The Myth of Agelessness: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Agelessness in North American Anti-Aging Skin Care Advertisements

In both myth and metaphor, the search for the fountain of youth has become a profitable metaphor in the mantra of a multi-billion dollar anti-aging industry that pervades the North American consumer market of the 21st century. Drawing from a collection of over one hundred and sixty North American print advertisements for anti-aging skin care products from January to December of2009, my thesis examines the discourse of agelessness, a concept which has come to fruition over the past three decades. As a continuation of the semiotic project of the study of rhetoric and the motivated sign, my analysis moves beyond the basic level of signification to how agelessness is ordered, placed in hierarchical relation to our experiences of aging and age itself, where agelessness is accepted as a way out and transcendence of age. Through the use of advertisements as a reflection and reinforcement of the larger culture of anti-aging and resulting discourse of agelessness, my work functions to uncover, unpack, and understand the underlying order that moves through our everyday experiences and interactions with age and aging, to illuminate upon our current vision(s) of agelessness, illusively staring back at us from the reflective surface of the mythic fountain of youth.