Ageing and the presentation of self: Women’s perspectives on negotiating age,identity and femininity through dress

Abstract

Scholars have anticipated that women who grew up during the 1960s may resist cultural pressures to achieve a feminine appearance into old age. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews and personal journals from Australian women aged between 55 and 72, I argue that older women’s choices of dress and appearance are disciplined by their application of cultural norms regarding age-appropriateness, femininity and, increasingly, active ageing. Utilising the Foucauldian concept of self-surveillance in the operation of disciplinary power, this article explores the interaction of prevailing ideas about old age in the context of broader discourses on generational change and the emphases upon individual responsibility for the body. It focuses on the degree to which older women feel able to craft their own embodied old age within these competing discourses in order to explore tensions between shifting meanings of old age and structural constraints on choice.