| 1. |
- Kenalemang-Palm, Lame Maatla, 1991-
(författare)
-
Recontextualising ageing as a choice : A critical approach to representations of successful ageing
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the intersection between representations of ageing femininities, empowerment, and oppression in marketing and advertising practices, within the context of successful ageing. In the current era of population ageing, debates on gender and ageing are becoming more pronounced. Due to population ageing, there is a visible increase in representations of (successful) ageing in the media. As a result, we are experiencing an expansion in the “grey market” of anti-ageing products and services, e.g., cosmetics, mainly aimed at wealthy older women who constitute an important market segment for such. Given that the media helps form people’s ideas about ageing, there is a need to critically examine this growing market and how older women are represented and/or addressed in it. Such representations are crucial for understanding contemporary feminist discussions on the contestation between women’s empowerment and oppression. To provide a deeper understanding of this phenomenon, I use an intersectional feminist perspective combined with the methodology of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA). This perspective highlights and deconstructs the complex ways in which power and ideology work to maintain and reinforce existing intersectional structural inequalities based on age, gender, class, and race that marginalise women. This thesis consists of three empirical studies. The findings suggest a shift from the postfeminist gaze towards a neoliberal self-objectifying gaze that closely operates alongside discourses of successful ageing. This self-objectifying gaze encourages women to actively work on and transform the ageing self through intensifying self-surveillance, self-scrutiny, and self-improvement practices. These self-transformation practices are presented as the free choices of empowered, entrepreneurial, and responsibilised subjects. Nonetheless, such choices confine women to never-ending forms of self-governance that promote the internalisation of patriarchal and capitalist ideal standards of beauty, thus reinscribing privilege and oppression.
|
|
| 2. |
- Kenalemang-Palm, Lame Maatla, 1991-
(författare)
-
The beautification of men within skincare advertisements : A multimodal critical discourse analysis
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Journal of Aging Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0890-4065 .- 1879-193X. ; 66
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study draws on the theory of Social Semiotics and the methodology of Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to examine the textual and visual design of skincare advertisements targeted towards men. The current proliferation of the market for male-oriented facial products represents an important shift towards the increased attention to the beautification of male bodies in Western societies. Such beautification encourages men to work on and improve the self (and face) through intensifying practices of “aesthetic labour.” Aesthetic labour places emphasis on an entrepreneurial self-care and self-control regime that promotes an active late lifestyle fostered through ideas about “successful ageing.” As expected, the analysis of the corpus consisting of advertisements from L'Oréal Men, Nivea Men and Clarins Men shows that the male face is generally constructed as a “problem” that can be cured through the consumption of skincare products. The consumption of these products increases men's visual literacies of the face and hence normalises male beauty practices that seemingly encourage men to care for and work on their skin, which can be construed of as a feminising practice. Nonetheless, the advertisements employ masculine traits and strategies that link cosmetic products to traditional values of masculinity. The beautification of the male body, thus, turns the consumption of skincare products into a performance through which men can maintain their already privileged status in society, rearticulating the double standard of ageing (Sontag, 1972).
|
|
