Centre for Policy on Ageing



Older women's body image and embodied experience — an exploration
Author(s)	Laura C Hurd
Journal title	Journal of Women & Aging, vol 12, nos 3/4, 2000
Pages	pp 77-98
Source	http://www.tandfonline.com
Keywords	Older women ; Physical characteristics [elderly] ; Ageing process ; Attitude ; Ageism ; Social surveys ; Canada.
Annotation	Findings are presented and analysed from unstructured interviews with women aged 61 to 92 regarding their perceptions and feelings about their ageing bodies. The data are discussed in light of the existing literature on women's body image, which has largely ignored the experiences of women in later life, and which has tended to focus on adolescent and middle-aged women. Given the fact that beauty is equated with youthfulness and slimness in our society, older women face unique challenges as they strive to construct and maintain positive evaluations of self. The women in this Canadian study exhibited the internalisation of ageist beauty norms, even as they assert that health is more important to them than physical attractiveness and comment on the "naturalness" of the ageing process. (KJ/RH).
Accession Number	CPA-010222205 A
Classmark	BD: BA: BG: DP: B:TOB: 3F: 7S
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.