User:Csmit150/sandbox

In film the female body is depicted in different states of dress, and portrayed differently depending on the age of the actress. Their clothing is used as an identity marker of the character. Young women are put into revealing and sexy costumes whereas older women often play the part of a mother or grandmother clad in appropriate attire. This can include a bonnet or apron as she carries about her matronly duties. This can lead both men and women to perceive the female body in a certain way based on what is seen on screen. Annette Kuhn said twenty years ago that "One of the major theoretical contributions of the women's movement has been its insistence on the significance of cultural factors, in particular in the form of socially dominant representations of women and the ideological character of such representation, both in constituting the category 'woman' and in delimiting and defining what has been called the 'sex-gender system'" Women's bodies are often seen as an object to be looked at and desired by men. As women get older and enter their post-menopausal years, they no longer are examples of the ideal feminine model. Added to that is the idea that females become mentally unstable as they enter their older years. "They become quarrelsome, vexatious and overbearing, petty and stingy; that is to say they exhibit typically sadistic and anal-erotic traits that they did not possess earlier...(Freud 1958,323-24)" Ageism is not new to Hollywood and has been around since the time of silent films. When transitioning from silent movies to talking motion pictures, Charlie Chaplin (a well known silent movie actor) said in an interview that "It's beauty that matters in pictures-nothing else....Pictures! Lovely looking girls...What if the girls can't act?...Certainly I prefer to see, say, Dolores Costello [a 1920s silent movie star], in a thin tale than some aged actress of the stage (Walker 1979,132)".