Deborah Jermyn

‘Get a life, ladies. Your old one is not coming back’: ageing, ageism and the lifespan of female celebrity

I want to open this special edition with a question. When does a woman become an ‘old woman’? Or if that is too sweeping, too crude, when does a woman become an ‘older woman’? In fact, the latter question is not any easier to answer. Because of course, we are all, by the simple virtue of living and breathing, becoming ‘older’ all the time. By the time you reach the end of this essay, you’ll be older than you are now, in chronological terms at least. We live today in an ageing population where the boundaries of what counts as old appear to be shifting all the time – 40 is the new 30, we’re regularly told, 50 is the new 40 and so on. A recent television advert for ‘Age Re-Perfect Foundation’ by L’Oreal illustrates this nebulous landscape well, as a vibrant Jane Fonda is seen carefully choosing an outfit and delighting in applying her make-up, before peeking though her window where she gimpses a man outside, evidently waiting for her during what we now understand to be her preparation for a date (www.youtube.com 2011). Such ‘girling’ of older women is both symptomatic of postfeminist culture and indicative of a move to push back the boundaries of ageing; now in her seventies, this ageing woman star is figured as being just as excited – and just as entitled – to be going out on a date as a woman or girl a fraction of her age might be. I open with these thoughts in order to underline the inescapably subjective nature of what this special edition is concerned with, namely the intersection of ageing and female celebrity. As Susan Sontag notes in ‘The Double Standard of Aging’: ‘[A] woman of “‘a certain age”, as the French say discreetly . . . might be anywhere from her early twenties to her late fifties’ (1972). Since Sontag was writing, the blurring of ageing parameters has become even more manifest (across genders) as the commercial potential of older consumers has become more significant. This shift has gained momentum as average life expectancies in numerous nations have increased, along with what is known as ‘active lifespan’; the ‘babyboom’ generation, figured as reluctant to give up their quality of life, are entering retirement; and more recently at a global level, the economic downturn has meant people are expected to draw salaries for longer as retirement ages are raised.1 Today, ventures such as the Saga group in the United Kingdom speak to an older (financially secure) audience in ways which assume them to be active, vital, still passionate about life and new experiences, just like L’Oreal’s Jane Fonda (note of course how her

'Death of the girl next door': Celebrity, femininity and tragedy in the murder of Jill Dando

No one could ever have foreseen that Crimewatch, Britain’s leading public crime-appeal television programme since its launch by the BBC in 1984, would one day ® nd itself in the position of having to appeal for information on the murder of one of its own presenters. It was an event that, in co-presenter Nick Ross’s words, was a utterly surrealo (Crimewatch 1999). On the morning of Monday, April 26, 1999, Jill Dando, who had worked on the programme for four years, was murdered. She died on her own doorstep at her house in Fulham, London, killed by a single gunshot to the head. Dando’s death was an anomaly, a crime without precedent in the UK, a news event that arguably represents Britain’s most conspicuous case of a high pro® le, violent crime against a woman. While I want to argue that, as such, it is a case which offers an abundance of potent material for feminist media studies, one should recognise ® rst, as Cynthia Carter points out, the inherent danger of critical media research focusing overwhelmingly on a spectacularo crime coverage. Such a preoccupation risks neglecting analysis of a everydayo crime, which then risks compounding the media’s depiction of such crime as a normal,o expected, and even inevitable (1998a: 3, 1998b; see also Elizabeth Stanko 1990). But while keeping this proviso ® rmly in mind, it is precisely the a exceptionalo nature of Dando’s murder, and the contradictions contained within the coverage, which make it such a revealing and intriguing account. Indeed the close textual analysis which follows suggests that the coverage of this a spectacularo crime, while possessing a number of distinctive qualities, has more in common with representations of a everydayo violence against women than might at ® rst be apparent. In this paper I want to look closely at the speci® cities of British news reporting of Dando’s murder and more broadly at how such an analysis relates to the existing body of work on female victims of violent crime and the media. By virtue of her celebrity, Dando was of course in many ways far from an a everydayo victim. Despite the spectacular nature of her murder and the massive media event that followed it, coverage of her death, career, and, crucially, comments about her forthcoming marriage nevertheless point to a number of the tensions inherent in the representation of women throughout the media. Firstly, her death constituted another example of covert media anxiety, safely assuaged by the reporting, over the modern career woman who might endanger the pre-eminence of the private sphere as the ideologically a propero female domain (Susan Faludi 1991; C. Kay Weaver, Cynthia Carter, and Elizabeth Stanko 2000). Secondly, it points again to the gendered discourses within news

Still something else besides a mother? Negotiating celebrity motherhood in Sarah Jessica Parker's star story

This essay examines media coverage of the rise of Sarah Jessica Parker, from jobbing movie actress to A-list television superstar and fashion icon, following her starring role as sex-columnist fashionista Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004). Significantly, during this same period Parker also became a mother, giving birth to her son by actor Matthew Broderick in 2002. If motherhood in the twentieth century at least has conventionally been constructed as at odds with glamour, style and trend-setting, Parkers fortunes indicate a changing cultural landscape. Celebration of the “celebrity mom”, twinned with the emergence of the aspirational “yummy-mummy”, have become highly visible preoccupations widely evident across contemporary representations of motherhood, the ramifications of which are explored here. Examining interviews conducted with the star in womens magazines drawn largely from the United Kingdom and United States through 2002–2006, the essay explores Parkers role as a “celebrity mom” and how this coverage of her consistently adopts a confessional mode and intimate address in order to dispel any apparent conflict wrought to her prior celebrity by her new maternal status.

Past Their Prime Time?: Women, Ageing and Absence on British Factual Television:

As has been well documented, from the days of its early expansion in the 1950s television was widely situated as a ‘feminised’ medium, consumed in the domestic space and subjected to a process of gendering that has been articulated and facilitated in numerous ways, from advertising to scheduling to theories of spectatorship. This ‘feminising’ of television occurred despite the predominance of men in its management and the ‘masculine bias’ of many of its overarching ideologies.1 Heavily marketed to women consumers in the post-war period in both the United States and United Kingdom as it entered an era of substantive growth, Janet Thumim notes that in this ‘formative period’, women ‘were acknowledged to be central to the project of inserting television into domestic spaces and routines’.2 Subsequently it has been widely constructed for a good part of its history as being consumed most predominantly by (undiscerning) women audiences, with the image of the housewife viewer tuning in for her daily dose of daytime television proving enduringly prevalent. More recently, however – particularly in the contexts of changing and increasingly ‘high-spec’ technologies; the burgeoning movement of television into spaces outside the home; and the latest ‘golden age’ of quality television drama – this notion of a ‘feminised medium’ has increasingly held less currency. As Rob Schapp notes, ‘The television system of today constitutes too sophisticated, complex and expensive an array to escape statusenhancing masculine associations.’3 Nevertheless, the ‘special relationship’ long thought to exist between women and television remains at the very least an integral part of the medium’s history. Significantly, this is apparent also in the way that the medium has long been perceived to provide a greater breadth of opportunity for its women actors and ‘personalities’, particularly as they aged, than has cinema for its women stars. Patricia Mellencamp, for example, has argued,

‘Glorious, glamorous and that old standby, amorous’: the late blossoming of Diane Keaton's romantic comedy career

In recent years, following films such as Somethings Gotta Give (2003), Mamas Boy (2007) and Because I Said So (2007), Diane Keaton has emerged as ‘the poster woman’ for a body of newly inflected romantic comedies, films which have placed the desire of and for an older woman heroine at their centre. Through textual analysis, particularly of Somethings Gotta Give (which was widely touted as her ‘comeback’ vehicle) and media discourses surrounding both this film and Keaton more broadly during this period, this article explores how Keaton returned to such prominence, specifically in this genre and at an age when it is typically presumed most women actors will have receded from the spotlight. I suggest three key themes emerge from this analysis. First, for many audiences, Keaton carries what we might call a heightened (and gratifying) sense of history, that is, that her oeuvre has built over the course of some four decades to shore up a recognisable performance style and to enable numerous reflexive connections across her films. Second, Keaton is a star whose performance style and characters are recurrently received or understood as being enmeshed with the ‘real’ Diane Keaton. Third (and linked to both of these), over time the theme of motherhood emerges as increasingly significant to both her film roles and the media coverage of her. What, then, might her later career and the blossoming of her romcom persona have to tell us about the contemporary Hollywood film industry, about the romcom genre and about the place of older female stars within all this?

Pretty past it? Interrogating the post-feminist makeover of ageing, style, and fashion

Abstract From the “Leading Ladies” advertising campaign for UK high-street stalwart Marks and Spencer, to Charlotte Rampling becoming the face of NARS cosmetics at sixty-eight in 2014, and the delight that meets select older women stars such as Helen Mirren on the red carpet in the women’s magazine market, it appears that the fashion, beauty and celebrity industries of late have opened their arms to embrace stylish “women of a certain age” to an unprecedented degree. This article scrutinises the reception and complexities that lie at the core of this seeming cultural shift which, at first glance, might be positively construed to demonstrate that at last the disenfranchisement and invisibility endured by older women in these industries—which are central to upholding wider social hierarchies about which women “matter”—have been dented. Examining recent documentaries and advertising campaigns, I ask: what is at stake in the decision to co-opt “old women” into the (young) marketplace of style and fashion, and in the seeming willingness by many audiences to embrace texts featuring older women as sartorial mavens? The zeitgeist described here arguably underlines how the directive to enact “self-surveillance, monitoring and discipline” (Rosalind Gill 2007) around one’s appearance increasingly incorporates an older subject/consumer, and evidences how coercion to submit to “makeover” culture seemingly never ends. For these reasons, I argue, it is imperative that feminist media studies’ critique of the neoliberal, post-feminist climate addresses the widespread neglect of older women in extant cultural analyses, and turns its attention now to the implications of this shift.

The Audience is Dead: Long Live the Audience! Interactivity, 'Telephilia' and the Contemporary Television Audience

notions of spectatorship and hypothesised the existence of conflictual subject positions, the growing discipline of television studies was already engaged in building a rich repertoire of audience studies. Never shying away from the methodological and ideological pitfalls of ethnographic research, scholars – from David Morley and Dorothy Hobson to Ann Gray – sought to understand how real individuals, groups of viewers and targeted audiences actually engaged with television, whether in the context of the domestic setting, family relations or wider social networks. Implicit in much of this early work was the notion that the audience was tangible, reachable and somehow quantifiable. As we settle into the twenty-first century, however, this perception, and the concomitant notion of a ‘mass’ audience, has become increasingly fragile and problematic. In this article, we look at some of the reasons for, and repercussions of this shift, while reflecting on where the ‘TV audience’ and the conceptualisation of it may go next. Certainly, the once popular vision of the family gathered regularly round the communal set, while clearly not defunct (see, for example, Annette Hill), seems a world removed from the contemporary multi–set, multi-channel and multi-media home, in which viewing may be splintered across the Internet, ‘series links’ saved to hard-drive or pay per view. As Jane Roscoe comments:

Silk blouses and fedoras: The female detective, contemporary TV crime drama and the predicaments of postfeminism

This article examines the markedly contrasting fates of two recent female protagonist led police series, the dismally received Prime Suspect USA (NBC, 2011) and widely celebrated The Fall (BBC, 2013– ), asking what the reception of each suggests about the state of play for women in TV crime drama in today’s postfeminist culture. What do women cops need to do to make the cut in an era in which, on the one hand, it seems they are more prevalent and have more opportunities than ever before (Gerrard, 2014); but also, on the flip side of this, in which they must somehow offer something ‘extra’ to survive in an era where the presence of a female detective in itself is no longer an innovation or novelty? In an era in which, to adopt Angela McRobbie’s much-cited phrase, ‘feminism has been taken into account’ (2007: 255), how can these series’ invocation of feminism or ‘feminist issues’ be understood as fundamental to their respective demise and triumph? I argue that, crucially, Prime Suspect USA’s account of sexist bullying in the NYPD was greeted as hackneyed and overblown, where The Fall spoke adroitly to a media culture in which ratings can be won via a superficial but glossily packaged nod to the female detective’s postfeminist ‘progress’, while relishing misogynistic violence. Hence the article also asks, what implications does an inquiry of the kind undertaken here – where interrogation of the genre combines comparative text-based analysis with critical reflection on the author’s own perturbed response to the eroticisation of violence against women in The Fall – have for future models of feminist criticism of TV crime drama?

The New Model Subject: “Coolness” and the Turn to Older Women Models in Lifestyle and Fashion Advertising

The desirability of youth is a core value long held dear by fashion and lifestyle advertising. Yet numerous recent campaigns by the likes of Lanvin and The Row have been fronted by older women. This chapter examines the implications of this shift for understanding the cultural value that older women can, or cannot, signify at this time in these spheres. Focussing particularly on the 2015 Celine campaign featuring Joan Didion, and the 2017 Pirelli calendar, this chapter argues that crucially the notion of cool is reinscribed across these labels by way of the “edgy” older woman subject, and examines to what extent this challenges (or merely relocates) established norms pertaining to what kinds of bodies warrant our desire and attention.

We know how Sarah Jessica Parker does it: the travails of working motherhood and celebrity privilege

In what contexts, and to what effect, might a star fracture an audience’s readiness to accept their claims to ‘ordinariness’? This essay reflects on this question in relation to the recent small but telling revolt against Sarah Jessica Parker’s account of her life as a ‘working mom’. Following much anticipation and a decade after the book was published, 2011 finally saw the release of the film adaptation of Allison Pearson’s bestselling novel, I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011). The success of Pearson’s book had captured the postfeminist zeitgeist when it first appeared in 2002 (Pearson 2002). Centring on the harassed personal and professional life of Kate Reddy, a high flying London hedge-fund manager and mother-oftwo, it detailed the era’s preoccupation with the ‘real’ price paid by women who apparently ‘have it all’; namely, having to juggle it all, while guilt-stricken and sleep-deprived. When the story relocated to Boston for the big screen, Sarah Jessica Parker – ‘SJP’ – seemed the perfect choice to play Reddy. Recent celebrity culture has become increasingly invested in promoting idealised representations of motherhood and within this, Parker is a figure who has made the moniker of ‘working mother’ central to her star currency and claims to be ‘keeping it real’ (Jermyn 2008). To use Richard Dyer’s (1979) enduringly pertinent paradigm, Parker has achieved this through careful negotiation of her ‘ordinary/extraordinary’ status, in which she has maintained her role as a major fashion icon and high-profile actor alongside a persona as an ordinary working mom (her son was born in 2002), who struggles like everyone to find a work-life balance. This persona has been all the more keenly nurtured since 2009, when Parker and her husband announced the arrival of their twin daughters, born via a surrogate. In December that year, for example, the UK’s Grazia magazine ran an article detailing how Parker had recently given an ‘uncharacteristically candid interview’, where she confessed ‘she is struggling to cope with balancing the different components of her perceived “dream life”’, saying ‘I’m sure I am failing miserably’ (Anon 2009). It was an admission that Grazia saw as ‘[resonating] with millions of working mothers’, cutting across the differentiations between Parker and her audience, since ‘for an A-list star to talk about juggling busy work schedules with being a good parent is pretty rare’ (Anon 2009).1 The role of Kate Reddy thus seemed the perfect complement to the star image SJP has built. It was a part primed to appeal to the predominantly female, ‘middle youth’ audience she has solidly attracted since starring as Carrie Bradshaw in HBO’s Sex and the City