Age in change: voices and views of older women

Abstract

The youth orientation of Swedish society makes older women invisible. Current norms of youth and beauty exclude and misrepresent the elderly and ageing, and pose a challenge for older women to maintain a positive self-image. This research explores how older women experience and cope with the processes of ageing within a youth centred cultural context. The paper presents and analyzes findings from six semi-structured, in-depth interviews with women between the ages of 65 and 85 regarding their experiences, feelings, and perceptions of ageing in relation to their bodies, to significant others, and to media representations of ageing and old women. The results of the research reveal that these women have, through lived experiences, developed strategies in dealing with ageing in relation to their bodies, to significant others, and to the youth oriented media outlet. Such strategies are diverse and overlap into different contexts, yet themes of approaches utilised by all six respondents emerge in the form of shifting values, humour, communication, and resistance. The results further suggest that identity formation continues in old age, as an embodied process of continuity and change that is influenced by structural factors, relationships, as well as individual agency.

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