Doing beauty: Women, ageing and identity

Abstract

Women are continuously bombarded with images of idealized feminine beauty that privilege young, slim, toned and healthy bodies (Bordo, 2003; Gimlin, 2002; Wolf, 1991). While youth is equated with sexual desirability, health and femininity, oldness is associated with asexuality, poor health, social invisibility and a loss of physical attractiveness and social currency (Bytheway, 1995; Calasanti and Slevin, 2001; Holstein, 2001-02). Existing age relations culminate in the assigning of social resources, opportunities and value based on one’s age and ability to approximate the youthful ideal (Calasanti, 2005; Calasanti and Slevin, 2001). Thus, women experience enormous pressure to engage in beauty work in order to stave off the appearance changes that accompany ageing and the concomitant loss of social currency. Indeed, from an early age, women learn that the effective and appropriate '“doing” of gender’ is a ‘routine, methodical and recurring accomplishment’ (West and Zimmerman, 1987: 126) that requires ever more intensive beauty work (Bartky, 1990; Bordo, 2003; Davis, 1997). Examining how women do gender and femininity through beauty work, feminist researchers have explored the use and experience of dieting and exercise (Bordo, 2003; Brumberg, 1997; Gimlin, 2002; Hesse-Biber, 1996), hair care (Furman, 1997; Gimlin, 2002; Hurd Clarke and Korotchenko, 2010; Weitz, 2001), make-up (Beausoleil, 1994; Hurd Clarke and Bundon, 2009), fashion (Jeffreys, 2005; Hurd Clarke, Griffin and Maliha, 2009; see also Chapter 9 this volume), sun tanning (Hurd Clarke and Korotchenko, 2009) and surgical and non-surgical cosmetic procedures (Davis, 1995; 2003; Hurd Clarke, Repta and Griffin, 2007; Hurd Clarke and Griffin, 2007; 2008).