Awakening to the desires of older women: Deconstructing ageism within fashion magazines

Older women's body image is multidimensional, changes across lifespan, and is a significant source of self-esteem. Ageist social practices in popular fashion magazines and the reluctance of the fashion industry to recognize the sartorial needs of female baby boomer cohorts feed into an internalization of naturally aging women's bodies as socially undesirable. Depression and/or eating disorders are associated with negative internalizations of body image. Despite baby boomers being the most affluent female social group in the United States history and the fashion industry's enormous social influence on women's self-image, few studies have examined the depiction of older women in fashion magazines. Visual content analysis of eight fashion magazines revealed that the fashion industry continues to focus its promotional efforts on youthful populations and seldom includes images of women over forty, regardless of the large percentage of such women among their readership.