From zoomers to geezerade: Representations of the body in ageist and classist society

This paper is based on an analysis of representations of the seniors in the media. In particular I examine images of the bodies of seniors in the advertising campaign promoting a product called Geezerade sold in Circle K convenience stores in the Atlantic provinces of Canada in the summer of 2011. I contrast these with images of seniors in the Canadian magazine Zoomers, formally CARP magazine, a magazine published by the Canadian Association of Retired People, a seniors advocacy organization. According to Moses Znaimer (Canadian broadcaster and media entrepreneur and responsible for popularizing the term, a Zoomer refers to "a Baby Boomer with Zip" and represents the 14.5 million Canadians who are 45" and over. Following Goffman’s arguments in his seminal presidential address to the American Sociological Association, "the Interaction Order," I take the position in this analysis that the body does not determine social practices but none-the-less the body is the sign vesicle that enables interaction. I argue that the images in the Geezerade campaign and Zoomers magazine represents a binary models of images of seniors that reflects ageist and classist assumptions about the bodies of seniors. Such a model limits the categories through which we understand the aging body and fails to account for the diversity of senior’s bodies in society.