Description

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Older women have never been so visible, or so problematised, in popular media culture as now; but what kinds of representations are being offered, and how can we make sense of them in the context of post-feminism and global economic change? Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations offers a timely intervention into the hiatus between the visibility of aging femininity in contemporary circuits of culture and its marginalisation in cultural theory. From graceful agers and Saga subscribers, to make-over models and pop divas, each of the essays in this collection interrogates the different manifestations of aging femininity in terms of both its historic invisibility and its new visibility. The book forges links between contemporary lived experience and feminist cultural theory and research, often through the direct and autobiographical knowledge of the writers themselves. Divided into four sections - Cultural Herstories, Regulations and Transgressions, Problematic Postfeminists? and Divas and Dolls - plus a thought-provoking photo essay, it wrests the discourse of aging away from the twin hegemonies of consumer culture and gerontology to present a diverse selection of essays and positions. Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations establishes the long overlooked richness and the complexity of this field of study.

About the Author

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Dr Josephine Dolan is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of the West of England. She teaches and publishes in the areas of women and film and British cinema, whilst her most recent research is concerned with questions of aging, gender and film. She is a founder member of the WAM (Women, Aging, Media) research network and has been appointed to the Advisory Board of ENAS (European Network of Aging Studies). Her recent publications include The Queen: The Bio-pic, Aging Femininity and the Recuperation of the Monarchy in Aging Studies in Europe (Volume 2, 2012), Firm and Hard: Stardom, Gender and the Troubling Embodiment of 'Successful Aging' in De-Centring Cultural Studies: Past, Present and Future of Popular Culture (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013) and Smoothing the Wrinkles: Hollywood, the Pathological Gaze and Old-Age Femininity in The Routledge Companion to Media and Gender (2013). Estella Tincknell is Associate Professor in Film and Culture at the University of the West of England. She is the author of Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation (Edward Arnold, 2005) and the forthcoming Viewing Jane Campion: Angels, Demons and Voices (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). She is a member of the WAM (Women, Aging, Media) research network and has written and commented extensively on the ways in which older women are depicted in popular media. Her recent publications include Goldie Hawn: A Dumb Blonde for the Baby Boomer Generation, in Celebrity, Performance, and Aging (Verlag, 2012), Scourging the Abject Body: Ten Years Younger and Fragmented Femininity under Neoliberalism in New Femininities: Post-feminism, Neoliberalism and Identity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), Double O Agencies: Femininity, Post-feminism and the Female Spy in Casino Royale in Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale (Wallflower Press, 2009) and, with Josephine Dolan and Suzy Gordon, The 'Postfeminist' Biopic: Re-Telling the Past in Iris, The Hours and Sylvia in Textual Infidelities (I. B. Tauris, 2009).