ANALYZED: the portrayal of aging women in advertisements placed in fashion and non-fashion magazines

STRATEGY: created a 10 point scale for appearance of age and degree of skin wrinkles and folds. 200 ads of women from each magazine type were selected and rated accordingly on the 10 point scale with consensus among the group, giving a 98% inter rater reliability.

RESULTS: Non-fashion magazines incorporated more images of aging women with more wrinkles, but still infrequently. Fashion magazines seldom represented  aging women

THEORY: Social Comparison Theory was used to indicate how the underrepresentation of aging women in both types of magazines leads to a distorted or negative image for aging women