Film and the stigmatisation of ageing female sexuality: consumer commentary of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an analysis of macro-level discourses of age, gender and sexuality in a meso-level consumer discussion from social media revealing how gender ideology and power materialise in the consumption of the 2022 film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. We respond to the call to establish ‘how fictional representations in films…can be used discursively to understand market structure and consumption experiences’. We demonstrate the enduring value of popular culture as a window into understanding consumers. By establishing that postfeminist and successful ageing discourses are appropriated to inform consumption, we contribute to the theorisation of affective marketplace exclusion by arguing that these powerful ideologies weaponise stigma to marginalise and exclude, in other words, that the symbolic consumption of popular culture informs marketplace gendered and sexual politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Popular culture
• representation
• consumption
• age
• gender
• stigma

Introduction

Representations, including media images, make identities available to consumers as raw materials for identity construction

(Schroeder & Borgerson, 2015, p. 1726)

In his hugely influential essay Encoding/decoding, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1980) articulates his argument for the ideological function of televisual (we may reasonably add filmic) media. Drawing from semiotics, Hall details how these media are encoded to reflect the dominant hegemonic position and later (1998, pp. 447–448) that commercial popular culture stimulates moments of recognition to which the audience responds. Stern (1995) made the compelling case (following on from others such as Holbrook & Grayson, 1986) to look to stories to understand consumers, and emphasised the value in also understanding consumer responses to these stories through such moments of recognition. Scholars of consumer behaviour and popular culture have identified representation as foundational to subjective experience (see Bonsu et al., 2010; Hirschman, 1988) and we contribute to this body of work by theorising marketplace exclusion through illustrating the importance of popular culture and responses to it in understanding affective exclusion (hooks, 2009/2014). We know that power structures and gender relations are mediated through popular culture (Connell, 1987; Hall, 1998; Maclaran & Chatzidakis, 2022; Preece et al., 2019), yet despite this, marketing insights derived from the analysis of popular culture texts are still limited within the field. Such research, although sporadically appearing in marketing and consumer research journals, has illustrated the utility of film as a source of data in order to understand cultural production of queer imagination and understanding of brand authenticity (Södergren, Vallström, et al. 2023); immigration, globalisation and consumption (Eckhardt & Kerrigan, 2020); the Barbie Movie, commercialisation and faux feminism (La Porte & Cavusoglu, 2023) and film plot as representative of consumer culture (Holbrook & Grayson, 1986) among others.

The importance of representation on screen has been established by scholars and practitioners alike with the phrase ‘if she can see it, she can be it’ adopted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (2020). This has led to increasing evidence on the importance of screen portrayals of diverse characters and greater understanding around inclusion and exclusion on screen (see Liddy, 2014, 2015, 2017). Building on prior research in the field which takes film texts as data to understand consumer representation, and combined with an analysis of audience response to film, in this paper, we present analysis of macro-level (societal) discourses of age, gender and sexuality present in meso-level consumer discussion on social media and networking sites (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) to reveal how gender ideology and power materialise in the consumption of the 2022 film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. Inspired by scholarly work into the importance of representation for cultural power (Hall, 1998), gender politics (Gurrieri, 2021; Tuchman, 2000) and social and marketplace exclusion (Saren et al., 2019), we contribute to understandings of how we ‘see’ ourselves and our social relations and the influence this has on our actions and practices (Hall, 2000, p. 272).

The extant literature makes clear that youth, beauty and sexuality are forms of capital for women and that women over 40 are symbolically annihilated in what Lauren Gurrieri (2021) has identified as patriarchal marketing (Åberg et al., 2020; Sontag, 1972). The film industry, as a key representational industry, is partially responsible for this erasure through a dearth of roles for older women (The Geena Davis Institute, 2020). This paper interrogates consumer appropriation of discourses of age, gender and sexuality in response to a mediated representation of ageing female sexuality. While roles for older women are limited, as cinema itself settles into its the second century, and advances in health and medicine mean people are living longer and better, there has been a shift towards what Chivers (2011) referred to as the silvering screen which ‘features aging prominently, not just as a background concern to make youthful plots more virile and fascinating, but as a central premise that drives the film’ (2011, p. xvi). However, Chivers notes that middle age, especially for women, does not feature prominently, with stories moving swiftly from youth to old age. Critic Anna Smith (2010) is credited with coining the term gerontocom to characterise the trend in making films with older romantic protagonists and Jermyn (2011, p. 26) notes ‘with its focus on romantic bargaining, the sexual economy and shifting cultural standards, the genre is ideally placed to reflect on and critique the nature of changing values and relationships’. These shifts in cinematic representations of ageing women underpin and inform this research.

Our research asks, how do consumers employ discourses of age, gender and sexuality in discussion of the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and how do these discussions reflect and/or inform discourses of sexuality at the intersection of age and gender, what we identify as ageist sexism? Further, we ask what can this tell us about the current social, political and cultural conditions at the intersection of age, gender and sexuality? That is, what can we learn about the evolving perception of, and experience of (ageing) female consumers as sentient, agentic actors in the marketplace through consumer discussion of a representational model of such a consumer?

Theoretically, and informed by our findings outlined below, our analysis adopts the lens of postfeminism, a term we use to indicate a contemporary ‘feminist’ articulation of femininity, common to popular cultural representations, that is inherently linked to sexualisation and foregrounds a pro-women discourse yet is absent of a political vocabulary (Gill, 2007, 2017; McRobbie, 2009). We demonstrate the utility of popular culture analysis and responses to it, contributing to the growing body of consumer research addressing the affective implications of marketplace representations which contribute to marginalisation, marketplace exclusion and the symbolic annihilation of women over 40 (Gopaldas & Siebert, 2018; Gurrieri, 2021; Saren et al., 2019; Whiteman, 2024). We highlight a shift in the representational framework at the intersection of postfeminism and successful ageing which gives space to ageing female characters to express a sexuality through the gerontocom genre, drawing attention to its intersectional limitations and highlighting the overlap between postfeminist and successful ageing discourses which stigmatise women who do not, cannot or will not conform to conventional postfeminist beauty standards.

In the next section, we set out our theoretical framework which draws on consumer research and complementary sociology, cultural studies and gerontology studies of the ageing female body. We then locate our analysis and understanding of ageing female sexuality within Imogen Tyler’s (2020) articulation of stigma as power, embedded in and entangled with histories of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. We outline the film broadly and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande in some detail as our research context, before presenting our methodology. We then detail our findings focused around the themes of shame, sexual positivity and power before discussing their implications for consumption and consumers. We conclude with a review of our contributions and suggestions for future research.

Theoretical framework

Feminism, popular culture and the ageing female body

The following section provides a brief overview of the literature within the field of marketing and consumer research and the complementary fields of sociology, cultural studies and gerontology studies, addressing feminist theory and the ageing female body.

Contemporary feminism is diffuse and has multiple articulations in scholarly work. Broadly speaking, postfeminism may be used as an overarching term to define what is commonly referred to as feminism’s third wave, beginning in the early 1990s, from which several distinctive strands or articulations of feminism have emerged (Banet-Weiser et al., 2019). Maclaran (2015) sets out the relationship of each wave of feminism to marketing and articulates a fourth wave, characterised by young women’s use of the Internet and social media to challenge gender inequity. These contemporary articulations of feminism highlight its focus on intersectionality and social activism, locating it within the current zeitgeist for online socio-political activism which seeks to highlight and challenge discrimination (see, for example, Sobande, 2019).

A central theme of critical feminist approaches to the study of representations of gender in popular culture is the entrenched and routine sexualisation of the female body (Gill, 2017; Gurrieri, 2021; Maclaran, 2015). Indeed, the sexualisation of women has been a concern for feminist theorists and activists since the second wave (Mulvey, 1975). More recently, Ros Gill (2007) articulated a postfeminist sensibility present in media culture that connects the feminine with sex in a way not previously seen. Much scholarly attention in marketing and consumer research has been given to the identification and analysis of women in advertising (Beetles & Harris, 2005; Reichert, 2002; Sobande, 2019) which has contributed to a widespread awareness of the damaging implications of the routine sexualisation of women in media. Maclaran (2015) notes that challenging this normalising of sex and sexualisation of women and girls in popular culture is a distinguishing characteristic of ‘fourth wavers’. A recent analysis by Peñaloza et al. (2023) highlights the limited but growing focus on sexuality and the increasing focus of research on the gendered body and representation within the field; however, they note that the dominant focus tends to be identified differences or gender-based traits.

Analyses of popular culture texts have highlighted the central role of consumption in sex and sexualisation as women in particular are required to consume an array of products and services to facilitate sexual desirability and practice. For example, Zayer et al. (2012) examine representations of masculinity and femininity in Entourage (2004–2011) and Sex and the City (1998–2004) in what they identify as the postfeminist era, noting the fluidity of gender roles at play, portrayals of masculinity and femininity, and how consumption practices facilitate themes of domesticity, sexuality and authenticity. They find that the characters negotiate the tensions between ‘more traditional gender roles and the assumption of contemporary roles through consumption’ (p. 337). This is particularly the case when it comes to sexual relationships and their analysis notes how two central characters, Miranda and Samantha, in Sex and the City ‘demonstrate that performances of female sexuality are related to feeling pleasure’ which can be obtained through consumption, in this case sex toys (p. 347). Scholars such as Walther and Schouten (2016) and Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020) have examined female sexuality and the pursuit of sexual pleasure, examining women’s consumption of erotic products and pornography, respectively.

Zayer et al. (2012) highlight the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in their analysis when they focus on Samantha’s consumption of cosmetic surgery. Although ageing is not a significant theme in Sex and the City, Samantha (the eldest of the four main characters) embodies concerns about ageing, self-esteem and sexuality, and considers cosmetic surgery to escape some of these concerns. The desire to remain youthful and the role of an active sex life as part of this are central to Western successful ageing cultural imperatives (Gurrieri, 2021) which similarly offer up consumption as an ‘empowering’ means of achieving this, for example, through cosmetic surgery or other medical, pharmaceutical or cosmetic products and services. Rasmussen (2017) in her analysis of author Helen Fielding’s novel and subsequent film adaptation of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, where we meet a 51-year-old, widowed Bridget Jones, embarking on a relationship with a younger man, notes that the postfeminist lens sees women as ‘aggressively hailed as consumers’ (p. 149). Jones rejects a younger sexual partner out of fear of being depicted as a ‘Cougar’, one of the available tropes for middle-aged sexually active women.

Successful ageing discourses encourage individuals to take personal responsibility to battle the physical decline age brings through exercise, medicine, consumption and lifestyle choices. Maintaining a healthy and active sex life, supported through consumption of, e.g. vitamins and sex toys, is increasingly considered a necessary part of this by the positive ageing movement (Gott, 2004; Katz & Marshall, 2003). The cultural imperative of ‘successful ageing’ has been linked to the invisibility of women aged over 40 and visible signs of ageing among women in the marketplace, e.g. wrinkles and grey hair (Gurrieri, 2021). It is this gendered dimension of successful ageing within postfeminist popular culture, the intersection of age, gender and sexuality, which we draw attention to, highlighting the power of cultural products to engineer stigma and stigmatise consumer groups resulting in marketplace exclusions. In the following section, we draw on Tyler’s (2020) theorisation of stigma power as violence to situate this analysis.

Stigma

Stigma has been researched from a range of perspectives within marketing and consumer research (see Rosenthal et al., 2021 for a recent review). Scholars in the field tend to draw on Goffman’s (1963) work in unpacking the experiences of stigmatised and stigmatising consumers and consumer groups. For Goffman (1963), stigma fell into three categories: ‘abominations of the body’, ‘blemishes of individual character’, and ‘tribal stigma’. While Goffman did address the body, he did not particularly look at the role of ageing, or how gender and sexuality played out in this context.

More recently, Tyler (2020) has focused on stigma as a form of power ‘embedded within the social relations of capitalism, and … entangled with histories of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy’ (p. 8). Tyler (2020) acknowledges the evolution of the sociological concept of stigma beyond early definitions linking this to feelings of shame and develops a ‘psycho-political understanding of stigma, reconceptualising stigma as a form of power, that is written on the body and gets under the skin’ (p. 9). Importantly, she highlights the separation of power from accounts of stigma and stigma producing practices within Goffman’s work. Rather than providing a broad overview of this developing sub-field of the literature, here we address research that focuses on the body, sexuality and ageing consumers specifically to enrich our contextually focused analysis.

Some marketing and consumer research scholars have focused on stigmatised consumer groups’ restricted access to specific markets, in comparison to dominant consumer groups, deriving from, e.g. body type and race. Others have focused on media representation, mainly through examining representations of women in advertising. The following section provides a brief overview of these perspectives.

Stigmatised consumer groups and marketplace access

Within the CCT literature, Södergren, Hietanen, et al. (2023) considered how inclusive advertising may compound as well as challenge stigma for disabled consumers and Crockett (2017) found ways through which middle-class Black Americans managed stigma. In gender-based studies, there has been less of a focus on the ageing female consumer, and more on a different type of what LeBesco (2003) referred to as ‘revolting bodies’, or plus-size consumers. Feminist scholars have addressed a range of issues related to the body and gender, for example. its relationship to food (see Bordo, 1993), and racial and physical intersections among myriad affective and emotional considerations within the bodily imaginary (Lennon, 2010). Much CCT work addressing ‘revolting bodies’ focuses on the fashion industry, where youth and thinness have reigned for decades and provides us with a consideration of how stigma has been applied in CCT literature in relation to gender.

Gurrieri et al. (2013) examined how plus-size women understood, conceptualised and experienced beauty within a ‘thin-dominant paradigm’ (p. 277). Their specific focus was ‘fatshionistas’, bloggers focused on challenging stereotypes of what it means to be fashionable and found that the ‘fatshionistas’ refused to keep the social contract of hiding away or blending in and faced public shaming and insults as a result. Scaraboto and Fischer (2013) and Zanette and Brito (2019) also looked at plus-size fashion consumers, highlighting the role of the fashion industry in excluding and stigmatising this group, and the efforts of such consumers to push the boundaries to create alternatives because of the marketplace exclusion they experienced.

A growing area of academic focus is older female social media influencers. Farinosi (2023) examines this marginalised group within fashion studies, focusing on media representation and how ageing influencers inhabit online spaces. She finds that older fashion influencers are reshaping cultural meanings associated with ageing and challenging conventional portrayals of the older woman, arguing social media platforms allow these ignored consumers to overcome marketplace exclusion derived from the stigma attached to the older female body. This account mirrors that of Scaraboto and Fischer (2013) who found evolving market logics informing mainstream fashion’s adoption of traditionally marginalised market actors.

This returns us to notions of stigma bound up in our understanding of power. As the means of (media) production have been in the hands of younger and male producers, the body of the older (and/or less conventionally attractive) female has been stigmatised. Susan Liddy’s (2020) edited collection establishes the underrepresentation of women across the film industry, illustrating the existence of this practice.

Media representation and stigmatised consumers

Media stereotyping has long been discussed in the fields of media and cultural studies (see Bell & Milic, 2002; Hall, 1989; hooks, 1996, 2009/2014; Vernon et al., 1991). While earlier studies such as those by Petersen (1973) found an absence of older women (even compared to older men) on prime-time television, the visibility of older women has increased over time. Vernon et al.’s (1991) intersectional analysis of the representation of older women on television found that while women overall were underrepresented on prime-time US television during the 1980s (despite progress in terms of broader social position of women), middle-aged and older women fared particularly badly and ageing women were ‘sexually unattractive much earlier than men’ (p. 66). Recent research by Julie Whiteman (2024) cites data gathered between 2010 and 2020 which demonstrates unrepresentative representation of those aged 60+ in US film, TV and advertising, yet also highlights a shift in film roles for older female protagonists reflecting political, social, economic and cultural trends which increasingly visibilise older people. This suggests less stigma attached to roles available for older women, than a continued absence of representation, or symbolic annihilation. Liddy’s (2020) edited collection illustrates the power inequality that exists for women working within the film industry. Liddy (2014) undertook an analysis of the UK, Irish and French films and found that expressions of older female sexuality were apparent, but such depictions rarely showed the physical female body in this context. ‘Even if mature female characters are depicted as sexually active, the mature female body usually remains strategically concealed. Finally, mature female characters are white, middle class, slim and able-bodied women’ (Liddy, 2014, p. 1).

Various studies have examined the intersection of gender and sexuality when considering how (young) consumers are portrayed and respond to gendered portrayals in advertising. Moraes et al. (2021) examined the negative impact on wellbeing derived from objectifying and sexualising women in advertising, while Rome et al. (2020) found that young women’s postfeminist gaze could lead to blind spots in the intersection of gender, class and race. Drake and Radford (2021) focus on fitness advertising as ‘biopedagogy’, which seeks to illustrate how women should construct themselves as athletes while Gurrieri et al. (2013) examined how women can alter their bodies, through ‘marketplace solutions’ such as diet, exercise and cosmetic surgery. As is evident, much focus has been on young and ‘fit’ bodies, and little focus has been given to older female consumers.

Tyler (2020) sets out the gendered history of stigma through an examination of the historical position of women. Drawing on British Historian Mary Beard’s account of the silencing of women, Tyler articulates how this resonates with contemporary public culture, noting that singled out for particular punishment were ‘older women such as widows and paupers’ (p. 21). While the role of women in society has shifted over time, overarching power dynamics influencing portrayals of women and responses to such portrayals need unpacking. Coleman et al. (2020) examined this in the advertising industry in Turkey and found that decisions on how to represent gender were influenced by four competing institutional logics: gender role logics, power logics, logics of duality and logics of risk. Here, Coleman et al. (2020) set out the inevitability of market forces and argue that the desire to give people what they want can challenge the central role that the media (and popular culture) have in providing representation. Saren et al. (2019) detail societal and individual implications of marketplace exclusion, and through this paper, we present original empirical evidence detailing how shame and stigma are applied to ageing female consumers, effectively and affectively barring them from resources and opportunities.

Research context

Film has been identified as a site of increasing visibility for ageing female sexuality (Casado-Gual & Oró-Piqueras, 2022; Jermyn, 2011; Liddy, 2014; Peñaloza, 2022) and we adopt film as an object of critical enquiry and lens to extend academic knowledge of how mediated representations within popular culture contribute to the dissemination of cultural power and gender relations (Arnould & Thompson, 2005; Rokka, 2021). Hirschman and Thompson (1997) summarise prior consumer research saying, ‘mass media vehicles sort reality into meaningful social categories that provide a frame of reference from which consumers interpret their daily lives’ (p. 44).

We focus on the 2022 film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande which details a temporary relationship between Nancy, a 55-year-old retired Religious Education secondary school teacher and Leo Grande, a 20-something male sex worker. Nancy is a widow and mother of two who has never experienced sexual pleasure or orgasm and hires Leo to fulfil her sexual ambitions. Although identified as comedy/drama on IMDb (IMDb, 2024), the comedic elements stem primarily from Nancy’s sexual inexperience, lack of bodily confidence, and fear of physical and romantic intimacy. This positions it far from the genre of British sex films which had their heyday in the 1960s and 1970s (Brooke, 2018) where comedic responses were derived from sexual encounters and nudity. It is Nancy’s position as a 55-year-old sexual ingénue, embodied in an otherwise confident and experienced self, which makes her symbolic representation interesting and shifts the focus from comedy to drama. Nancy’s character is in opposition to the hegemonic postfeminist norm of empowered female sexual agency that characterises much mainstream media content (see Rome & Lambert, 2020), and which has been extended in recent years to incorporate older female protagonists, epitomised in the gerontocom. It is this apparent ‘outsider’ position that makes Good Luck to You, Leo Grande an appropriate vehicle to identify consumer definitions of normative, and thereby acceptable and ‘insider’, subject positions. Equally, referring back to Liddy’s (2020) collection and the underrepresentation of women in key roles in the film industry, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande was written (Katy Brand), directed (Sophie Hyde), and produced (Alison Thompson) by women. We set out in Table 1 below the range of roles typically available to older lead female characters in film and mainstream TV. McGlynn et al. (2017) identify the available roles for older women as mothers, widows and spinsters. A more sexualised version of the mother trope is the MILF, and other common tropes are the Cougar (Liddy, 2017), the Crone (Stevens et al., 2020) or the Dirty Old Woman (The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (2021)).

Table 1. Middle-aged female stereotypes in Western popular culture.

Stereotype	Text e.g. film, TV	Genre	Characteristics	Function	Plot
MILF	Sex Education (TV) 2019–2023	Teen drama	Gillian Anderson. Beautiful, sexy, strong and capable, financially independent. Divorced sex therapist. Open sexual appetite, including for younger men, and sexually confident which is significant because her son is not. In later series, morphs into standard mother trope as she cares for her new baby.	Mother to lead male character.	The son has sexual knowledge from her which he trades for school/peer popularity. She has a series of casual lovers then meets and falls in love with a manual worker her age. She has an affair resulting in a child and her relationship ends. She struggles to balance single parenting second time around.
Cougar	How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)	Romantic drama (film)	Angela Bassett. Youthful, strong, beautiful, financially independent, mother.	Lead character.	Aged 40, the lead character, Stella, goes on holiday to Jamaica and meets a young man aged 20 who she has a sexual fling with. She returns home to the USA, and he follows. They have a relationship during which she in particular faces many challenges and negative judgements. The film ends with Stella accepting a marriage proposal from her lover.
Crone or Shrew	Monster-in-Law (2005)	Romantic Comedy	Jane Fonda plays the future mother-in-law to Jennifer Lopez. Ageing, alone and recently fired, she seeks to stop her son marrying for her own ends.	Mother-in-law to the main character	Jane Fonda’s character’s son meets a woman and gets engaged. Jane Fonda’s character tries repeatedly to sabotage their relationship.
Mother (asexual)	Otherhood (film) (2019)	Drama comedy	Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman are mothers in their fifties. All are slim, attractive and recognised as having been sexually desirable when younger. All are wealthy and successful. Two are married, one is widowed. Characterised variously as an alcoholic narcissist, overbearing and intrusive Jewish mother, and grieving and distant mother.	Lead characters.	The mothers met because their now adult sons became friends. All desire to bond with their sons and all action is directed to this end. The women have no discernable life beyond their role as mothers and romantic partners, which takes second place to being a mother.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)	Film	Drama with comedic elements	Emma Thompson. Middle-aged, sexless, widowed, dowdy.	Direct story, central character/lead, has dreams fulfilled	Wants to achieve sexual pleasure and gain sexual experience. Hires attractive young, male sex worker. Achieves sexual pleasure, finds new sense of self through the experience.

In contrast to the hegemonic postfeminist representation, in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, our female protagonist struggles to inhabit the space of sexually desiring and desirable female sexual agent and describes a life devoid of sexual pleasure, contrasting the eternally positive and problem-free sexual lives we invariably see in postfeminst and geronotocom narratives (Gill, 2008, 2009; Gott, 2004). In this sense, the film presents a noteworthy departure and tempts us into believing the representational space is opening up to offer a more inclusive and nuanced depiction of (ageing) female sexuality.¹ However, as we will demonstrate, the representation does not straightforwardly challenge normative assumptions and may be read as reinforcing postfeminist norms in a nuanced reworking that includes older women. Reflecting recent work by Casado-Gual and Oró-Piqueras (2022), we examine consumer discussion to argue Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (re)presents and extends intersectional limitations which reinforce a hegemonic (White, middle class, heterosexual, conventionally attractive, able-bodied) feminine ideal that thereby excludes, invisibilises and stigmatises those outside of its limited and limiting definition, ‘perpetuating enduring disadvantages for those rendered invisible’ (Gopaldas & Siebert, 2018; Gurrieri, 2021, p. 367).

De Sutter and Van Bauwel (2023) identify Good Luck to You, Leo Grande as part of a subgenre of gerontocom, the ‘older bird chick flick’ and, on the basis of Nancy’s age, argue it is incompatible with postfeminist media culture, thereby reiterating its ‘outsider’ position in the genre. In common with Liddy’s (2017) analysis of responses to Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, we argue consumers interpret Nancy through the lens of postfeminism and that Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is part of an extension of the postfeminist ideal, incorporating older women who meet a number of already established connected characteristics (e.g. attractive, middle-class, light skinned), linking postfeminist and successful ageing discourses.

To illustrate our position, Table 1 below sets out a selection of popular culture texts representing the key stereotypes for ageing (that is middle-aged, not old and not young) women in Western media:

By highlighting the characteristics of the dominant stereotypes available to ageing female characters in popular culture, we illustrate how Nancy and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande are differentiated and appear to offer an alternative subject position. This apparent alternative positioning of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and Nancy invites the consumer to enter a space of possibilities for ageing female sexuality. In our analysis, we highlight how discourses at the intersection of age, gender and sexuality reinforced existing hierarchies, market logics and exclusions to inform gender relations. We theorise a gendered interweaving of successful ageing and postfeminist discourses that works to sustain normative and discriminatory definitions of ageing, gender and sexuality.

Methodology

It should be an assumption on the part of any researcher investigating consumer culture that while the consumer perceives his or her actions, desires and intentions as directed specifically to circumstances in the life of themselves or their close peers, these drivers of consumption to a large extent originate in cultural, societal, economic and political conditions (Askegaard & Linnet, 2011, p. 388).

Reading film as a cultural text and consumer interpretations in (sub)cultural context is a recognised mode of consumer research (Hirschman, 1988; Holbrook & Grayson, 1986; Maclaran et al., 2009; Stern, 1995). This research enquires into the ways consumers interpret, discuss and make sense of representations of ageing female sexuality in the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. In examining consumer interpretation, we are inspired by bell hooks (2009/2014) work which argues that improving representation on screen is not sufficient to challenge (in her work, racist) stereotypes. For hooks, there was a need to focus on and understand how such representations were being received by audiences and to shift the focus of audiences away from hegemonic norms (in hooks’ case she was particularly concerned with White supremacist interpretations). We use popular culture as a lens to identify and examine gender relations in market systems and the power structures present in that. Our research asks, how do consumers employ discourses of age, gender and sexuality in discussion of the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande and how do these discussions reflect and/or inform discourses of sexuality at the intersection of age and gender, what we identify as ageist sexism? Further, we ask what can this tell us about the current social, political and cultural conditions at the intersection of age, gender and sexuality? That is, what can we learn about the evolving perception of, and experience of, (ageing) female consumers as sentient, agentic actors in the marketplace through consumer discussion of a representational model of such a consumer?

We argue that our methodological approach highlights how hegemonic norms (macro level) play out in the meso level of online consumer discussion, illuminating how stigma is used as a tool of power. To answer these questions, we engaged in multi-method research of online consumer discussion of the film Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. ‘Mass media vehicles may express and represent the values of the social and historical context which engenders them’ (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1993, p. 62). Both authors undertook a semiotic textual analysis of the film, asking a series of questions of the text, for example, how does Nancy’s character evolve and how is this signified? What do specific interactions between characters mean, e.g. questions they ask each other? This approach, identifying film as a communicator of cultural myths (Stern, 1995) and semiotic analysis (Hirschman & Holbrook, 1993) as a means to identify and interrogate those myths, is an established methodological approach in consumer research. After watching the film and undertaking our own analysis, we gathered data from publicly posted comments to official Good Luck to You, Leo Grande account posts from YouTube (806), Facebook (1614), Instagram (1816) and Twitter (408) resulting in a total of 4,644 comments as per our dataset. We chose to limit our data selection to posts on the official account to ensure consistency across platforms, recognising that we could not be sure of capturing all posts related to the film on all platforms and received full ethical approval (ERN_1017-Sep2023) from our institution for this data collection. Comments were anonymised, those in languages other than English were translated using Google Translate (original text was retained) and were uploaded to NVivo data analysis software. The initial data collection process operated as a first level of coding as comments were read for overall understanding. Emergent from this, the research team developed codes that addressed modes/styles of communicating apparent in this initial stage of coding (e.g. humour-based response). The second stage of coding took place in NVivo. Coding of our researcher-led analysis and coding of the consumer comments took an abductive approach identifying themes within the data that spoke to discourses of age, gender or sexuality. These were labelled as codes, e.g. consent, beauty, age difference positive/negative. All comments included in this paper have been altered/re-worded, and platforms have not been specified to protect commenters’ anonymity. Where ‘user’ is included in the quote, this indicates an anonymised named tag and connected posts are shown together, and lines are used to separate individual posts from groups of posts. Throughout the data analysis process, our analysis of the film (researcher lens) was used to interpret consumer data, for example, by identifying themes pertinent to the research questions. Differences in tone were apparent across platforms, for example, Instagram comments were typically short in length and positive/jovial in tone, whereas Facebook comments were frequently lengthy, debating the moral dimensions of the text in depth with hostile exchanges. The data included in this paper do not specify which platform they came from because of the personal nature of this publicly available content and our desire to retain the anonymity of users.

It is important to note that during coding it became evident that not all commenters had seen the entire film and/or understood its premise. This was evidenced in discussion of Nancy and Leo’s relationship, when it was clear the commenter was not aware Leo was a sex worker. This has implications for data and has been considered in the analysis as far as is possible, but given the method of anonymous and impersonal data collection, we recognise that we cannot be clear about the commenters’ level of engagement with or understanding of the text. However, because we are interested in the macro-level discourses consumers draw on to discuss age, gender and sexuality, this was not felt to be a barrier because it is these very discourses that underpin the assumptions made.

All consumer data was gathered from social media sites. Comments were voluntarily posted in response to original posts from the film company, Searchlight Pictures. Implicit in this act is a recognition that consumers were motivated to share their views about this film in an open public forum with strangers and acquaintances. We do not have any verifiable information about our sample, but an observation of our dataset is that most comments were in English (although several other languages from multiple continents were present) and we presume, based on language and cultural references, Euro-American, indicating a Western bias to our research. Where commenters have identified characteristics about themselves, e.g. age, gender, sexuality, we have accepted this.

Findings

When undertaking our analysis, it became clear to us that postfeminism was a productive lens through which to view the film and the consumer responses. Below, we set out three dominant themes that emerged from the coding process. We discuss these in relation to theoretical understandings of age, gender and sexuality before addressing their theoretical implications.

Shame

Shame was apparent in intrapersonal and interpersonal comments throughout the sample. This section will first address intrapersonal expressions of shame before considering how shame was used interpersonally as a tool to denigrate the film and (ageing) female sexuality more generally.

Shame was visible in various ways in comments from female consumers; there was shame in being seen, shame in being sexual, shame in wanting to watch the film. Women frequently used humour to downplay, distract from or minimise their desire to see and take pleasure in the film and tagged female friends with jovial posts that poked fun at the film, the characters and/or their own desire to engage in the film or the film’s premise (having pleasurable sex).

[user] why do I want to actually see this lol

[user] it looks cute! We’ll watch it together

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This looks hilariously interesting!

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[user] … we need a girl’s night to go see this! Lol

[user] Yes!

While the tagging of friends may indicate an expression of female solidarity and empowerment through sharing an experience of sexual pleasure, the consistent framing of these messages in humour (e.g. the use of ‘LOL’ to position desire as motivated by fun not sex) may suggest that a sense of shame is also present. One explanation could be that female consumers anticipate or experience shame in being perceived to enjoy/wanting to participate in a consumption experience that centres sex and the appropriation of humour conceals this by facilitating a respectable distance for the speaker from potentially shameful associations (e.g. being thought promiscuous). This entanglement of neo-conservative values in relation to sexuality (shame in being openly sexually desiring for women) and liberal attitudes to sexual relations (isn’t sex great, let’s all get together and watch this movie about sex) is characteristic of a postfeminist appropriation and simultaneous repudiation of feminist discourses that encourage an active and desiring sexuality in women, while at the same time shames women who chose to ‘own’ these behaviours (Gill, 2007; McRobbie, 2009, p. 12). By engineering an appearance of nonchalant amusement, the speaker creates a respective distance for themselves and the audience from the potent shame which would be felt in discovery/disclosure; the violence of stigma attached to an active and desiring female sexuality is recognised and evaded through this act (Goffman, 1979; Tyler, 2020).

Shame was also present in women’s comments about their bodies and sexuality, which was often expressed through resonance with Nancy’s experiences in the trailer and/or film:

But that would assume a world where sex is the same for men and women. It’s not. So much of sex for women is shame. Our bodies are shamed, pleasure is shamed, sex for fun or casual sex is shamed. Slut is a word reserved for women, mostly. Movies like this are so important to even the field. To liberate women and say ‘it’s okay’. Women should be allowed to feel good, enjoy sex, without shame…as men do

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I find it weird and a bit sad that I, a young woman, can relate to a 63-year-old widow

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What a strike at the heart, I have also always been ashamed of my body

Nancy’s shame about her body and sexuality are central to the plot and consumers’ resonance with this not only replicates the shame expressed by Nancy but also highlights the limitations of action to extend beyond the text. That is, the potential for consumers’ lived experience to mirror the experience shown on screen; Nancy transcends her shame, becoming actualised as a sexual being and advocate for later life sex, something that seems unachievable for some consumers of the text. Following this sexual reinvention, Nancy adopts and expresses successful ageing discourses by claiming sex as transformative. As the film progresses, her demeanour shifts from stiff and formal (and focused on ticking things off her list) to more relaxed; our analysis found Nancy ‘less buttoned up’ during their third meeting. This shift in Nancy is consistent with postfeminist discourses that link sexuality to femininity (Evans et al., 2010) and link these two powerful ideologies – successful ageing and postfeminism – in a distinctly gendered way.

The shame expressed by consumers here can be attributed to the shame experienced in not achieving standards (of beauty, of sexual confidence or practice) advocated by these discourses, of not ‘being’ a fully actualised, self-confident and sexually fulfilled woman. These discourses stress that responsibility for their accomplishment lies squarely with the individual and those who do not meet these standards are stigmatised with a ‘toxic insecurity’ (Cruikshank, 2013; Gill, 2017, p. 619; Gurrieri, 2021; Katz & Marshall, 2003; Rosenthal et al., 2021).

Nancy’s sexual self-reinvention from inhibited, sexually unfulfilled widow to self-actualised sexual subject is communicated semiotically in her adoption of successful ageing and postfeminist tropes. These tropes epitomise sex as liberatory and sex as central to one’s sense of self discourses and are emblematic of successful ageing discourses in Anglo-American popular culture (Cruikshank, 2013; Evans et al., 2010). For example, her hair, make-up, posture and dress all become more relaxed as she becomes more comfortable with sex. She stops wearing a formal two-piece and buttoned up blouse with perfectly arranged hair. Instead, she has free-flowing messy hair and is seen lounging comfortably in an open shirt over a bra and knickers; she tells a server (and former pupil) she is paying Leo for sex and tells Leo she has recommended his services to her similarly aged female friends and suggests his services should be available on the NHS. Through these and other actions, Nancy communicates the exclusively and profoundly positive intrapersonal changes she experienced resulting from sexual intimacy,² consistent with postfeminist and successful ageing discourses that prioritise (later life) sex (Gill & Orgad, 2017; Gott, 2004). The absence of potential negatives related to sex/potential for unpleasurable sex in this representation reflects successful ageing and postfeminist discourses of (ageing) female sexuality. This depoliticises and romanticises later life sexuality leaving those unable, uninterested or unwilling to participate excluded and marginalised, bearing an individualised affective responsibility with no recourse to social, cultural or otherwise external influences (Gill, 2008, p. 54, 2009, pp. 105–106; Gott, 2004). Wrapped up in this and noted by consumers of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, it ignores the stigma attached to ageing bodies, normatively understood as ‘unwatchable’ and ‘taboo’, and in particular older female bodies (Vares, 2009). In their first meeting, Nancy asks if she is Leo’s oldest client and he answers in the negative, saying his oldest client was 82, allowing Nancy’s character to feel less stigmatised due to her (significantly younger) age.

Notably, Leo also expresses shame about his life and work as a sex worker but counters and challenges these expressions himself with sex-positive discourses. His discursive devices suggest he is not immune from the stigma attached to non-hegemonic sex, i.e. heterosexual, monogamous and sanctioned by marriage (Rich, 1980), but millennial Leo can draw on ideological discourses allowing him to manage that shame. This difference in the source of sexual shame and stigma and the ideological tools available to counter them can be attributed to the generational differences between Leo and Nancy, a point we explore in more depth in the following section.

Shame was also used in consumer comments as a tool to denigrate the film, sexuality and ageing female sexuality more specifically. Expressions of disgust, drawn from moralistic anti-sex discourses and normative disassociations of old age and sex (Gott, 2004) were applied to the film for visibilising and centring sex and sex work, and the character of Nancy because of her age. We discuss how these comments were met in the next section but here highlight how these comments weaponised stigma to ridicule and condemn Nancy explicitly because of her age, suggesting something inherently wrong, deviant and distasteful about an older woman being desirable and/or sexual.

Shades of its Grey down there

Gross! No one wants to see some old saggy skin broad naked!

Consistent with extant literature positioning older women as outside the scope of socially acceptable sexual desirability (Casado-Gual & Oró-Piqueras, 2022; Gopaldas & Siebert, 2018; Sontag, 1972; Vares, 2009), these comments highlight the persistent shame of an ageing or aged female body (sexist ageism), a body which no longer meets the youthful criteria set out in patriarchal marketing (Gopaldas & Siebert, 2018; Gurrieri, 2021). This mode of comment was prevalent, sometimes with a violence as above, sometimes through humour, but always with the effect of shaming Nancy's character or actor, Emma Thompson, for combining her age, gender and sexuality in this way.

Such shaming was also evident in Rasmussen’s (2017) analysis of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy where the main character (Jones) feared being branded a Cougar and ended her romance with a younger man in favour of a more ‘age appropriate’ one. Equally, critical responses to the novel (adapted into a film) mirrored this stigmatised response. ‘Perhaps what is most troubling about this development is that the ageism taking place within the novel also happens in the real world outside the text, where critics direct violent ageist rhetoric at Bridget and, occasionally, at Fielding herself’ (Rasmussen, 2017, p. 148). We see Nancy, Bridget and Helen Fielding cast in the trope of the ‘dirty old woman’ for entering into such romantic or sexual encounters. This trope is regularly deployed in film through intertextual references to storylines such as ‘Mrs Robinson’ to denote The Graduate’s May to December storyline, or in branding a character as ‘Stella’ from How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

Sex-positivity

Sex-positive discourses permeated comments as users expressed resonance in their inability to achieve, and/or the importance of, sexual pleasure at any life stage. Exchanges between women commenting were typically encouraging, supportive and often gave specific advice.

[user] I can relate. I just turned 40 and am single with 2 children. I haven’t had any of those experiences, especially an orgasm or whatever it’s called lol

[user] Oh lovely, get yourself a vibrator, there’s no need for a woman your age to not have experienced orgasm.

[user] yes, please do! Men are fun but you don’t need one. PLEASE play alone, no one’s watching

[user] you’re not alone. Only 60% of straight women have regular orgasm, maybe you can too! Watch The Principles of Pleasure on Netflix.

Concurrently, there was a definite and forthright intolerance for anti-sex discourses. Commenters who expressed views oppositional to the dominant sex-positive discourse were mediated, often actively policed, by vociferous sex-positive advocates, frequently drawing on ageist, misogynistic and religious terms to silence.

Disgusting use of film.

[user] We clearly have very different ideas of disgusting because this looks harmless. Perhaps even nourishing.

[user] sex isn’t dirty, we’ve made it dirty. Sex is beautiful and taking the time to encourage someone to love themselves completely is nourishing. I don’t imagine there are close-ups of actual sex, it’s about the people not the sex. If it isn’t for you, don’t watch it, but if you haven’t seen it, you can’t call it disgusting.

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Trash. Society is clearly in the toilet judging by these comments.

[user] *Karen has entered the chat*

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If you have a problem with sex with mature women you’ve never had fun with a mature woman.

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This conversation is not acceptable for a public space! Take your private life to a private conversation! I don’t want to see this.

[user] The world has changed, Grandma. We talk about sex now. If you don’t like it, go read the bible and stop looking at facebook.

[user] Calm down, boomer.

[user] stop reading then up tight Karen. Sex makes the world go round

It is important to note that in our analysis we observed that commenters suggesting sex per se should not be public were explicitly challenged and reprimanded, however, those suggesting women over 50 should not be sexual were far less likely to experience any challenge demonstrating an implicit sexist ageism. This fits with Liddy’s (2014) analysis of British and Irish films where storylines about sex and older characters were not accompanied by sexual imagery. Perhaps significant to this, at an early stage of the commissioning process, an experienced intimacy producer was consulted on the nature of the relationship between the lead characters (Gooder, 2023).

The dominance of sex-positive discourse and lack of tolerance for oppositional opinions illustrated above reflects hegemonic postfeminist and successful ageing ideologies that prioritise sex and sexuality and are intimately bound up with the contemporary sexualisation of culture (Gill, 2007; Gott, 2004; Maclaran, 2015). Working in concert, these discourses argue for the importance of sex for ageing women. This centralisation and valorisation of sex has affective dimensions, observable in these comments, that seek to determine how and what women feel about their bodies and sexual selves and their sexual subjectivities. Women are required to feel good about their bodies and sexual selves, with no room for negativity or dissent (Orgad & Gill, 2022), and any speech in that vein incites judgements of being out of touch with the moment, archaic, a prude, a religious nut. The affective dictates present in these consumer comments show how power is reproduced through stigmatising those outside the accepted social norm, in this case, the sexualised postfeminist, positive ageing movement. The commenting function in the social networking space is ‘designed to enhance, facilitate and democratise public speech [is] experienced as [a] stigma machine [] - spiked with threats of violence’ (Tyler, 2020, p. 49). Everyone is required to express a positive and liberal attitude to sex and its public representation, embody sexual confidence and self-esteem. We address the affective dimensions of this in more depth in the following section.

As illustrated, challenges to anti-sexualisation or public decency arguments typically drew on abusive, sexist and/or ageist terms, e.g. grandma, boomer, nun, Karen.³ By employing sexist ageism, the speaker is undermined and identified as irrelevant in a commonsense way, negating the validity of their position. In these unchallenged attacks on the primarily older female consumers, we see the modern-day materialisation of the historic stigmatisation of women who dare to speak, to challenge and hold space in public, the socio-political function of stigma as a productive form of power to silence (Tyler, 2020).

Power

Consumer comments noted the power dynamics between Nancy and Leo in respect of age and race and Nancy as an older woman in respect of her appearance (beauty). That Nancy is approximately 30 years Leo’s senior was both applauded and derided. Comments finding the age difference problematic frequently conceived of it as sexual impropriety and/or symbolic of unequal power that could be interpreted as exploitation. The perceived exploitation worked both ways with some suggesting Leo was exploiting Nancy for financial gain,⁴ others that Nancy was exploiting Leo from a position of maturity, using him ‘to feel young again’. Typically, approval for the age difference came from an experiential sex-positive position, reflecting the discourses outlined previously.

The racial and ethnic identities of both characters – Nancy is White British and Leo is light-skinned Black Irish – were identified by many users as signifying unequal power, reflecting discriminatory and exploitative social relations including sexual tourism and the illegal sex trade. That Leo is light skinned was also commented on in reference to colourism with suggestions that his light skin tone made him more acceptable to White audiences than a darker-skinned Black man would and that the intersection of him as a light-skinned Black man with an older White woman combined to embed the inequality of their positions and reflect social structures that excluded the possibility of a coupling that reversed these categories of distinction.

Gets herself an Island Boi

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This is just like the sex trade happening in Africa.

The inequalities highlighted by consumers in response to Good Luck to You, Leo Grande reflect the ‘gendered racial capitalism’ typical of popular culture artefacts within a capitalist economy whose role is to communicate ‘cultural norms, roles and hierarchies’ in the social hierarchy (Hall, 1998; Rosa-Salas & Sobande, 2022, pp. 178–179; Tyler, 2020). This is grounded in and connects to the normative representation of Black sexualities as deviant and of Black characters as subservient in a White supremacist framework (Hill-Collins, 2004, Hooks, 1994; Rose, 2016). Although Stella and Winston (in How Stella Got Her Groove Back) were both Black, Stella as a wealthy American tourist and Winston as a young man from the Island also experienced conflicts related to economic power inequality during scenes in Jamaica and the US despite his wealthy background.

Consumer comments also highlighted that Nancy, played by British actor Emma Thompson, is conventionally attractive and recognised as sexually desirable on and off the screen. This included expressions of sexual desire and appreciation for Nancy/Emma Thompson from male and female consumers and a recognition that this beauty capital afforded the character a sexual licence not available to all women of Nancy’s age.

Emma Thompson is still so sexy and gorgeous. Oh my goodness

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[user] As if a sexy woman like Emma Thompson would need help finding a man to eat her for hours…that really is make believe.

Interestingly, film producer Mark Gooder (2023) commented that while Emma Thompson was attached to the project when it was pitched to the production company, he could think of several other actors who could have taken the role signalling a shift in roles available to older female actors that complements recent research on the increasing visibility of ageing female protagonists in film (Casado-Gual & Oró-Piqueras, 2022).

In our researcher-led analysis of the film, we noted that Nancy’s middle-class position as a retired teacher and widow with assumed pension entitlements, gives her the financial means to purchase Leo’s services, a young, conventionally attractive and attentive sex worker. Thus, Nancy can remove uncertainty to specify and satisfy her needs and wants without the need to consider a potential romantic partner’s own needs and wants. This economic capital grants her a privileged and powerful position because she can dictate and direct events, an advantage not available to many consumers of the text. We also noted the ethnic power dynamic in the British/Irish coupling that speaks to the colonial dynamics of power, with the British character playing the dominant role in their interaction.

In addition to the intersectional dimensions of power outlined above, power was present in consumer expressions of empowerment through seeing themselves represented on screen in Nancy. This process of recognition was identified by Stuart Hall (1998) as a form of cultural power and shown in a recent study to shape consumer identity (Rosenthal et al., 2021). Hall locates popular culture as the site of social transformation, where the cultural industries ‘rework and reshape’ representations and argues there is power and validation in seeing oneself represented (Hall, 1998, p. 447).

After watching this magnificent study in the human condition, I was given permission to look at and really love my body. I’m 77 years old and that has never happened. My mirror now gives me courage to face the world … naked. Thank you.

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Yes finally a film I can relate to! Lol Having a real orgasm is on my bucket list too. Lol it’s unfortunate how many men don’t know how to give a woman a real orgasm.

However, as outlined above, there are important limitations to the potential for resonance within this representation, with significant implications for consumers outside the postfeminist successful ageing ideal. As Hall (1998) argues, representations ‘impose and implant … such definitions of ourselves as fit more easily the descriptions of the dominant or preferred culture’ (p. 447) and the exclusions this necessitates, outlined above, have real implications. This links to hooks (2009/2014) argument, set out above, regarding the limitations for screen representation alone to address issues of inequality and exclusion. Through our analysis of audience responses, we gain insight into the positionality of the audience and how they respond to on-screen representations. This is addressed in the following section.

Discussion and conclusion

In presenting an analysis of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, we continue to demonstrate the relevance of examining popular culture texts and responses to these texts to the field of marketing and consumer research. Specifically, we take this film and responses to it to move from the particular (the film) to the general (understanding the intersection of sexism and ageism) (Hall, 1968) in deepening our understanding of affective exclusion. Following pioneers in the fields such as Stern, Holbrook and Hirschman, we demonstrate the rich insights available from such analysis. In this paper, we present an analysis of macro-level (societal) discourses of age, gender and sexuality in meso-level consumer discussions on social media and networking sites (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) to reveal how gender ideology and power materialise in the consumption of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. This paper speaks to scholarly work in the areas of cultural power (Hall, 1998), gender politics (Gurrieri, 2021; Tuchman, 2000) and social and marketplace exclusion (Saren et al., 2019). We have established that postfeminist and successful ageing discourses are appropriated to inform consumption and argued that these powerful ideologies weaponise stigma to marginalise and exclude, in other words, that the symbolic consumption of popular culture informs marketplace gendered and sexual politics. Our focus on issues of representation and responses to this enriches theorisation regarding the affective nature of exclusion.

It is no accident that shame is a central theme in this film about female sexuality. Shame and stigma are well-documented bedfellows of female sexuality (Sontag, 1972; Tyler, 2020). The prevalence of shame in consumer discussions of (ageing) female sexuality speaks to this normative conceptual linking of age, gender and sexuality, and women’s expressions of shame about their bodies and sexuality reflect extant literature that affirms this as normative and complexified through its intersection with age (Åberg et al., 2020). Where these expressions are met with messages of support and encouragement speaks to a perceived shift in popular discourse that aligns with successful ageing and postfeminist ideologies that advocate for body and sexual positivity. However, the use of these discourses to silence as well as to lift up reveals an affective dimension, just as when expressions of sexist ageism were left unchallenged, revealing limits to their inclusivity. Postfeminism and successful ageing intersect in a distinctly gendered way to reinforce social hierarchies, weaponising stigma to inform the subjective experience. Sex-positive discourses, intrinsic to both, call on women to throw off their sexual and/or bodily shame and/or negative experiences through the sheer force of will or risk sexist ageism; shame and stigma operate as power, producing affective responses in consumers. This affective ideological work reflects recent work by Orgad and Gill (2022) who argue women are increasingly called on to look within and change themselves in response to social injustices and structural inequalities.

The central premise of this theme is that the ageing female body is abject, that this affective abjection is experienced and observed and needs to be managed, either by work on the self or by hiding from public view – embrace your abjection or be stigmatised for your shame. Tyler (2009) challenges the analytical focus on identification of the female body as ‘abject’ and we follow her position in encouraging the debate away from discussion of the body to critical engagement with the sociopolitical forces that centre it as a key site of analytical interrogation. Orgad and Gill’s (2022) study on the affective ideological work of postfeminist confidence culture similarly highlights how the female body remains a key site of affective work on the self. It is this enduring primacy of the body as a key site of value, meaning and worth for women that underpins and informs the inherent misogyny of this theme. The conceptual linking of shame to the female body, whether in how it is received or experienced, contributes to the ongoing marginalisation and exclusion of (ageing) female consumers.

In this theorisation, we illustrate how the market mediates gender politics and through this marginalisation, the limitations for action to exist beyond the text; consumers express and experience an inability to throw off their shame as Nancy does for fear of social, psychological and cultural repercussions, reflecting the marketplace exclusion outlined by Saren et al. (2019). The consumer discussion for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande operates, then, as a ‘stigma machine’ (Tyler, 2020) where shame operates as power, (re)producing gender ideology. The continued stigmatisation of ageing female consumers maintains an unequal gender politics, it is part of a genealogy of sexist ageism that permeates patriarchal marketing and popular culture (Gopaldas & Siebert, 2018; Gurrieri, 2021). Postfeminism’s lack of a political vocabulary (Gill, 2007, 2017; McRobbie, 2009) demonstrates the inability of postfeminist discourses to offer a defence against such gender ideology and the need to counter ageist rhetoric. In response, we encourage a shift to politically focused discussion that identifies and interrogates the patriarchal power structures (postfeminist and successful ageing discourses) which generate affective responses among consumers, moving from the particular (representation) to the general (power structures).

In this paper, we have set out the affective implications for female and older female consumers’ intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships in the light of our findings. We know that representations matter (Goffman, 1979; Gurrieri, 2021, Hall, 1980, 1998; Maclaran & Chatzidakis, 2022; McRobbie, 2004) and that stigmatising images influence ‘both stigmatised consumers’ identities and their responses to stigmatising portrayals’ (Rosenthal et al., 2021, p. 586). While the majority of research in the field of marketing and consumer research focuses on advertising imagery, we, like Zayer et al. (2012), turn to popular culture to unpack the links between representation and symbolic consumption, demonstrating how stigma is reproduced to marginalise and exclude in the marketplace. We argue postfeminist and successful ageing discourses weaponise stigma to marginalise and exclude, affectively informing ideological consumption and marketplace gendered and sexual politics.

In focusing on portrayals of female pleasure, we connect to research on the bodily aspects of female erotic pleasures such as Daskalopoulou and Zanette (2020) and Walther and Schouten (2016). However, by focusing on responses to sexual exploration and expression rather than the experiences of the women themselves, this allows us (following hooks, 2009/2014) to identify and interrogate discourses of marginalisation.

Our analysis reveals how power materialises in representation, but the story and consumer discussion foreground the experience of White, middle-class Nancy and her sexual awakening, rather than the Black migrant from a formerly colonised country, engaged as a sex worker. Recognising this as a limitation of our study, along with our research scope and sample, we highlight the importance of cultural producers in directing our gaze and interpreting characters in a particular way and hope this work contributes to the development of broader intersectional conversations within the field. To this end, we suggest the following as potential avenues for future research: postcolonial analyses of power, sexual relations and stigma (see Tyler, 2020); how the marketplace responds to and shapes ageing female desires and understandings of the self, and the evolution of sexual scripts in popular culture. Such research could provide space within which to explore presentations and responses to sex work, which inverts the usual focus on men soliciting women. The focus of our paper did not allow us to home in on the theme of older women and younger male sex workers in a way that would do this important topic justice. Our paper does highlight the erasure of the middle-aged woman, despite a growing focus on older characters on screen and future research could draw on popular culture treatment of the menopause to contribute to this growing field of research on women in middle age.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julie Whiteman

Julie Whiteman in a Lecturer in Marketing at Birmingham Business School. Julie’s research interests include mediated representation and consumption of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class, intersectional theory and research methods.

Finola Kerrigan

Finola Kerrigan is Professor of Marketing at Birmingham Business School where she researches and teaches marketing. Her research tends to focus on the creative and cultural industries, branding and digital identity.

Notes

1. Parenthesis is used to indicate that the significance and/or implications suggested are not exclusively limited in all circumstances to an ageing female sexuality and may be applied to female sexuality more broadly.

2. It is perhaps significant that at the time of this conversation, Nancy is enjoying an active sex life with Leo but has yet to experience orgasm, raising an interesting contradiction to the centrality of orgasm in sexual scripts (Jamieson, 1998).

3. Karen is a pejorative term that originated in America to characterise White women using their intersectional position as a form of racial privilege. The term has evolved and is often now also used as a sexist and ageist term to silence women who speak up in public, and in particular online (Lewis, 2020).

4. Some of these comments may be the result of commenters only watching the trailer and not understanding the relationship as sex work, assuming Leo and Nancy were in a romantic relationship.