This dissertation explores women's lived experiences and interpretations of aging against the contextual backdrop of the growing normalization of cosmetic surgery. C. Wright Mills' (1959; 1999 2L, 22) articulation of the "task and promise" of the sociological imagination--the reflexive interaction between "personal troubles" and "public issues"--inspired my investigation into the meanings women ascribe to aging in our contemporary era of commercialized medicine. How do women make sense of growing older in a world of expanding anti-aging surgeries and technologies, in a world whereby the older woman's body is increasingly targeted as source of profit?
Drawing from intensive interviews with women between the ages of 47 and 76 who are having and using, and refusing, anti-aging surgeries and technologies, themes of self, identity, and self-body relationships are analyzed. I also investigate the construction of my respondents' attitudes and experiences of growing older in and through their immediate social milieu (including interactions with friends, family members, colleagues, and doctors). Finally, I seek to illuminate the interplay between my respondents' understandings of aging and their encounters with, and exposure to, the cultural prevalence of anti-aging surgeries and technologies at large--from media images of older women, to anti-aging surgery/technology print and television advertising campaigns, to marketing brochures and posters in doctors' offices.
This dissertation is located at the intersection of four emergent sociological fields: critical gerontology; feminist age studies; sociology of the body, and feminist theories of the body. Even within these fields, the older woman's body is relatively absent. Through giving voice to women's articulations of self, body, and aging, my research empirically informs each of these fields and contributes new theorizations of the older woman's body.
