Aging Women and the Media

Aging Women and the Media

As the fabric of American culture has continued along the often ponderous path of progress during the last century, women have experienced perhaps the most significant changes to both their daily lives and their position within modern society. While females in this country, and aging women in particular, have traditionally been relegated to peripheral roles involving familial concerns, a succession of societal advancements since the 1960's has moved their status towards the eventual goal of gender equality. Professional positions once reserved only for men have increasingly been opened for ambitious women to attain, salaries have been balanced to shatter the proverbial glass ceiling, and women currently control many of the most powerful political offices in the nation. Although the significance of the strides made by women in modern American society cannot be understated, a fundamental component of this country has failed in its duty to recognize and report the betterment of women's rights. Popular media outlets, including network television sitcoms, big budget Hollywood films, and fashion magazines continue to classify aging women, especially wives, mothers and grandmothers, as second-rate citizens defined by their subjugation to male authority figures. As renowned feminist scholar Myrna Hant noted in her 2007 paper entitled Television's Mature Women: A Changing Media Archetype: From Bewitched to the Sopranos, "despite almost a half century of change and growth for women spurred by the Second Wave of the Women's Movement, older women continue to be depicted on television as caricatures informed by ageist ideologies" (Hant, 2007).

Hant's assertions regarding the role of aging women in American media can be observed firsthand through a variety of highly rated television programs currently ebing broadcasted on national networks. Just as Hant identified several glaring instances of exclusionary bias within widely watched programs like Bewitched and The Sopranos, in which aging females are depicted as the "prototypical older woman & #8230; frail, weak and helpless" and beset by the many "ravages of getting older and being denied her position as a powerful young woman" (2007), many of the television shows currently garnering the highest viewership ratings succumb to the same stereotypes. The trite cliche of the unpleasant and overbearing mother-in-law, perhaps the most pernicious of popular distortions applied to older women in the media, can be found throughout the major networks' primetime schedule. The Emmy award winning sitcom Evrerybody Loves Raymond, which dominated the airwaves nine critically acclaimed seasons, featured elderly actress Doris Roberts as "Marie Barone," the bane of main character Raymond's existence who constantly asserts herself in unpleasant and obnoxious ways. The archetype identified by Hant as the "Jewish Mother" is exemplified perfectly by the character of Marie Barone, because "on the television shows that have a mature woman character, she typically exists only as a mother or a grandmother… and so often the portrayals are the Jewish Mother schtick of the whining, devouring and complaining older woman" (2007). Typified by her domineering and smothering style of mothering her grown children, Marie Barone represent's Hant's conception of aging women as the other, and the wildly successful run enjoyed by Everybody Loves Raymond is a testament to the complacency American society has developed towards upwardly mobile female figures.