Oy, Hollywood. Oy.

If you live somewhere in America, and have eyeballs, you have probably seen the posters for Courtney Cox’s new show, Cougar town. As you might expect, it is about ‘cougars’, the hugely overused term for women who might be considered to be courting middle age and who date younger men. I don’t really have much interest in watching this show anyway (if the best they can come up with is ‘a sexy new comedy’, I’m out, thanks), but it really isn’t helped by the poster, which illustrates one of my most favorite examples of completely contradictory Hollywood thinking. Take a gander at the image:

First of all, I won’t even mention how horrible the photoshopping is on her legs – I feel like I did a better job editing things with that little paint can that used to be in drawing programs on computers ten years ago. Or the hot pink color, which clearly means that this will appeal to the womenfolk, because we all like pink, right? What bothers me so very much about this poster is the fact that the whole POINT of being a cougar is about empowering older women, right? Her shirt says it all – 40 is the new 20. But before you think that maybe, just maybe, Hollywood has acknowledged that women over the age of 25 might still be attractive (shocking!), take a closer look.  Not only have they designed the colors and fonts to look like they wouldn’t be out of place on a Bratz Doll box, Courtney Cox has been so completely airbrushed into oblivion that she actually looks like she’s 20. So basically, the show is presumably about how awesome it is to be 40, and yet the poster is saying that it’s awesome to be 40, but ONLY IF YOU LOOK LIKE A 20-YEAR OLD. So their poster has basically contradicted their entire message. Nice, guys. Nice.