feminist frequencies

The transcription is a conversation between two individuals discussing their podcast on women and aging. They explain that they created the podcast to provide a longer format to discuss important issues regarding women in society. They also discuss how women are negatively portrayed in the media, specifically as they age. They mention the importance of looking at aging through an intersectional lens and how youth is glorified. They highlight the fear of aging that many women experience and the societal pressure to look young. They mention statistics and polls that show the anxieties women have about aging. They also discuss how stereotypes of old women are created in the media and the limited representation of older women in literature and entertainment. They mention the need for more diverse and nuanced portrayals of older women in media. Hello? Oh, yeah, it works. Yeah? Yeah. Okay, I'll be around. Hello? Okay, it works, it works, it works. Oh, okay, there are three audios. Yeah. Okay, that's good. Should we pause it? For example, I will talk, and it's going to record. Okay. And then if you want to pause it, you press here. And then to restart, you press here. But it doesn't, like, my voice doesn't show right. Do, do, do, do, do. Okay, I think this one's me, and this one's you. Yeah, this one's me. Should we try and listen to it back? Okay, I'm seeing it. Yeah. I think we need to click it again. Yeah. Do, do, do, do, do. Okay, it's started. Should I do a timer? All right, I'll do one as well. Just so we can see, I guess. How much we take. Yeah, and if we just keep note of how many minutes we gave each one, I guess, and we just try and follow a little bit. Yeah. But I think, like, we've pretty much, like, it's going to be even. Yeah, it should be. Okay, should we start? Yeah. Okay, you go first. Like, wait, do you want to start with me? Welcome to Feminist Reconciliation. No, you do that. You want me to do that? Yeah, yeah, you do that. You said you'd start. Oh, okay. Okay, wait, let me double check it's recording. Okay. Hey, guys. Welcome to Feminist Frequencies. And this show is brought to you by the KCL iFEM Society, which is the Intersectional Feminist Society. So, I'm Toba. And I'm Lisa. And today we're going to be talking about women and aging. We created this podcast with the iFEM folks because we felt that there needed to be a bigger format for, um... Because I thought you were going to say the whole thing. That's so easy. Yeah, okay, wait. Do you want me to say, like, the whole thing? Yeah, that would be good. Hey, guys. So, welcome to Feminist Frequencies. So, this show is brought to you today by the KCL Intersectional Feminist Society. And so, I'm Toba. And I'm Lisa. And today we're going to be talking about women and aging. So, initially, we created this podcast with the iFEM Society because we felt that there needed to be a bigger format and a bigger sort of area for us to discuss important issues regarding women in today's society. So, Lisa's going to explain why I guess it's important for her. Yeah, it's important for me because I felt like we needed a longer format where we could talk about other issues that we may not be able to develop in our society's events. And we needed a place to express ourselves. So, what we want to achieve with this podcast, and the goal that we want to reach, is that we want a more comprehensive, longer format to express ourselves and reach out to the people who might not know a lot about intersectionality but still want to engage with it. It's more approachable when you try to look into intersectionality. I definitely agree. And I think that a lot of people, when they think of feminism, they don't really understand the true depth that feminism really is. And so, I think with intersectional feminism, it really allows us to sort of understand different perspectives, understand where people are coming from. And we just have that ability to discuss important topics and raise awareness for them. So, yeah, so saying that, we're also open to any suggestions. If you guys have any topics that you'd like to suggest, you're always free to send us a message on our Instagram, which we'll link. And, yeah, just let us know what you'd like us to talk about. So, starting off. Yeah, so today we're going to talk about aging and ageism. So, let's talk about how we got to choose this topic. So, basically, we were with Robin, who is the president of this society, and we were going back and forth about different subjects and different topics that we could talk about. And I was on my phone, and my friend tagged me on a video, like a picture of us on TikTok, and she put the aging filter. And I was bewildered. It was alarming to me. I was so upset. And we just talked about how women and aging are viewed in such a diminishing way. And that's how Robin suggested that this could be a great topic to start off the podcast. Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't know if you guys remember, but that filter was really trending at the time. I think even now, like, people look back and, you know, they'll feel horrified, especially women thinking about, you know, the idea of aging, specifically due to that filter. And so I guess that's why we chose to do this topic. We just want to discuss, I guess, specifically how older women are portrayed negatively in the media. You know, it's not the same as an older man. And I guess this is important when it comes to women's rights and just intersectionality as a whole. Just because of the stereotypes that we have to face as women, you know, the day-to-day sort of ways that it impacts us. And, yeah. So I guess we'll also discuss, you know, women's rights. We'll be looking at ageism and how that also can be discriminatory towards women especially. And we just kind of want to make it through a more intersectional lens. You know, specifically how an older woman might be affected, and specifically according to her race or class. Yeah, and it's important for us to look at this through an intersectional lens. Because young people have such a different experience of what youth is and what it means, depending on their background, their race, their religion, their life experiences, and how they are perceived in this society. And I guess it's important for us to analyze it through an intersectional lens. Because people, and young people especially, have such a diverse experience of what youth is, of what aging is, and what it means, depending on their background, their race, their religion, their social class, their life experiences, and how they are perceived in society. Yeah, so I guess that brings us along to our first point, and the first question. Which is, what is youth? And why is youth glorified? So I guess the statistic that we really found shocking, and you know where we want to discuss, is the statistic that was actually discussed on our Intersectional Feminist Society group chat. So someone sent a graph, and we were having a look at it, and we found that on average, 50-year-old women think that 46-year-old men look the most attractive. Whereas when you ask 50-year-old men, what sort of age range are they most attracted to in a woman, they said 22. So obviously that's quite alarming. Yeah, and I think it really highlights how women are commodities for men, and how society, and how their value decreases as they get older. So basically women's value in society is based not on how they perform well in society, and their work, and their family, but really about how men perceive them. As a personal experience that I think is quite universal, I have a fear of aging. Me too. And I think every girl, especially girls, can relate to that. For example, something that I do is, I love skincare, I'm obsessed with skincare. Especially after lockdown, I was obsessed with skincare. You can see me on TikTok scrolling through skincare, and aging things, and people really do push that agenda. I use retinol, I use sunscreen, like you will not catch me in the sun without sunscreen, because I'm scared of that skin damage. So yeah, it takes a toll on yourself. Yeah, and it really highlights how this fear of aging is really embedded to us women. It's like constantly looking in the mirror, seeing is there a new wrinkle, do I look older? Yeah, and taking action now to not look old, and a failure when I'm old, which does not make sense at all, because you cannot reverse nature and reverse aging. So a poll that we thought was really interesting is that they surveyed 2,000 women, a poll by Dermstore, and it found that 28% of women under the age of 25 have certain and constant anxieties about the indications of getting older. This number continues to climb to 54 for those aged 35 to 44. Yeah, and I think that just goes to show that it's quite upsetting. These are 30-year-old women who should be living their life, and not be constantly fearing about what's going to happen in the future. They should be in the present and enjoying and entertaining themselves right now, but because of these stereotypes and because of the agendas that are pushed on them, they feel that they've got this constant fear of getting older, and it's just not enjoyable for anyone. Yeah, and I think it's totally acceptable and totally normal to worry about those things, and taking care of your health and taking care of your physical appearance, right? But when it's such an oppressive agenda, that becomes a problem, in which we have to decipher what societal norms are pushed onto women that cause this fear of aging. No, 100%. So I guess we're going to really discuss and go into how these stereotypes have been created, and how women have sort of, throughout the years, we've reached a point where we now feel the need to look as young as possible. So initially, it's obvious we should always look at the media, and look at the forms of entertainment that we're enduring. And so just things like movies and shows and literature, we feel that the representation of old women is kind of limited. For example, in fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty, old women are always portrayed to be evil, they're ugly, they're wicked. When do you ever see an old woman who's kind, who's still as gorgeous as she was when she was 20 years old? We don't see that. Yeah, and one example that we had is that women are always portrayed in stereotypical roles. They're the caregiver, they're the grandmother, they're the attentive wife. They have limited character developments. They do not have context narratives that fully depict their individuality. Meaning that as you get older, women are just accessories to the story. For example, we see that in Macbeth. Macbeth has been praised for Lady Macbeth, who is such an impressive character, with such nerves and such character developments. But she's complex. Yes, it's a reality. But in reality, the way she's portrayed is that she's a driving force behind her husband's actions, rather than having an in-depth exploration of her character. Yeah, and I guess in literature it's like that. In movies and shows, we have that sort of limited narrative. But it's also outside of culture. When we look at people in power, people in positions of power, what do we mostly see? Think of Donald Trump, think of Joe Biden, think of Boris Johnson. They're all just old, white men. We don't really see old, white women. Or, well, old women. And I guess if we do see them, they're sort of ridiculed. They're just never given the same narrative that men are given. They never have that opportunity. And so this is why we think that it's quite important to give these aging women a voice. Because they need to be seen and humanised. And they're not just secondary characters of people's lives. They're not just on the side of a man's life. They have their own life as well. And it's unfair. And the idea that they're limited and no one ever sees them, not only is it bad for them, it perpetuates this norm that older women is not a thing. And so people are not used to the idea of a woman getting older, of a woman getting wrinkles, of a woman slowly walking. Just those sort of examples. We don't have that. And I think it's super important to have something like that. Yeah, and even if it's only in culture, it's a reflection of society's values and principles. It's important to see a depiction that is accurate, that humanises. That humanises every woman and all of their characters and narratives and humanities. It only contributes to shadowing those people and erasing their identity if you remove their narrative as they get older. Yeah, so I guess a lot of people might not think that ageism really is something that we should talk about in terms of misogyny and sexism. But I think this discussion that we just had just proves that gendered ageism contributes to the fear of ageing that women experience. And I guess, in conclusion, the poor depiction of older women in media has also caused the natural phenomenon of ageing to be seen. And yeah, so I guess for this part, that's our conclusion. So I guess what we'll be talking about next is the setting of unrealistic beauty standards. So I guess this basically discusses the internalisation of ageist beauty norms. And how, because we never see these older women having that narrative, we begin to internalise that as individuals. And so we grow up with these expectations to never grow old, as we really don't see women grow old. There's essentially a cult of beauty, a cult of youth, and that's what sets this unrealistic expectation of what beauty and what an older woman ought to be. And this has been pushed specifically in our society today by the media, specifically social media. And as women and as girls are more exposed to people and their own appearances, there's this agenda of remaining young, remaining beautiful that is pushed. And this is an agenda pushed by the capitalists. Yeah, I guess you could say that as much as it's to do with misogyny towards women, it's also due to capitalism. And it ties in with these capitalist ideas of marketing and consumerisation. So, for example, there's this huge market centred towards youth and beauty. And I think nowadays it's getting crazy, the amount of people you'll see on TikTok advertising Botox, specifically women. Someone's getting lip fillers, someone's getting Botox on their forehead, someone's getting Botox on their cheeks. I think it's become far too normalised today. And there's also other procedures that are just essentially targeted more towards women. Yeah, absolutely. And an important thing to add is also this intersectional lens. And in our society, youthfulness is often associated with whiteness. And older individuals from marginalised racial and ethnic groups do not fit in this image. They cannot identify to those standards. So, for example, in the fashion and beauty industry, specifically the ones dedicated to edging, products and advertisements often feature predominantly white and youthful models, which reinforces the association between youthfulness and whiteness. Older women of colour get outcasted from the marketing campaigns that do not represent their identity and diversity of age and race. It marginalises them and basically they do not conform to the mainstream beauty standards. And it reinforces the stereotypes about ageing and race and gender. It marginalises those women who do not identify to whiteness and do not fit the beauty standards. And I think today, especially in the 21st century, we should really be focusing on the idea of being centred towards all diverse ethnicities. Everyone, we shouldn't be kept in this lens that is predominantly Eurocentric. And I guess now we're going to talk about how people contribute to these stereotypes. For example, women. Sometimes we can be our own enemies. But I guess that's more through the gears of this internalisation of this misogyny. So, for example, we often have internalised stereotypes and standards of how a woman should act, of how a woman should look. And therefore this affects how we treat each other. I don't know if you guys have ever heard anyone, but I'll often hear someone look at a picture of a woman and say she looks good for 50. Or for example, look at her, she doesn't look that great considering her age. And it just goes to show how these harmful stereotypes really affect us. Yeah, and it's like a failure for women to live up to those standards. Because if you do not manage to reverse nature and to reverse ageing, it's a failure. You have failed in protecting your youth, in protecting your beauty, in protecting your character. Because society frowns upon ageing women. It's a failure to protect your own value as a woman. And I guess this also ties in with the failure to invest in yourself. And I think women may feel this a lot because all we see on TV are other women who perhaps have managed to quote unquote quote overcome this ageing. They're the ones successful, they're the ones who have the ability to reverse this ageing. And then we feel a bit more, you know, awful about ourselves. Yeah, but at the end of the day, one cannot stop ageing. Even though rich women are the ones who can afford treatments like Botox or like Clingia that we've talked about. They are the ones who can afford investing in themselves. They are doomed to fail. Even though no matter how much you invest in yourself, you invest in those procedures, ageing is doomed. You cannot reverse nature. So, as we can see, women as Donatella Versace, she has invested so much in herself, she has invested so much in her youth. And at the end of the day, down the line, she still hasn't managed to overcome what is doomed to happen, which is ageing. And like, think about her now, guys. I don't know about you guys, but I know a lot of people clown her on things like Twitter and TikTok because of the way she looks now. Because of all the way she's invested into her youth with all the filler she's put in her face, all the Botox. We see this with so many different celebrities. Even like, for example, the Kardashians, Kris Jenner, people are now laughing at her because she had all these rigorous procedures to prevent this ageing. Even most recently, Kylie Jenner, who is young, she must be 25 years old, she was ridiculed because we could see her fillers fill in her cheeks. And those have been procedures to enhance her beauty, but to prevent her ageing as well. And people do say that it has made her look older than she is. So, no matter how much you try, no matter how much you invest in yourself, ageing is still going to happen. Even the most successful celebrities that you see out there, even the ones that push the agenda, push the narrative on youthfulness, they are prey to ageing as well. No, definitely. Okay, and I guess we can link that to double standards. Because, as you know, most of this podcast, we've been directing this towards women. But it's not because, you know, we are focusing on women. It's because this sort of issue is targeted towards women. Men don't go through the same sort of insecurities towards ageing. I mean, of course they do have those insecurities, but I don't think that it's to that same depth that we have to suffer through as women. You know, due to these sort of structural things set in place. And so, for example, you know, these double standards men, they set this system up, you know. And I guess we women have to suffer through that. And I guess they make the money. They make the money out of consumerisation. And they essentially make money out of our insecurities as women. Yeah, I think it's a really important point to emphasise. Beauty and youthfulness and this fear of ageing is truly an industry. There have been so much brands that have been created since lockdown. Because the skincare industry has been booming and there has been so much more talk about ageing. So, it really is something created by men, by this capitalist agenda, industry agenda. To make money and treat women as commodities and accumulate capital through women's insecurities. In that sense, women are only victims, victims, quote-unquote, of the capitalist agenda. And their competition between themselves and their desire to overcome this ageing is only pushed by men's desires. And pushed by men's will to accumulate money. Yeah, I don't know about you guys, but this has put me off skincare. But I guess, like, from this transition, it goes outside of societal norms, it goes outside of media. Ageism is truly a problem that we see in the socio-economic society today. There's no definition. Yeah, there's a definition for that. Ageism, as an official form of discrimination, is a prejudice or discrimination. Okay, I'll leave that out. So, it really goes outside of media and societal norms and societal agenda. It really is a socio-economic problem. It's a recognised discrimination. So, ageism, the definition is that it's a prejudice or discrimination on the grounds of a person's age. And we can see that as intersectional because there's gendered ageism, which affects women much more than men. As we have referenced on the double standards. Yeah, and I guess going into it on an intersectional lens, we can see this through things such as workplace discrimination. So, for example, I think that older women face a lack of opportunities. They don't have the same sort of opportunities that a man will have in those leadership positions. For example, I don't know if you guys have read the book, Kim Ji Young, born 1982, I think. And this book really goes into depth about how women, they're not really hired for those corporate senior leadership positions. Because they fear that, you know, oh, they'll get pregnant and they'll have to go on maternity leave. And so, they therefore can't look after the workplace properly. And, you know, I think we can see this sort of ageism. So, I guess we can relate this to sort of an intersectional lens, just through understanding workplace discrimination. So, for example, aged older women, they don't see, you know, you don't see that many in senior leadership positions. And, you know, I think it's obvious that it's really lack of opportunities that they actually have. And then there's also just economic disparities. So, for example, there are so many studies out there that just go to show that women earn less over their whole lifetime. You know, just simply because of sexism and their caregiver roles in society. You know, they're sort of required to take on that maternal caregiver role where they need to stay at home, they need to cook and clean. And so, therefore, they don't have the ability to be working as well. Yeah, and class and economic power plays a huge role in this issue, as you've said before. Because older women positions, they don't necessarily have to have such a big role in caregiving and nurturing and being the women of the household. They don't face insecurity or they are much more less vulnerable to violence, to neglect and abuse compared to women from lower social classes and who have lower economic power who have been affected by sexism all over their careers. And we can look at this gap between, we can take a look at that through the age gap that only increases as women age. Indeed, the ARRP, which is the American Retirement... It's a business to do with older people, I think. Yeah, we'll cut that out. And the ARRP, which is an American association that studies those types of issues. So, I guess as Lisa was saying, the wage gap, I would say that it's due to the glass ceiling. So, if you guys don't know, the glass ceiling is really a phenomenon that states that, as you know, women and men, as they go higher and higher in their corporate senior positions, and you know they're reaching to the top, women actually face a glass ceiling. And you know, metaphorically, they're hit on the head by the ceiling and they can't go higher, whereas men will go higher and higher and higher. And I guess as we said before, this is due to reasons such as women, well people not wanting to hire women in senior corporate positions, because of that maternal caregiver role that they're supposed to have. And so we've got some stats to show that. Yeah, and going back to the ARRP stats, we see that 16-24 years old earn 8% less than men per week. Women ages 25-54 earn 16% less, and women ages 15-64 earn 22% less. So we see that as they get older, this gap widens, going back to what you said about the glass ceiling. As they get higher, they do not obtain the same positions and they do not match up and catch up with the men. And another one we have to add is, so there was a Harvard Business Review, and it actually surveyed the employability of women leaders according to their ages. And so the results that they found actually is that younger women would not be employed in leadership positions, just wholly due to sexism. And as they reach their 40s to their 60s, employers cite the charge of children, or perhaps they'll have excuses such as menopause and its effects on work. And so therefore they won't hire older women in senior corporate positions. And for example, other people were actually found to even say that women in their 50s and 60s have not quote-unquote aged well and do not look vital. And I think that this is actually just, it's crazy because we see so many men in these corporate positions in their 70s, in their 60s as well. And I'm sorry, they look awful, they've got wrinkles everywhere, but why when it comes to women does a wrinkle matter? Why is the amount of lip filler on their face, why does that matter? Why is the fact that they go through menopause, why does all of that matter when none of it matters for men? Yeah, and I think there has been so much effort put into place by different policies or different companies to include much more women. But how is that significant when you don't put women in positions of leadership? And we can see that through the increasing wage gap, which relates to the employability of women in positions of leadership. Like, women are included when they're young, when they're beautiful, when they're marketable. And as they get older, they are not as marketable, they are not as beautiful, they don't serve the patriarchal agenda as they used to when they were young. So they are not included in those positions of leadership, in those positions of power anymore because they do not serve any agenda. They can go back to their sexist norms as they did before because it's only performative for the young ones. Exactly, and I just have a recommendation. If you guys are into reading books, there is a book called Kim Joo Young, born 1982. And it kind of discusses the idea of the glass ceiling and how women will always suffer because of it. And they'll never have the same opportunities as men. So it's really interesting and you should definitely check it out. But going back to the topic. Yeah, we can see that in political leadership as well. And there are so much stereotypes, as in society, about aging and race and gender. And it creates additional barriers for older women, especially women of color, taking political office. It limits their access to resources, to endorsements, and support networks. This intersectional bias perpetuates disparities in political representation and decision-making processes. It excludes their voice and perspectives of older women of color from policy discussion and governance. Older women of color who challenge the established power structures and advocate for transformative change face systemic barriers to political participation due to ageist, racist, and sexist biases. Their perspective is not represented in the political spectrum. Meaning that to go further, when older women of color are not represented in the political scene because they're not as marketable, it's not beneficial for the patriarchy to perform openness and inclusion through the lens of women of color because I think the older they have more... Okay, we'll edit that out. How can I say, like, they have more claims, they have more demands? As they get older, they have more demands, they have more perspectives, and effectively, excluding those demands, excluding those older women of color, excluding those perspectives, it excludes the voices and the perspectives of the older women of color that represent society. Yeah, I definitely agree, and I think it's such a shame, and we really need to work as a society on building up these spaces for older women of color where they can discuss their experiences and they're able to offer opportunities to just women in color throughout their aging process, I suppose. And going back to what you said about Joe Biden, like, we see those old men in power. We see Joe Biden everywhere, Boris Johnson, as you said, and we don't see even, like, old women at all in positions of power. The only women that you're going to see in power are, like, the youthful ones, the dynamic ones, and they're praised for their youthfulness, for their dynamism, for their actions. So, although they represent some type of women, they do not represent the whole spectrum of women, especially the older, aging ones. Yeah, for example. And also, if we do see older women, it will always be white older women. For example, you know, someone that immediately comes to my mind is Hillary Clinton. But then when you look back on, you know, photos of her, and you look at her throughout her process of aging, you know, she was considered beautiful. She was considered attractive. You know, would someone else, would another woman, another woman of color, who perhaps may not be as, you know, attractive in the societal eyes, would they have the same opportunities as her? And I think that's something that we really need to think about. Yeah, and I guess that brings us to our conclusion on what we've said in this first episode. So, I guess, like, in conclusion, we've just really gone through how, you know, this call of beauty and youth has originated, how this particularly affects women when it comes to ageism, and perhaps working in sort of the corporate world, but then also how this sort of dictates the rest of their life, and how they feel like they have no representation. And just sort of ways we can go about that. And, you know, we should really be fixing that. Yeah, and I guess it's also important to remember that this is all an agenda pushed by the capitalist norm and capitalist agenda to push women to consume, to push women to conform, to push women to be a certain way. And specifically one type of woman, the youthful white one. And those perspectives of the older women, the older women of colour, the older women of lower social classes, are not... The older women of other social classes are not... I love this one. That perspective of those older women, the older women of colour, the older women of lower social classes, are totally overshadowed in society. And we need to include those perspectives to fully represent what... I want a woman to fully represent what a woman is. And I'm going back to this sort of capitalist idea we were talking about. I guess this goes to say, guys, with the rise of skincare, you know, obviously you guys put your SPF on every day, it's super important. But you know, sometimes you don't need all that retinol, you don't need your 50 pound serum that you put on your face every single night. You don't need to be putting snail mucus on your face either. Sometimes it's okay to accept that we're growing up and we're growing old and we're still going to be as beautiful as we were when we were 18 years old. Yeah, so all that being said, we thank you for tuning in and we thank you for listening up to this point. So if you guys have any feedback, please message us on our Instagram. We'll link it below. You know, someone's always available to answer you guys. And also, if you have any topics that you'd like to perhaps suggest that we can talk about, we would love that. And yeah, we thought about doing a Q&A section in our next episode, so please do ask questions about our impressions, about our opinions, about even societal issues that you want us to discuss. Exactly, so yeah, all that being said, thank you guys and I hope you have a great day. Bye!