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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Constructions of ageing and narrative resistance in a commercial slimming group | | Author(s) | Debra Gimlin |
| Journal title | Ageing and Society, vol 27, part 3, May 2007 |
| Pages | pp 407-424 |
| Source | http://www.journals.cambridge.org/jid_ASO |
| Keywords | Older women ; Attitude ; Physical characteristics [elderly] ; Weight ; Ageing process. |
| Annotation | The role of organisational setting and age in shaping individual narratives of embodied selfhood form the focus for this study. It compares younger and older women's use of 'narrative resistance' to negative identity in the light of their ageing and the negative social and personal meanings of being fat. G Cordell and C R Ronai (1999) observed three types of narrative resistance among overweight people: loopholes, exemplars and continuums. This paper identifies two others: 'justification' for behaviour associated with weight gain, and 'repentance' for behaviour that reaffirmed a commitment to losing weight. Drawing from six months of participant observation and in-depth interviews with 20 older and younger female clients of a commercial weight loss organisation, this article shows that both the meanings women attributed to their experience of slimming, and their opportunities for benefiting from organisational resources, varied by their stage in the life course. The weight loss group generated narrative strategies and opportunities for its members that were informed for both cultural constructions of ageing and the organisation's interests. While these strategies stopped short of empowering the clients to abandon restrictive dieting altogether, they did enable the older respondents to excuse temporary setbacks in weight loss and their deviation from what they described as the more exacting appearance standards of youth. At the same time, the strategic narratives reaffirmed constructions of ageing that present the older female body as uncontrollable and older women as unconcerned with physical attractiveness. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-070426005 A |
| Classmark | BD: DP: BA: 4X6: BG |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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