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DEAR free-to-air producers and advertisers, I’m writing on behalf of myself and - ummm - around five million other Australian women aged over 40 to say: GOODBYE.
We‘re not going to watch your prime time programs or put up with your ads much longer because, basically, we‘re bored witless and we‘re not going to take it any more.
We don’t mind TV per se and we love all the girly stuff advertised on the telly, but the actual ads insult our intelligence.
If there ever was a Pond’s Institute we graduated from it a long, long time ago.
Any anti-wrinkle goo claiming a miracle ingredient doesn’t impress us.
We’ve been buying these products for 20 years. The miracle ingredient should have worked by now.
We‘re also over the free-to-air prime time TV shows. You expect us to watch an endless stream of jerks, jocks, docs, cops and corpses.
And that’s on a good night.
The jocks appear in the sports shows, which can become a dreary discussion of iffy knees, shonky ankles and groin injuries.
Very few intelligent women over 40, or any age, appear in these shows.
The cop and doctor shows are of a higher standard and do, thankfully, have intelligent women in them, but few are over 40 and any woman over 50 only gets a guernsey to sob over the corpse.
On a bad night free-to-air prime time TV offers Two and a Half Men twice, the 49th repeat of the 135th episode of The Simpsons and Airheads on Parade, I mean, America’s Next Top Model.
Is that it? Is that the best you can really do in prime time TV? Of course, you’ll insist Two and a Half Men gets good ratings.
It may, but in a shrinking audience.
Television ad revenue is expected to drop 5 per cent this financial year.
And get this, according to a Bureau of Statistics forecast for 2009 the discretionary spending by households headed by someone over 45 will be $218 billion.
For those under 45, it’s $166 billion.
We over-40s are going and we‘re taking our money with us.
According to focus groups in The Evergreen Report 2008 we women in the well-beyond-40 age group see ourselves as self-assured, accomplished, positive, savvy and comfortable with our looks.
We want to look good for our age, but we don’t kid ourselves that we‘re still 20.
We‘re proud of our achievements and we‘re sick of the sexualisation or sell-out of women. We refuse to fit your ageing stereotype and we like humour.
Yet we rarely see ourselves, or women like us, on free-to-air prime time TV.
So, what will we do when we stop watching TV? Plenty.
We’ll read. Newspapers, for instance.
We have brains. We’ll socialise. We have friends. Well engage in the new media.
In other words, we‘re doing it for ourselves.
You could win us back with programs with a few realistic-looking, intelligent women our age saying something intelligent and some funny ads. But we won’t wait.
If you want our money, catch us if you can.
Bye for now, from the You Don’t Own Me girls.
Kery is a columnist with Harold Sun she also has a website that you can visit her at Kerry" target="vblank" href="http://www.kerrycue.net">Kerry">http://www.kerrycue.net">Kerry Cue
I absolutely agree! My seven-year-old is petrified to go into any room of the house on his own because of the previews of “Drag me to Hell” being on during prime time television during (excuse me) “So You Think You Can Dance.” There is not much good on television for kids but dancing is good and competition is good, as well. What isn’t good is seeing my kids cuddled up on the couch, fingers in ears and eyes squinted closed so they cannot hear or see the television.
Suppose the only opportunity is to leave the television off and continue expanding the library. The only problem is, I can only control what is inside my house. Outside we have all the other people who are exposed and desensitized. There has to be someone to make a point with, right?
Michelle (mbshus) is a columnist for Examiner. [Link Removed]
I ABSOLUTELY agree. You know what? I’m just tired of being so angry every time I watch television. I’m in New Zealand but the formula for TV over is exactly the same as you have. The over representation of sexualised/gorgeous women and under representation(shall I rephrase that - non-representation) of older, normal looking and intelligent women. I literally have to mute the TV or leave the room in the ad breaks because I’m so sick of ads banging on about anti-aging or how we women should all love to look beautiful. When there is hardly anything like that aimed at the men, in fact we have some blood curdlingly revolting men in our ads, because they‘re considered ‘funny’ or their stupidity is somehow what men should be aspiring to.
I think the good thing these days is that the act of us stopping watching TV can’t be dismissed quite as easily as it may have been in the past - because many of us as you say, are earning and will take our money with us (its not as powerful a thing as if the men stopped watching but at least its a protest that could be noticed?
:o) Liz
Great article!
I especially loved this: “We're proud of our achievements and we're sick of the sexualisation or sell-out of women. We refuse to fit your ageing stereotype and we like humour.”
And I agree with Liz that the ugly men have got to go!
MB
)O(
http://www.starbringergallery.com/
“We all come from the Goddess and to Her we shall return like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean.”—Z. Budapest
“‘If God is male, then the male is god.’ . . . if our only images of the sacred are male . . . inevitably women will be devalued.”—Starhawk quoting Mary Daly
The thing that makes me sad is that I don’t want to feel so resentful about it - I want it to be ok for EVERYONE to be championed for what they can do, who they are as a person, their character. If there’s going to be pressure to be hot or sexy, or young looking at least it should be an EQUAL amount of pressure. But so long as the formula remains “Women Must Look and Act Beautiful and Sexy at All Times” while “Men Should be Strong and Fit BUT Can Also be Themselves As Well and Still be Loved and Marketed By The World” I will stay p*ssed off. Over here, the ‘slob’ overweight goofy man character seems to be a marketable commodity - presumably the ads make ordinary men feel that they are ok as they are (great for them) - yet there’s is just NO WAY you’d ever see the equaivalent female that gives us the permission to let go once in a while. God forbid we must never do that. :oI
A cross section of ads running nightly in New Zealand: (and I haven’t just picked out ones that illustrate my point, the balance IS like this)
Men
(even when in this last ad they DO have a big strong ‘masculine’ character, it’s pointed out to guys watching that “you don’t have to be the big guy” to be ok. Do we ever hear “you don’t HAVE to be the beautiful/sexy/slim one“?)
Women
and you hear all the comments made by guys in response to their ads like “yeah these ads with the fat guy are great and so funny, post some more so I can show my mates” “the ads with those Tui chicks are like the best ads on TV”
Yet do women feel as tittilated or happy and content after watching ‘our’ ads telling us over and over that we are either too fat, too old or not beautiful enough? I don’t think so.
Create lasting relationships
with other like minded women.