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"With a sharp sense of justice and humor, Susan J. Douglas confronts ageism against women in media, work, and politics. In the 1970s, baby boom women began to redefine women's lives and opportunities. Now, that they are the largest American female generation over fifty, Susan J. Douglas argues that these feminist boomers are again challenging outdated stereotypes, and reinventing what it means to be older and female. This is a demographic revolution, and Douglas proposes that it's time for a new wave of activism to address ageism against women in all its manifestations. In Our Prime takes on the cosmetics industry for its expensive products and anti-aging messages; big pharma for its images of docile grannies and puttering gardeners; and Hollywood and TV for seeing females over fifty as has-beens. She exposes the financial insecurity many face even as conservatives continue their attack on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid-and calls on women of every age to unite to combat gendered ageism and to secure our country's financial safety net"--

This article reviews both what Personal Influence revealed about the two-step flow within women's inter-personal networks and what it failed to capture about women's experiences during the tumultuous changes in gender roles between 1945, when the data were collected, and 1955, when the study was published. One of the central contradictions of the Decatur Study is that it simultaneously disguises that it is women who are being studied here yet universalizes them as representative of the general population. But the article also argues that despite the blind spots and ahistoricity of Personal Influence, it was a crucial reminder that women, despite being individual targets of much media fare, were also embedded in social networks through which they influenced other women and were, in turn, influenced by them.

This article reviews both what Personal Influence revealed about the two-step flow within women's inter-personal networks & what it failed to capture about women's experiences during the tumultuous changes in gender roles between 1945, when the data were collected, & 1955, when the study was published. One of the central contradictions of the Decatur Study is that it simultaneously disguises that it is women who are being studied here yet universalizes them as representative of the general population. But the article also argues that despite the blind spots & a historicity of Personal Influence, it was a crucial reminder that women, despite being individual targets of much media fare, were also embedded in social networks through which they influenced other women & were, in turn, influenced by them. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2006 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Today, celebrity culture is an inescapable part of our media landscape and our everyday lives. This was not always the case. Over the past century, media technologies have increasingly expanded the production and proliferation of fame. Celebrity explores this revolution and its often under-estimated impact on American culture. Using numerous precedent-setting examples spanning more than one hundred years of media history, Douglas and McDonnell trace the dynamic relationship between celebrity and the technologies of mass communication that have shaped the nature of fame in the United States.