Anti-ageing advertisements and perceptions of ageing

Abstract

Age relations - organizational systems of inequality that privilege younger adults at the expense of old people (Calasanti, 2003) - serve to exclude old people from full citizenship. This notion of ageism goes beyond allusion to stereotypes and prejudices, and draws both from Butler’s (1969: 243) early definition as the ‘systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old’, and from Laws’ (1995: 112) argument that ageism is founded on ‘a set of oppressive social relations’. Rather than view ageism as attitude or ideas to contemplate, this perspective reveals it as group behaviours that contribute to intersecting relations of inequality by age, gender, class, sexuality, race and the like.