AOL Shopping has a whole pictorial dedicated to How Not To Dress for older women, accusing older women of being "cougars" for sexy dressing. Its admonitions failed - I want to be a cougar. I now want a velour track suit. I never wanted one before. I want to wear excessive gold jewelry and have big hair - all cougar-like signs, apparently.
Oh, and by the way, what's wrong with being a cougar? I'm supposed to hide my sexuality now? To sell clothes?
This is all power-based. As the ultimate glass ceiling is being battered during our Presidential election season, the media machine AOL/Time Warner backlash is against older women expressing self-confidence and power. It's a shame-based strategy. The message is "you will be held up to ridicule if you express your sensuality, even if you do reach the impossible size six. So nothing you do is good enough. Here, buy this."
What a pleasant way to control older women! Like the age-old technique of telling women how fat they are unless they buy your clothes/shampoo/cigarettes, AOL Shopping has a list of items older women shouldn't wear. And how convenient! There are links to things you can buy to wear instead.
This AOL pictorial has made me turn a corner - watch out Juicy! And you, too, Miss Twenty-Something.
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