Health and wellness companies target boomers – fit, active and the healthiest ageing 50-plus generation ever
- Perceptions of ageing are changing rapidly; as Jennifer Lopez showed in her Super Bowl halftime show, for many life really does begin at 50
- Many advertisers don’t see baby boomers as young at heart, but shrewd players in the wellness industry see there’s money to be made in the ‘silver economy’
It is an undeniable fact of being alive that we must all age and – brace yourselves – die. Growing old is part of the human condition, and in our ageing, we are all united: a postal worker in the US Midwest ultimately faces the same fate as William Shakespeare and Xi Jinping. Or do they?
While nobody is seriously claiming that immortality is reasonable to expect, many experts and entrepreneurs are finding that the current generation of the middle-aged is making history, growing old in ways that nobody dared to, nor could before them.
“The baby boomers are simply refusing to age in the ways that people had to before,” says Beth McGroarty, vice-president of research and forecasting for the Global Wellness Institute and the Global Wellness Summit.
Don’t believe us? Well look no further than this year’s much tweeted-about Super Bowl halftime show. In between American football halves, Jennifer Lopez and Shakira performed a breathtaking, pyrotechnic, Latin-inspired song and dance routine, working up a sweat and, judging from the reaction online, driving at-home viewers into a sort of frenzy.
Lopez, who is 50 years old, and Shakira who is 43, inspired a veritable parade of think pieces in the days following their performance. There was “J. Lo and the Power of 50” in The New York Times, and “Jennifer Lopez and the Invisibility of Middle Aged Women” on Jezebel, and then there was Buzzfeed’s more pointed “Congrats To Everyone Who Realised Older Women Are Hot.”
