It’s a strange thing, but the L’Oreal ads for L’Oreal Age Perfect Extraordinary Facial Oil in the US seem to be rather different to those in the UK. The only press ads I’ve seen here feature German model, Tatjana Patitz and Doutzen Kroes. Tatjana is 48, looking amazing, and from the picture I’ve used that was in this week’s Stylist, she doesn’t seem airbrushed – or so minimally that her age is allowed to show through. And still she looks fabulous.
Fast forward to the USA, where they’re also using Jane Fonda, the trio has been airbrushed into oblivion. It’s a very marked contrast that doesn’t do anyone any favours. Actually, it’s verging on embarrassing.
However, on the positive, the Stylist ad gave me a glimmer of hope that brands are starting to realise that it’s only them that disapproves of ageing, not us! It’s just a natural part of maintaining your beauty routine to want to look great – there’s nothing wrong with that at all (from someone who has a bit of the tox every now and again and isn’t a stranger to a filler!) but we’re pretty much in charge of changing how we’re perceived. It’s years and years of indoctrination with brands – not only telling women how they should look and instilling a fear of looking your age, but that runs right through the brands, too. It is so in their DNA, they don’t know how to speak to women like us who actually love our ages, don’t really find a wrinkle devastating and who find the positive in being older. It’s really ok!
I’m doing a lot of work with brands at the moment, talking about how being older is just another phase of beauty (they all get their pencils out at that one) and that we’re really not afraid of what they think we should be afraid of!
There is so much change in the air in the industry; I can’t state it enough. Older women are key to the continuing success of brands so the power lies in our hands to make changes. I’ve worked in beauty for a long time and I’ve never felt that change could really happen – that older women can be seen as beautiful women no matter what their age, but I feel it now. I think it’s coming and I have so much hope for a new respect for the older woman from the beauty industry that doesn’t use the old style thinking that we can’t possibly be happy with our faces.
Every comment you leave on this site that expresses an opinion on how you want to be spoken to by the beauty industry will help – we have to be directive to a certain degree. If we don’t say what we want, how can they know? The beauty industry is populated by youth, which is ironic, but there you have it. It’s not for them to tell us, it’s for us to tell them, so let’s do it!
By Jane, aged 49.
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All products are sent to me as samples from brands and agencies unless otherwise stated. Affiliate links may be used. Posts are not affiliate driven.
24 comments
Jane Fonda just looks plain scary!!! What a pity she’s gone so far down the plastic surgery road….she’s looking more like Joan Rivers every day! Americans seem so petrified of showing women over 25; thanks goodness in Europe common sense still prevails (at least a bit!). Tatjana looks gorgeous; let’s keep it that way & celebrate life & ageing naturally.
I recently saw a picture of an amazingly looking woman with white grey hair with the caption “do not regret getting older, it’s a privilege denied to many”- I think that’s so on the money. We all age & let’s face it there is only one way to not get older & frankly I don’t fancy that!!
I do still find it hard to “come to terms” with being in my 40’s on many levels. I keep thinking that soon I might start to become a responsible adult.
In the meantime I propose to enjoy myself and enjoy make up as much as I ever did. I can’t believe so many brands are so short sighted.
I am 61. And proud of it! I take care of myself, but not obsessively so. I want product ads to address reality and illustrate the inherent beauty that age brings.
The future is inevitable, and I for one, embrace it!
I’m heartily sick of photoshopping and airbrushing to the extent that you look at a picture and wonder who it really is and one of the worst offenders? Good Housekeeping here in the UK supposedly targeted at the more ‘mature’ woman – browsing in Sainsbury’s some while ago I looked at the cover and wondered who the hell it was and had to look at the inside – lo and behold it was Lorraine Kelly and it was nothing like her. I now chuckle each month when I look at their covers – but that one cover lost them my custom as I’d been a regular purchaser before that date. Please nag not only the beauty companies but also the magazines – they should all be ashamed of themselves..
Has anyone seen the US TV commercial for Clinique’s Smart Serum? The one that purports to treat lines, wrinkles, sagging, age spots and uneven tone? The model is definitely under 20 and I absolutely resent it that they are using someone who has *years* until she experiences those skin issues to represent the product. I found myself wanting to throw a shoe at the TV as I am wont to do when I hear BS. Come on, Clinique, let’s be at least a little realistic!
With all the scandals over young girls anorexically dieting to emulate airbrushed models, why is the beauty industry trying so hard to promote unhealthy images to women, too? It’s not normal for a 70-year old woman to look like she’s 35. STOP with the airbrushing/photoshopping thinking you’re making mature women look like teenage girls. LIFE is beautiful, not just when you’re under 21!
I am so fed up with the lies in the adverts and using ever younger models to sell products targeting lines and wrinkles. We are not stupid, I am not falling for a pot of cream makes Jane Fonda look like she does, or Lulu with her time bomb on QVC botoxed to the hilt. I don’t take any notice of adverts, I don’t own a tv. I follow a few bloggers and you tubers in my age group, I am 56 and happy with my age and how I look. I trust women in my age group like Jane and others, if they recommend products I may well buy one next time I need a moisturiser. I tend to buy more natural organic creams these days, I am not into all the science and miracle claims, a face cream can help moisturuses and protect skin, it will not remove wrinkles despite the outrageous statements and prices on the box
This fills me with hope! I have just turned 42 and although my face seems to be showing a new sign of aging almost before my eyes, I have no wish to run after an impossible airbrushed image. I am not ashamed of my age. Why should I be when it means that I can now afford amazing beauty products that my 20 year old self couldn’t. Keep up the fantastic work.
Our demographic has money to spend and a desire to buy products to help us look our best. Look our best not be 20 again because we know that’s impossible and any brand trying to tell us they can do it, well…..
I hope a change in the big (and small) brands marketing practices is a coming.
Perhaps, they should just advertise makeup that gives a woman the airbrushed look. Throw the anti-aging garbage in the can and advertise brands that help give a woman a more airbrushed look as seen in every one of our U.S. ads. It would be the more truthful approach. I despise the ANTI-AGING theme.
Thank you for your blog – at last somebody who ‘gets it’ about women and aging. After all aging is so much more attractive than the alternative.
Bravo to you Jane,and to all “beauties” who embrace aging with attitude and grace. I am 53 years,and know that my best years are before me! My powder room is overflowing with red lipsticks and great tweezers! HA! I’m rockin’ my “silver” highlights too!
The cosmetic surgery and photoshopping strike me as systematically trying to accustom people’s eyes to thinking 60- and 70-year old women actually have perfectly smooth skin and no sagging or lines. Gradually, after seeing it over and over and over it could start making people feel BAD about the way they look. “If she looks so great at 70, howcome my skin looks so baggy at 60?” Maybe the cosmetics companies and the plastic surgeons are giving each other kickbacks.
I want to be inspired by real women. I’m not interested in looking at pictures of teenage girls or plastic dolls or a misty fantasy (lie). If a product or magazine is aimed at a more mature woman, then please, please have a more mature woman in the pictures. Women in their 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s etc can be beautiful too, and that’s what I want to see. Cathy, aged 50, who feels no different to her 30-something-self only with more life experience.
I struggle to find images for thebeautyplus.com that reflect the audience it’s intended for.. I have to pick really carefully or just show product only.. x
I think if a magazine came out with every single editorial and ad showing a real mature woman looking fab it would sell like hotcakes. I grew up reading magazines and I am saddened that there is nothing out there now for women who are smart, sassy and seasoned. I guess we have to BE the new attitude to make it happen.
You know what they say – of you’re not aging, you’re dead. I am 70 and delighted to be here as several of my friends have been denied that privilege. I believe in taking care of myself and doing the most with what I’ve got, but I’m not obsessive about it. I deeply, deeply resent the ingrained message, so heavily promoted by the cosmetic and skin care industries, that we must do everything to absolutely avoid ever looking our age. And, shame on you Jane Fonda – you look ridiculous.
Thank you Jane and your pals in the biz who are speaking up for the rest of us. Tell them to wake up and look at their major demographic and pay attention. I am so weary of seeing fresh young faces selling the products designed for the older woman. It borders on false advertising and is highly insulting to us. I am adding my voice to your campaign for mature women, real mature women, not the airbrushed, surgically-altered (Jane Fonda) ones in the ads.
Meant that to be a comment, not a reply. Sorry.
I agree magazines do normally over photoshop pictures and its a real shame. I believe makeup should enhance a lady’s natural beauty not hide it. So often you hear the comment “what gorgeous makeup!” If I was a makeup artiste I would prefer the comments to be about the model and how gorgeous she is. That way I would know I have done a good job. Sadly many new bloggers have also fallen into the photoshop trap. Keep it real, it is so much more relateable.
I like seeing people as they should be. I’ve lost count of the number of women on TV or in magazines, by whom my husband has been inspired to say: “Wow, she’s aged well.” But ‘she’ hasn’t, actually. She’s either been nipped, tucked, folded, ironed or botoxed to the hilt. Or, if in a magazine, photoshopped ad nauseam. I don’t find these women or images in the slightest bit inspirational, so I wish…particularly with the photoshopping…advertisers/promoters of cosmetics would give us the real McCoy. I have far more respect and admiration for the woman who doesn’t mutilate herself, but enhances her features. That’s what’s going to make me buy a product. Not a surgically altered Jane Fonda.
I’m not judgemental of women who choose how they age.. but I don’t think it always works in the way they think it will. I have a little botox from time to time and a dash of filler but for example, choose not to deal with lines around the sides of my eyes. I just don’t care that they’re there! So, you can mix and match with all sorts of things to get the face you feel comfortable with. Crucially, I feel experimental about it – not pressurised. I’m curious to see what can be done and then I can take it or leave it depending upon how I feel. It’s not a question of not being able to face up to ageing but technology exists so that you can control it a little better if you want to. I never want to look wind tunnelled and there is sod all you can do about your neck (barring surgery) so everything has to catch up at some point! Thanks so much for your comments Cathy, I’ve really enjoyed reading them x
I agree with Cathy up top from 2 weeks ago. There’s definitely a gap in the market for a magazine that targets ‘grown up women’, I guess a step up from Red but not quite GH. I was hoping that Porter could be that magazine but its shoot are the same as every other high fashion mag. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Hearsts and Conde Nasts aren’t cooking one up right now though…
Thanks, Jane, but I’m not the Cathy who commented earlier, lol!!