Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of gender discrimination.

Brooke Shields is well equipped to critique how media, including advertisement and film, shape our perceptions of women’s aging. Data show that advertising caters to younger women, even though older women wield more spending power. Ads rarely depict women over the age of 50. The film industry is also guilty of erasing older women. Shields notes that roles for women in middle age are limited and minor. Middle-aged women rarely play leading roles; when they play supporting roles, they are stereotyped as frumpy, shrewish, or unappealing. This erasure is known as “invisible woman syndrome”: “[W]hen we are no longer deemed sexy or able to contribute to society by birthing and raising young children, our value diminishes. We are overlooked, ignored, or worse, not seen at all” (4-5).

The media’s erasure of middle-aged women has a broader impact because it informs how society treats women over 50 while also acting as a mirror for social perceptions. Shields’s social interactions with men illustrate this point. In the opening chapter of her book, she describes walking along a New York City street with her daughters; she noticed that men were looking at her young daughters but not at her.