The elderly female face in beauty and fashion ads: Joan Didion for Céline

Abstract

The point of departure for this article is an astonishment at the recent increase in elderly women in fashion and beauty ads, and the question of what value this kind of photography may attribute to the ageing body and face in a visual culture whose association between youth and beauty forms one of the most influential constructions of ageism in Western culture. To attempt to answer this question, the article discusses the relationship between beauty, time and the ageing face, especially in beauty and fashion ads. The 2015 spring ad campaign for the luxury fashion brand Céline, which featured ‘celebrity writer’ Joan Didion, is used as a case study to examine how time and ageing coalesce in the construction of the ageing writer as cool. This article forms part of ‘Media and the Ageing Body’ Special Issue.