B. A consumer cult of fear

The messages of fear worked wonders. The Kinsey Institute reported from a current study of American women that compared to women of other countries, they had the lowest body image. Women learned to fear aging more fiercely as well as the ever-ticking time bomb of the “biological clock”. They were encouraged once again to be passive and beautiful. In fragrance advertising, the strong independent woman of the 1970s with her new lifestyle in which she could conquer the world melted into a demure lady of the '80s. As one ad smiled, she “doesn't have to be assertive anymore. She can be more womanly”.1 Ads showed women of glamour and wealth. Women saw romanticized images of marriage, home and afternoon teas.

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Pushed to the ultimate extreme of passivity came images of death: models on death biers or covered with flowers. Women without their competitive edge – lovely, quiet and dead. We still see these images of women and death in contemporary ads, such as the W “In the Woods” (August 2007) or on the side of a building in San Francisco in January 2008.

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Salespeople dressed in lab coats sold skin creams to “medically” reverse the aging process. Ingredients geared toward the incessant biological clock with “bovine embryos” and “human placental proteins” came into mode. The beauty industry portrayed aging as a terrible problem to fight, closely tied into the stress of being a career woman. As ad campaign reminded, “Dermatologists have agreed that you accumulate far more damage during the year going to and from work than in two years of concentrated sunbathing”.6 Ingredients have come in and out of vogue in the last 25 years, but the fight against aging is still strong.

Oil of Olay’s market expanded dramatically in the 1980’s to include women of all ages with its campaign to “fight (old age) every step of the way.” Today the company continues to work with the same fear, though now with even better scientific terminology and promise. A new line from Oil of Olay boasts of being a “inspired by genomics research and tools that have helped P&G Beauty Scientists explore how skin-related genes function, interact with one another and more importantly, respond to aging and environmental stress at the molecular level...(It promises) clinically proven results in 28 days guaranteed”.7