Do women age worse than men? Why do wrinkles make a man look more distinguished than they do on women? Why do women spend so much money on anti-ageing products? Do women fear the ageing process? Do women secretly miss being objectified as they grow older? Does the loss of youth affect both men and women in the same way?
These are some of the questions raised in the article by Susan Sontag’s’ The Double Standard of Ageing. For Sontag, men have, two stages of beauty (the boy and the man) while women only have the girl. Women aren’t afforded this next stage of beauty, approaching adulthood, women view every wrinkle, line, grey hair, unsmooth skin as a defeat. Men on the other hand invite the ruggedness of becoming older, the toughness and responsibilities …show more content…
Sontag (1978) states that a woman who has a high paying job is considered less attractive because of her inability to be treated as a sexual object (sexual objectification theory), men find these women particularly intimidating. The relationship often is adversely impacted by sexual objectification, which is defined as society’s treatment of the female body as a sexual object (Kaschak,1992). In sexual objectification, the female body is broken down to its most basic functions and proceeds to represent the woman. At the psychological level, the most profound effect of objectifying women force women to adopt a different view of self (Frederickson and Roberts, 1997). Objectification theory holds that at this psychological level, society socializes women to treat themselves as objects to be looked at. Effective socialization ends with the total compliance and acceptance of not “living” up to the beauty standards from external pressure (media, opposite sex, and family). Unger (1979) argues physical beauty correlates to power for women, it acts as fuel for social and economic status. For a woman to stay in power, he appearance must appeal to the dominant culture, …show more content…
People who are thought of as attractive tend to have better jobs, nicer homes, smart and socially desirable. The factor that has been shown to affect someone’s view on attractiveness is their age and culture. People with older faces are typically seen as less attractive because of the lines near the eyes, wrinkles, and excess skin on the face. Age is an important component of facial encoding and old faces are often judged to be less attractive than young faces, it is important to assess who judges old faces as unattractive (Clark & Foos, 2011). The focus on youth, mobility, change, coupled with the intense fear ageing in American culture leads to the negative stereotypes of older people, and anything associated with aging. Jokes about getting older, with the implicit message that it is bad or sad to get older. In a study done by (McLellan and McKelvie (1993), their results showed that both men and women rated older men as less attractive than their counterparts. One of the reasons young people fear growing up can be explained by the terror management theory (TMT) (Nelson, 2008). This theory states that, culture and religion are creations that give order and meaning to our existence, and this protects us from frightening thoughts of one’s own mortality and the seeming random nature of life. Per TMT, viewing older people in society is a
These are some of the questions raised in the article by Susan Sontag’s’ The Double Standard of Ageing. For Sontag, men have, two stages of beauty (the boy and the man) while women only have the girl. Women aren’t afforded this next stage of beauty, approaching adulthood, women view every wrinkle, line, grey hair, unsmooth skin as a defeat. Men on the other hand invite the ruggedness of becoming older, the toughness and responsibilities …show more content…
Sontag (1978) states that a woman who has a high paying job is considered less attractive because of her inability to be treated as a sexual object (sexual objectification theory), men find these women particularly intimidating. The relationship often is adversely impacted by sexual objectification, which is defined as society’s treatment of the female body as a sexual object (Kaschak,1992). In sexual objectification, the female body is broken down to its most basic functions and proceeds to represent the woman. At the psychological level, the most profound effect of objectifying women force women to adopt a different view of self (Frederickson and Roberts, 1997). Objectification theory holds that at this psychological level, society socializes women to treat themselves as objects to be looked at. Effective socialization ends with the total compliance and acceptance of not “living” up to the beauty standards from external pressure (media, opposite sex, and family). Unger (1979) argues physical beauty correlates to power for women, it acts as fuel for social and economic status. For a woman to stay in power, he appearance must appeal to the dominant culture, …show more content…
People who are thought of as attractive tend to have better jobs, nicer homes, smart and socially desirable. The factor that has been shown to affect someone’s view on attractiveness is their age and culture. People with older faces are typically seen as less attractive because of the lines near the eyes, wrinkles, and excess skin on the face. Age is an important component of facial encoding and old faces are often judged to be less attractive than young faces, it is important to assess who judges old faces as unattractive (Clark & Foos, 2011). The focus on youth, mobility, change, coupled with the intense fear ageing in American culture leads to the negative stereotypes of older people, and anything associated with aging. Jokes about getting older, with the implicit message that it is bad or sad to get older. In a study done by (McLellan and McKelvie (1993), their results showed that both men and women rated older men as less attractive than their counterparts. One of the reasons young people fear growing up can be explained by the terror management theory (TMT) (Nelson, 2008). This theory states that, culture and religion are creations that give order and meaning to our existence, and this protects us from frightening thoughts of one’s own mortality and the seeming random nature of life. Per TMT, viewing older people in society is a