Something Extra... V Magazine "Who Cares About Age Issue"
I was just looking at the fashion blog Fashiongonerogue.com and came across the three new V Magazine covers, staring Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, and Sigourney Weaver. All three of the actresses are over 60 and attempt to prove that age is just a number. However, Jane Fond
a just recently admitted to having plastic surgery. Furthermore, it appears that the women are trying to fit into what society has deemed as beautiful in the present. All three women are shown wearing styles that are in vogue and poses that we see displayed by models. Fonda is captured in animal print 
and a studded choker. Weaver wears a thick knit and dark lipstick and Sarandon is represented in the nude with long curly hair and big earrings. What do you guys think about these images? Do they work?
I was just looking at the fashion blog Fashiongonerogue.com and came across the three new V Magazine covers, staring Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, and Sigourney Weaver. All three of the actresses are over 60 and attempt to prove that age is just a number. However, Jane Fond
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ReplyDeleteAs we discussed in class and in McCabe's film "Make Me Young: Youth Knows no Pain" there is a clear link between youthfulness and the idea of beauty. As a result, emphasis has been placed on the idea of rejuvenation and a reversion to a "younger", "better" self. Furthermore, the individual’s identity is believed to change as he or she age as a result of socially constructed ideas of what is and is not acceptable (i.e. an individual’s choice in clothing, exposing more or less etc.). In Narcissism as Liberation, Susan Douglas critiques the representations of women’s liberation in the 1980s. She argues that women’s liberation came in the form of physical perfection, with an emphasis on the “dimple-free upper thigh and buttock” (247). The achievement of such a body served as “indicators of a woman’s potential for success” and the access to “enjoy the same privileges as men”(260, 262). As a result, women who did not fit in this category of physical fitness “would be dismissed as slothful and lacking moral fiber and self-respect, not to mention lazy, self-indulgent, insufficiently vigorous, lacking control, sedentary, and old” (261). These definitions, including being too old, serve as the antithesis to what was and could be argued to still be what is defined as beautiful.
ReplyDeleteIn this sense, the women in the V Magazine spread are attempting to show that they are still beautiful and can compete with those of a younger age group. While I would agree that they are great examples of beautiful women in the past and still in the present, there is still this idea of having to acting a particular age, in this instance, acting younger than your particular age. Even though these ideas of age specific characteristics and what is deemed appropriate are socially constructed, I would argue that these women are being forced to ‘act’ or ‘fake’ their age to be acknowledged as beautiful.