Women over 50 are doing everything they've done for the past three decades only with more sense and a lot more freedom. Tell that to the marketing gurus.There wouldn't be a woman over 50 who doesn't flinch when she walks past a shop window and sees her mother reflected back. It can come as a shock, this realization she is in her 'senior' years and yet this is the 21st century. Women in this age bracket are a force majeur in marketing terms even if the majority of industries and associated advertising agencies don't even rate her economic potency.
The exception, maybe, is the beauty industry. God knows there's no shortage of creams and potions to expectantly wipe away the years but what about other industries? When was the last time you saw a middle-aged woman happily driving her new car? Or, indeed, any woman driving a car. Or a woman in her 60s on her own (and a great many in this age bracket are living solo) congratulating a builder for completing her new home?
This demographic is simply not targeted unless it's for incontinent pants or a funeral plan and there's a reason why. Those in charge of marketing are the same age as your kids. A 30-year-old easing her tight little buttocks into a corporate chair understands little about this age demographic because her own chin hair is still 25 years away from making an appearance. Yet never in history have women in their fifties and beyond had the time, the health, the chutzpah, to do what they jolly well please. In marketing terms they have discretionary cash and the ability to dispense it and it's why such women are now literally worth something.
One British Sunday national newspaper devoted an entire supplement to women over 50 who are still doing, well, things - starting a business, continuing a business, travelling, having and enjoying you-know-what, with or without a husband. In short, they're doing everything they've done for the past three decades only with more sense and a lot more freedom.
Even the beauty industry still has much to learn. It's all very well promoting an age-defying, wrinkle-free existence to mature women but who tells you how to apply eye cream when you can't see in front of your own face without artificial aids? There's no alternative but to rub it in by Braille. Plucking eyebrows or other stray bits is like cleaning the bathroom sans specs, there's always something you miss. When you finally get to see those grey, startling stiff, errant hairs sticking above the upper lip you realize in a gasp of embarrassment you've gone all day with it shining like a lighthouse on the rocky shoreline of your kisser.
