ABSTRACT
Visible Difference advertising copy, like that of other anti-aging products, frightens women into feeling that their faces and bodies won't fit into the picture of femininity unless the women replenish their moisture supply. In Western history, witches, most often pictured and tried as old(er) women, have been accused of sexual gluttony. Old(er) women artists' prophecies are not cause for celebration untouched by conflict, for celebrants would be naively sentimental journeyers. That beauty promotes love is an ancient philosophical idea and a contemporary underpinning of beauty-product advertising. In American culture at large the Grand Mother, a wisewoman, is a fiction awaiting incarnation. The theme of invisibility runs throughout the literature on women and aging and recurs in the comments of women artists over fifty. Old(er) women can become invisible due to lack of interest in them as the subject of art. Generational separation may also contribute to old(er) women's art world invisibility.
