Until recently, the thought of paying close attention to the kind of mature women received little interest at best from other consumers and the style industry, but was most probably completely ignored.
Because to be fashionable and female, it is usually assumed that you’ve got to be young. What could older consumers teach us about style?
Due to the unexpected popularity of what’s generally known as “advanced style” phenomenon, discussions about ageism, gender and fashion have gained increasing attention in popular media, amongst other things The . The @advancedstyle Instagram accountCreated in 2008 by American street style photographer Ari Seth Cohen, it helped spark these critical conversations.
Cohen's celebration of the private kind of on a regular basis women aged 50 and over has launched a thriving consumer movement.
More than a decade after its founding, Advanced Style's Instagram account has greater than 300,000 followers and a hashtag (#advancedstyle) This has been used greater than 205,000 times and is commonly featured in major fashion magazines world wide reminiscent of: and was expanded into the realm of illustrated books in 2012 and 2016in addition to Coloring books for adults.
There is even a feature-length documentary dedicated to the documentary:
Given this social media success story, my colleague Marie-Agnes Parmentier and I made a decision to explore how women over 50 are amplifying their voices and changing their representation in the style and wonder industry by becoming official Instagram influencers.
The study
To this end, we conducted a focused media campaign and netnographic Examining the Advanced Style movement and its Instagram influencers. Specifically, we followed 10 popular Advanced Style influencers from our personal Instagram accounts for 12 months.
This online participant commentary, which is a big a part of conducting netnographic research, provided us with first-hand experience of influencers' marketing activities and fan interactions.
Our full study is now published online in a special issue of The The focus is on gender, markets and consumers. Overall, we found that each one 10 Advanced Style influencers are using the social media platform to actively combat gender-based ageism that’s rampant in the style and wonder industries.
(Advanced Style Facebook page)
In particular, these women engage in two types of embodied resistance which can be shaped by the dominant Western discourse on successful aging: they deconstruct gendered and age-specific fashion and defy gendered and age-specific beauty standards.
Successful aging not only turns the inevitable human biological decline into a private project, but in addition provides concrete strategies for a way best to become old. In 1997, American physician John W. Rowe and fellow psychologist Robert L. Kahn defined successful aging primarily as “This includes preventing disease and disability, maintaining high physical and cognitive functions, and sustaining participation in social and productive activities.”
Gendered ageism in fashion
The fashion market makes sustainable engagement difficult since it is filled with discriminatory rules about what a lady should and shouldn’t wear after the age of fifty. These style rules include now not showing off one's body through tight, short, or low-cut clothing, no more dressing in a less colourful wardrobe and makeup, and a retreat from high-tech, cutting-edge styles.
In response, we’re seeing consumers who’ve turn into influencers adopt a progressive style online “style activism,” Sophisticated designers create ready-to-wear options for his or her changing bodies.
In the realm of influencer marketing, style activism also means deciding which brands to support and collaborate with, and which brands to disregard and avoid. Advanced style influencers often refuse to “the token senior” of a marketing campaign.
Gender Ageism within the Beauty Industry
The majority of advanced style influencers are equally dismissive of the anti-aging beauty industry turns aging into an illness. The billion-dollar industry also falsely guarantees everlasting youth in a bottle.
(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
We find that these women are as a substitute selecting to publicize natural gray hair, wrinkles, and body scars through their Instagram posts. For eons, beauty brands have been telling aging women that gray hair is a humiliating problem that should be kept hidden, while older men usually tend to accomplish that it stays an indication of mature sexuality. Gray hair is subsequently a defining feature of those influencers' embodied resistance and is at the guts of their style activism.
We encourage everyone to follow the patron activism journeys of Advanced Style influencers on Instagram by engaging with the hashtag #advancedstyle.
image credit : theconversation.com