The overwhelming span of social media has taken record-breaking heights, with the number of hours scrolling at an all-time high.
This has resulted in an unprecedented rise in consumerism.
In the beauty industry, influencers on apps like Tiktok and Instagram often promote products like face masks, bonnets, serums and vitamins.
While there’s nothing wrong with self-care and wellness, these products are constantly marketed as anti-aging towards teens and young adults.
Let that sink in: teenagers being marketed anti-aging products.
They are too young to be worried about such vanity.
The idea that youth needs to be worried about wrinkles and blemishes as early as their pre-teen years, is a troubling trend.
Unfortunately, this concept has spread from social media to the entertainment industry, with many mature actresses in Hollywood now being overlooked for their younger co-stars.
But the fight against ageism isn’t a new concept, many actresses have been protesting the idea for decades before social media popularized it.
Actress Demi Moore is famous for her candor surrounding this issue.
Recently, she went viral after being snubbed for her leading role in The Substance.
Instead, Mikey Madison won her first Oscar, at twenty-five years old.
While both actresses were power-houses in their roles, fans believed that there was a larger message at play.
Moore has been acting for over forty years, yet she only received her first Academy Nomination in 2025.
While Madison is still relatively new, not to mention, this was her first time starring in a major picture.
Despite the favoritism in Hollywood for adolescent girls, a series of actresses are fighting back against this stigma.
Second, Pamela Anderson.
Anderson is fifty-eight years old, most known for appearing in the TV Show Baywatch.
Anderson was first discovered in August of 1989, at a Canadian Football game.
The star appeared on the big-screen of a jumbo-tron, and the reaction was immediate.
Playboy executives swiftly reached out to her, with Hugh Hefner helping to launch her acting career.
She soon entered the height of her career in the 90’s and 2000’s, notorious for her beauty and bombshell figure.
Despite having a nearly entirely male audience, Anderson has now pivoted from her former image.
The actress is often seen on red-carpets with a bare face, and her natural hair.
She confidently shows her wrinkles, freckles and imperfections at major events – stating “vanity is a ‘prison’”.
Third, Tracee Ellis Ross.
Ross is an award-winning actress, and appears in the hit-sitcom, Black-Ish.
She’s a style icon, producer and daughter of the legendary singer; Diana Ross.
At fifty-three years old, the actress embraces aging.
She calls it an “honor” and enjoys the experience of growing older.
In 2025, she came out with her hit-series Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross; an unscripted series documenting her life as she travels the world solo, with no spouse or children.
Ross emphasized self-care, and embraced her solitude; highlighting her complex experience with resisting societal pressure and expectations on motherhood.
While these three women have made strides throughout their career to normalize aging.
The trending cliches created online continue to destroy women in the industry’s self esteem.
The age considered “old” becomes lower and lower, with critics pushing their standards as young as thirty.
For example, the fourth figure; Alexa Demie.
Demie is thirty-five years old, famous for her role as “Maddy Perez” in the explosive series, Euphoria.
Despite playing a high school character while in her mid-thirties, the majority of fans never realized the actress’s true age.
Demie is notorious for having kept her age a secret, never confirming her date of birth in interviews, sparking a wave of curiosity across the internet.
After years of media investigating, her untold truth was revealed.
A viral tiktok was uploaded, showing a high school yearbook from the year 2008, confirming her birthday to be December 11, 1990.
Following the lively internet debate, supporters of the big name defended Demie. Arguing that her age shouldn’t have been treated as a news headline, and sparked revelations on ageism in the film industry.
Hollywood has an unhealthy obsession with youth and forcing aged-actresses to hit a glass ceiling.
Stereotypes surrounding age, is discrimination.
This prejudice is killing the industry.
Consumerism is killing individuality.
It has to stop.