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I originally started out writing my paper on sexism in today’s media which is something that I along with the majority of American’s see on a daily basis, but I really didn’t hold it near and dear to my heart. Nor have I experienced it personally enough that I can adequately write about it. So, I have decided to write about something that I experience on a daily basis – Ageism.

I understood that your life changes as you get older in the most general of ways your body slows down, you gain wrinkles, your eye sight starts to detoriate, you get aches and pains etc., but I didn’t understand until I myself have reached “middle age” that it was by far more than just the physical aspects of aging. There is a personality change that goes along with the whole aging package. Some might call it a “mid-life crisis” which according to Jaques (1965), is “A period of personal emotional turmoil and coping challenges that some people encounter when they reach middle age, accompanied by a desire for change in their lives, brought on by fears and anxieties about growing older.” (p. 502). I feel that it is brought on by more than just personal issues. American society and how it perceives mid-life along with how it copes with the people as they age plays a large roll in how people perceive themselves.

Upon conducting research other than my personal experiences I started to notice that my original choice of sex in the media tied in quite nicely with my new subject of ageism. In the majority of societies today beauty is perceived as youth. You see young beautiful women in all types of media wearing next to nothing being the objects of desire, the desired goal. It shows them happy, healthy, skin glowing and desired, where as when you see older people in media it is usually ads for perscriptive medicine, the AARP, run-about electric chairs and wrinkle creams. Getting older is shown as something to be fixed, medicated, retired and placed out of sight in...