Women, Travelling and Later Life

Abstract

Contemporary culture is saturated with what Kathleen Woodward describes as ‘the youthful structure of the look’.1 Women’s ageing bodies provoke particularly strong fear and disgust, as their sexual and aesthetic currency is perceived to diminish. Unsurprisingly, this disgust means that older women have been marginalised and have achieved limited visibility in popular film. This situation appears to be changing, however, as Meryl Streep notesI remember when I turned 40, I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles… It was almost like the world was saying or the studios were saying, ‘We don’t know what to do with you.’...That really has changed, not completely, not for everybody, but for me it has changed.2