Summary Of A Will To Youth Michelle Hannah Smirnova

In the article “A will to youth: A woman’s anti-aging elixir” researcher Michelle Hannah Smirnova explored the condition of the ageing woman in society. The article highlighted the discourse of eternal youth in marketing campaigns, addressed societal awe of science, and debated the duty of the ageing woman to remain young. Added into this mix were advertising imagery and mantras, designed to make women feel guilty about their loss of youthfulness, and desperate to find the cure to old age. Smirnova overlayed her claims on social theorist Nikolas Rose’s “Will to Health” theory. Rose (2001) suggested that the 20th Century saw the state sovereignty retire its responsibility to public health. The steady decline in state run health education strategies

Smirnova’s findings indicated that the general discourse centred itself on matters of medicine and health. The marketing behind anti-ageing cosmetics generally evoke a sense of medical intervention for consumers looking for a fountain of youth (Smirnova, 2012). These over-the-counter range of skin care products are known more broadly as cosmeceuticals. The term cosmeceutical is a fusion of the words cosmetic and pharmaceutical (Smirnova, 2012). There was a clear focus that the cosmeceutical narrative was aimed purely at the aesthetic element of health. Smirnova pointed out that 26.61% of the adverts utilised product approvals or recommendations by dermatologists, doctors or other types of specialists (Smirnova, 2012). The marketing of cosmeceuticals as effective and powerful was based in a cosmetic company’s ability to align themselves with the institutions of science and medicine. Mire (2012) suggests that the beauty industry’s apparent amalgamation with science was due to the display of science-like methods and jargon. It was the approach behind how cosmeceuticals were classified which allowed manufacturers of anti-ageing products to make both curative and beautifying statements (Mire, 2012). Once legitimised, the beauty industry was able to evoke a sense of moral failure upon women who failed to use the increasingly available age-defying technologies. Smirnova posits that it is this sense of impending failure which has placed the maturing woman in the ontological crisis of becoming both a captive and the saviour of her own body. Smirnova highlighted various fairy-tale motifs, sexualised images, film symbolism, and other such metaphors of femininity used in campaigns of eternal youth. Brown & Knight (2015) point out that endorsements by mature female celebrities began to appear during the 1990’s. Also, with the advent of the computer, software