Faculty of Arts Research Seminar Series
University of Winchester
Wednesday 16 December, 4.30pm, SEB110
All welcome!
About time: Ageing women, (in)visibility and the ‘old lady revolution’ in Fabulous Fashionistas
Dr Deborah Jermyn (University of Roehampton)
In September 2013 the TV pages of the UK press went into something of a tailspin following Channel 4’s broadcast of Sue Bourne’s documentary, ‘Fabulous Fashionistas’ on Cutting Edge. The film followed the stories of six women, with an average age of 80, who had rejected the cultural imperative to relinquish their interest in style and sartorial pleasure as they aged, to instead continue to pursue distinctive wardrobes and the gratifications of clothes shopping. Evidently this account of ageing women refusing to disappear into the background struck a major cultural chord, and the very fact of a group of women at this time in their lives being given a dedicated show on national TV was widely noted as striking, memorable, unfamiliar television.
In this paper I will examine the reception and significance of Fabulous Fashionistas, drawing on analysis of the film itself, its UK media coverage, and original interviews with director Sue Bourne and two of the film’s subjects, Sue Kreitzman and Bridget Sojourner. A number of the film’s ‘stars’ bear witness to the uncommon experience of becoming recognised ‘public figures’ as older women; that is, at precisely the time in their lives that women are expected to forego their (already delimited) voice and any claim to being a subject of interest in the public world. I examine the powerful tension at stake here, in that it is precisely by continuing to abide by the standard script of femininity in some respects (cf a devotion to one’s appearance), particularly within the contemporary postfeminist zeitgeist, that they gained their ‘15 minutes’. Yet they did this so energetically and thoughtfully that they have come to fulfil an activist function, becoming recognisable spokeswomen speaking out against ageism and ageist stereotypes. Kreitzman’s adage - ‘Don’t wear beige: it might kill you’ - has become a pithy rallying call for older women to resist the pressure to retreat into the margins of society, while Bourne’s documentary has been embraced for being at the vanguard of a seemingly burgeoning media trend to at last address the creeping cultural invisibility that envelops women as they age.
Deborah Jermyn is Reader in Film and Television at the University of Roehampton. She is the editor and author of a number of books including Sex and the City (2009) and Prime Suspect (2010), and most recently the co-editor of Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing: Freeze Frame (2015).
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