slightly from this such as Liz Lemon’s scar on her face, Rachel Berry’s larger nose or Betty Suarez’s extra weight is now considered “ugly.”  However, “in reality, those ‘ugly’ women look an awful lot like the beautiful ones,” (Chloe), so labeling beautiful women as “ugly” sets the beauty ideal higher still.  These types of representations set women up to fail because they cannot even achieve ugliness.  

Conclusion

It is worth noting that these shows are not entirely harmful in their representations of women.  After all, Ugly Betty told the story of a confident young woman whose greatest motivation was not love but instead a successful career.  Similarly, Rachel Berry’s motivation on Glee is to be recognized as a great singer.  Media representations of women are complicated and tied up in conflicting ideas of how women should look or act or what they should aspire to be.  Even without ugly beautiful women, aspirational images of women are damaging.  However, they become even more damaging when even what these shows portray as undesirable is unattainable.

Works Cited

Blum, Virginia L. Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery. Berkeley: University of California, 2003. Print.

Chloe. "Pretty Ugly: Can We Please Stop Pretending That Beautiful Women Aren’t Beautiful?" Feministing | Young Feminists Blogging, Organizing, Kicking Ass. 19 Mar. 2010. Web. 29 Oct. 2010.

Eco, Umberto, and Alastair McEwen. History of Beauty. New York: Rizzoli, 2004. Print.

Glee. Television.

Ugly Betty. Television.

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. New York: W. Morrow, 1991. Print.

Wykes, Maggie. "Print: Selling Sex and Slenderness." The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London [u.a.: SAGE, 2005. Print.

Wykes, Maggie. "Print: Selling Sex and Slenderness." The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London [u.a.: SAGE, 2005. Print.