Media Representations

How are aging individuals and individuals with disabilities portrayed in mass media? I perused the following media to find out:

Magazines: Due to convenience, I reviewed magazine titles owned by my local library - it's closer than visiting the nearest Barnes & Noble. Browsing through the current issues of high-circulating titles such as Glamour, Vanity Fair, People, Entertainment Weekly, Us Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek and Vanidades revealed little to no portrayals of aging individuals or individuals with disabilities. Magazines that focused on beauty and fashion contained ads for anti-aging products, but of course did not feature an actual older individual in the advertisement. Back issues of Time did, however, feature stories about the 2012 Paralympics and Paralympics and London 2012 Olympics athlete Oscar Pistorius. I also found an ad in Ebony for CVS pharmacy, which featured an older woman, the tagline "Managing my prescriptions is not how I want to spend my life," and a brief introduction of the woman's active lifestyle. Another good article featuring active aging individuals appeared in ESPN The Magazine's October 1, 2012 issue (personal subscription, not library owned). Titled "Senior Moments," the article highlights older jocks (including a 92-year-old volleyball player) and their lifelong passion for competition.

Newspapers: A recent review of articles from the past month on the San Francisco Chronicle's online presence, sfgate.com, uncovered articles about the California School for the Blind's new adapted tennis classes, a story about the sad situation of the aging "San Francisco Twins" Marian and Vivian Brown, and an elderly driver that hit 14 children in Los Angeles.

Television: I watched roughly three hours of television, and in that time I saw episodes of South Park, Futurama, the Boondocks, and American Dad. Oddly enough, South Park's portrayal of Jimmy, a character with cerebral palsy that walks with crutches, was balanced and positive - Jimmy is not the butt of any jokes, and participates in many of the same activities as the main characters despite his handicap (he actually appears regularly in many South Park episodes). The same can be said of American Dad's portrayal of Joe Swanson, a paraplegic police officer that is still able to perform his job duties. Futurama and the Boondocks both feature aging individuals as main characters, the senile mad scientist Professor and selfish, slightly out of touch Robert "Granddad" Freeman, respectively.

Films: Part of my three-hour television binge included watching a little bit of Diminished Capacity, a film about a man (Matthew Broderick) struggling with memory loss who is also helping his uncle, suffering from Alzheimer's, find enough money to stay at home with live-in care.

Overall, the representations of aging individuals and individuals with disabilities in the media review above were surprisingly realistic and/or positive. I say "surprisingly" because I expected at least half of the portrayals to be suspect to current stereotypes and biases toward the two groups, but the senile/grouchy old man stereotypes I did see occurred in only two portrayals, that of Professor from Futurama and Granddad from Boondocks, and even then, the stereotypical characteristics were small parts of a three-dimensional character. A majority of the media representations of aging individuals focused on the active lifestyles of aging individuals - this was evident from the CVS pharmacy ad and the "Senior Moments" article, which promoted the idea that age is just a number. The media representations are not far off from my personal interactions with aging individuals - the aging individuals I know, through the library or the gym, maintain very active post-retirement lifestyles, whether they're visiting family, taking care of grandchildren, volunteering at several facilities, or traveling. However, I did note that the representations of individuals in both categories, aging and individuals with disabilities, were mostly white - there was very little diversity.

What I didn't review: the print edition of Ability, which was available at the library, but I was looking for magazines geared toward the general population rather than specialized populations. Anyway, the Aug/Sep 2012 issue featured the ladies from the Sundance Channel's reality show Push Girls (glamorous women defying stereotypes of being in a wheelchair). How have I not heard about this show? Apparently it received plenty of publicity before its first season, and now the show has been renewed for 2013. Check out an interview with the show's stars here.