Marketing successfully to age 40-plus women by Colin Milner

In September 2002, 43-year-old actress Jamie Lee Curtis chose to shake that very foundation on which Hollywood and much of marketing is built: “the illusion of perfection.” In a cover story for MORE, a magazine that celebrates women in midlife, she showed the real Jamie Lee to the world. Curtis (whose films include the 1985 movie Perfect) was photographed in a sports bra and briefs, without flattering lights and professional makeup, and with no retouching. The picture revealed what she called “not great thighs” and a “soft, fatty little tummy.”1 Placed beside this photo of the unadorned Curtis was a more familiar image of the movie star—beautified, styled and retouched. Perfection.