Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-265) and index.
Contents:
Introduction : older women in cosmetic culture -- "I wanted to look like me again" : aging, identity, and cosmetic intervention -- "I am what I am!" : the freedom of growing older "naturally" -- "Age changes you, but not like surgery" : refusing cosmetic intervention -- "Can we just stop the clock here?" : promise and peril in the anti-aging explosion -- "Why should I be the ugly one?" : social circles of intervention -- "It's not in my world" : living as a natural ager -- Conclusion : taking the body back -- Epilogue.
Summary:
The story of how and why some women choose to use, while others refuse, cosmetic intervention. What is it like to be a woman growing older in a culture where you cannot go to the doctor, open a magazine, watch television, or surf the internet without encountering products and procedures that are designed to make you look younger? What do women have to say about their decision to embrace cosmetic anti-aging procedures? And, alternatively, how do women come to decide to grow older without them? In the United States today, women are the overwhelming consumers of cosmetic anti-aging surgeries and technologies. And while not all women undergo these procedures, their exposure to them is almost inevitable. Set against the backdrop of commercialized medicine in the United States today, Abigail T. Brooks investigates the anti-aging craze from the perspective of women themselves, examining the rapidly changing cultural attitudes, pressures, and expectations of female aging. Drawn from in-depth interviews with women in the United States who choose, and refuse, to have cosmetic anti-aging procedures, The Ways Women Age provides a fresh understanding of how today's women feel about aging. The women's stories in this book are personal biographies that explore identity and body image and are reflexively shaped by beauty standards, expectations of femininity, and an increasingly normalized climate of cosmetic anti-aging intervention. The Ways Women Age offers a critical perspective on how women respond to 21st century expectations of youth and beauty.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.