Not Anti-Age, Pro-Age

So, I have been tragically lapped by my magazines.  Like three or four issues lapped.  And I became a freelance writer in part because I love magazines.  I get a lot of them.  Today, I went through an enormous stack of my backlogged editions.  And I came across this little news tid-bit in Bitch’s Summer 2007 issue (Risk):  it seems that the FCC banned Dove’s ProAge television commercial because it showed ‘naked’ women (who happened to be over 50).  Now, these women have all their parts covered.  And those of us, of a certain age, might recall a certain not so young Officer Sipowicz showing his actual derrierre on prime time, but maybe the folks at the FCC couldn’t recall that scene.  Anyway, Dove has the ad on their web-site.  They also have their 2006 Dove Global Beauty study results on their web-site.  Some of the conclusions:

Older women are underrepresented in society …

• 91% feel the media and advertising need to do a better job of representing realistic images of women over 50.
• 97% believe society is less accepting of appearance considerations for women over 50 compared to their younger counterparts, especially when focused on the body.
• Nearly 60% of women believe that if magazines were reflective of a population, a person would likely believe women over 50 do not exist.
• 87% of women believe they are too young to be old.  

Finally, Dove has partnered with American Greetings so that you can send the women in your lives an e-card that tells them just how beautiful they are.