How much of our lives has been spent on living up to impossible beauty standards? Standards created by the media, the patriarchy, and yes, advertising. Global ad spend in the beauty category continues to grow, but who’s really paying attention? Who is absorbing the nonstop barrage of content messaging and predetermined ideals? Apparently not women over 40.

Survey says: 84% of women 40+ think brands overestimate their preoccupation with their physical appearance.

Fancy surveyed 500 women over 40 and asked them what they thought about advertising and marketing—what brands were getting right, and...not so right. They largely agreed that brands were overestimating their preoccupation with their skin, hair, face, size, shape, weight and everything else that makes up the way we look to other people and to ourselves.

Why do they think like this?

Women see themselves in beauty ads and not much else.

According to the Geena Davis Institute, ads featuring only men were five times as common as ads featuring only women (25% and 5%). And overall, only about a third of characters in commercials are women. And it’s not just sight; it’s sound too. Men speak about seven times more than women do. And when women do get a chance to speak, they aren’t given the same opportunity men are to say lines that convey authority with men given dialogue more likely to contain words associated with power (29%) and achievement (28%).

The beauty ads don’t reflect the way women over 40 feel about themselves.

The women we surveyed felt cooler, stronger and sexier than they ever expected they’d feel at their current age. They don’t necessarily want to relive their 20s (that’s a reality dreamed up by a bunch of 20 & 30 something marketers who don’t know how much better and more confident life on the other side of 40 actually is), they want to make their 40s, 50s, 60s...90s as amazing as possible.

There is no recognition (nevermind celebration) of the reality of the woman they actually want to buy the product.

Beauty brands know that their most intense skincare lines (with products for deep creases, crepey skin, sagginess, and all manner of neck things, etc.) are for women in and well past their 40s. And yet they are often sold with a far younger model, whose already (naturally, biologically) youthful skin is still retouched into a state of perfection even she could never achieve.

Beauty is a part of her life but it isn’t her whole life.

It’s not so much about looking good, it's about feeling good about the way you look. And this comes from living in a world where you feel respected, included, valued. When brands take the time to deeply understand a woman’s multifaceted life, especially women over 40, they will uncover a truth and a place to exist within her world that is both meaningful and motivating. And that is a beautiful thing.