The submitted paper is below; the power point
presentation can be accessed here.
Cosmetic and fitness intervention as antiageing technologies: Social and cultural
implications.
John Vincent (University of Exeter) & Emmanuelle Tulle (Glasgow Caledonian
University)
Introduction
Across cultures and through history there have been attempts to control ageing, resist
death and create immortality. In contemporary society this has been manifested in two
parallel but increasingly linked areas: biomedicine and consumer culture. In the West, we
believe that bioscience will come to control human ageing. The belief that ageing can be
manipulated is also felt at the interface between science and consumption. What is now
widely known amongst an expanding range of practitioners as ‘anti-ageing medicine’
relies on the opportunities offered by markets and commercialisation to promote and sell
putative anti-ageing products and therapies. Two important sites in which ‘symptom
alleviation techniques’ (Vincent 2006a), that is techniques designed to control the visible
or felt signs of ageing processes have become widespread, are cosmetic intervention and
exercise/fitness. In this presentation, using a range of theoretical tools, we will place the
rise of these techniques into their wider cultural context, examine the cultural and social
implications of relying on symptom alleviation techniques as a way for individuals of
developing a valued and meaningful old age and explore whether anti-ageing as a ‘social
movement’ (Mykytyn 2006), focused as it is on body modification, can address the social
and cultural marginalisation of older people. Ultimately this paper intends to contribute
to the enhancement of the sociology of ageing bodies by consciously interrogating
opportunities for meaningful social change contained in a set of practices which are
focused on altering the symbolic value of ageing bodies.
Resistance and cultural ageism
In this paper we will examine the anti-ageing ‘movement’ as a form of cultural resistance
to ageism. We will focus specifically on the anti-ageing endeavors focused on the body
as practiced in fitness clubs and beauty salons. There are grounds to accept that the
marginalization experienced by people as they get older is deep-seated. Butler (1969)
and, more recently Bytheway (1995), have presented frequently used definitions of
ageism. Ageism involves the devaluation or rejection of one part of the life course as
degraded or less valuable than another. Can ‘anti-ageing’ practices be understood as
resisting ageism or do they constitute part of the problem?
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There are parallels which can be drawn with youth cultures and working class culture in
the search for resistance to ageing and old age. The 1970 and 80s saw a prolific growth in
the study of youth cultures. This highly influential school of Sociology was focused
around the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies. They identified youth subcultures as
form of resistance in a class based society. A classic of this genre is Paul Willis’s (1977)
Learning to Labour. In his study of male pupils in a Birmingham comprehensive, one of
his key arguments is the way in which the ‘lads’ subculture undermines the middle class
control systems of school but ironically also prepares the boys for a life of manual labour.
Much of this Birmingham school moved on to cultural studies and the role of music and
stylist genres ( c.f. Hebdige 1979). The issue posed by this ‘culture of resistance’ (Saukko
2003: 39-54) approach for the sociology of old age is whether it is possible to identify
strategies of resistance to ageism equivalent to the resistance of youth. What can
certainly be retained from cultural studies applied to youth is that any attempt at
resistance is likely to be ambiguous.
One approach has been to look at specific generational cultures and identify particular
lifestyles, attitudes and value orientations. (c.f. Blaikie 1999, 2004, Gilleard and Higgs
2001). While this approaches fits well with discussions of consumerism, life style and
identity politics, it does not tackle directly the issues of ageism. That is to say, the
prejudices and discriminations which surround the impact of the passage of time on
social actors and their bodies are not addressed or challenged. Another approach is to
look at the Third Age social movement. There are many conscious attempts by older
people and others to counter ageism and construct a positive Third Age identity of
personal growth. Much professional gerontology following explicitly and otherwise from
Peter Laslett (1989) takes this reformation of the post-retirement phase of life to heart and
many activists have done excellent work in bolstering the esteem of this group. However,
critics of this position point out that there is a danger of merely extending the period of
valorized youth, leaving deep old age as marginalized and feared as ever. Resistance to
ageism can also be examined with respect to political action to counter age discrimination
and discriminatory practices e.g. anti poll tax campaigns. The problem with this
perspective is the limited appeal of grey power movements in contemporary society.
Pensioner power was more effectively mobilized in the 1930s than currently (Vincent et
al 2001, Mcnicol 1998, Blaikie1990). If consumption, third age lifestylism and the lack
of political mobilization reinforce rather than challenge ageism, we need to interrogate
other practices. Given the ubiquity of anti-ageing practices, leading Mykytyn (2006) to
characterize it as a ‘social movement’, we would like to explore the potential of such
practices to lead to a revaluation of old age.
The construction of ageing as a bodily phenomenon
As we have already mentioned, the dominant view of ageing in modern Western culture
is that it is a natural biological process. It is naturalized as an impersonal biological force
that happens to people creating a variety of changes to appearance and bodily
competence – stereotypically grey hair, wrinkles, skin condition and eye sight and
hearing loss. Old age is medicalised. It is associated with increased disease risk, not only
the major killers of heart disease and cancer but also arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease,
diabetes and osteoporosis. In sum, ageing is seen primarily as a bodily phenomenon and
as such ageism takes on particular characteristics. We can critically examine how a
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biologised view of ageing attains its power and explore where and how the tyranny of
biological ageing can be opposed and resisted.
We can draw on the sociology of the body to explain how the body has become the prime
site in which ageing is apprehended and examine whether bodily interventions are
effective ways of challenging ageism. This will contribute to the further development of
the sociology of ageing bodies. In particular, we propose that an enhanced sociology of
ageing bodies/embodiment needs to open up ways of challenging existing modalities of
ageing embodiment and the prevalent structures within which current responses to
cultural ageism are fashioned. Particular developments in sociological theorizing can be
used to recast the issues which pertain to ageing, and in particular ageing bodies.
Knowing ageing bodies
In many ways, the biologisation of ageing is no longer an ‘external’ force but one which
we all have internalized, such that we have phenomenological experiences of our own
ageing which fit the biological template. This perspective draws on Foucault’s point
about discourse and how we become subjectified by discourse. Foucault’s work is a
useful point of reference to understand the way in which dominant knowledge systems
produce technologies to order, control, classify and discipline bodies (Foucault 1973).
These processes in effect act out the ‘truth’ about bodies. Katz (1996), using a
Foucauldian perspective, has been particularly insightful in revealing how the discipline
of gerontology, as it was emerging in the 19th Century, reframed the ways in which older
people’s bodies were apprehended, through their classification as medical events, from
which forms of control could be established. A critique of Foucauldian approaches is that
they give bodies little agency and in particular do not illuminate the mechanisms which
may lead to alternative forms of embodiment. However charting the archaeology of the
medicalisation of ageing and old age and the power of biological discourses may help us
identify and take advantage of any weaknesses in the discourse of ageing and old age.
We can also turn to Giddens who, in his attempts to characterize high modernity, one
which incorporated elements of the post-modern critique with the legacy of sociology’s
founding fathers, produced an influential theory of the body. He argued that the greatly
increased knowledge in science and technology gives the possibility of more and more
control and modification of the human body. At the same time consumerism and
expanded market opportunities create the possibility of identities formed and presented as
consumer choice. Given the close connection between bodies and identity, Giddens
(1991) argues, in high modernity we are engaged in body projects, involving the use of
techniques of bodily manipulation to achieve reflexive manipulation of personal identity.
Clearly numbers of anti-ageing practices can be seem as part of individualized body
projects, however the key issue is whether such activity is empowering or merely self
enacted slavery to an ageist agenda.
Pain and disease have been found to play a role in disrupting identity (see Williams &
Bendelow (1998), Leder (1990), Armstrong (1983) as well as Gubrium and Holstein
(2003)), operating biographical disruptions and spoiled identities. Turner (1996)
provides an analysis of the way that bodily ageing threatens identity. Bodily decay, he
argues, reflects badly on our soul, threatening the mind/body integrity and throwing light
on the lapses of character which might have led to such visible ageing. He argued later
4
that the ageing body constitutes the ontology of ageing. This explains why ageing
embodiment leads to cultural marginalization and the efforts which might be expanded in
modalities of social action which focus on postponing bodily ageing. The latter could be
seen as a continuation of the mortification of the flesh which in contemporary consumer
cultures is aimed at the attainment of virtue through the body beautiful. Giddens' body
projects and Turner's position on the ontological status of older people illuminate the risk
of cultural marginalization in which older social actors find themselves. However what
they do not offer is a way out, other than facilitating temporary denial or appealing to an
ageless self to protect the corruption of identity which is held to follow from bodily
decay.
One escape from the constraints, cultural or otherwise, of biological determinism is
developed in the radical critique of Donna Harraway through her use of the idea of the
cyborg (Harraway 1991). In the cyborg she sees liberating qualities through the unsettling
of boundaries between human and non-human, mechanical and transformed biology.
Harraway like other writers who have sought to ‘de-nature’ women’s bodies does not
explicitly address the issues of old age in depth. However, the key question raised by
Harraway’s approach is whether it is liberating to look for cyborg elders freed from the
failing and decaying bodies into the new possibilities of life as an enhanced
quasi/human/machine. While we can readily accept most people’s bodies in the West as
mechanically enhanced and biologically modified (in the case of the oldest author
through glasses, hearing aid, dental fillings, and appendectomy, vasectomy and
cholecystectomy). There are also the high tech models for quasi immortality, for example
the anti-ageing cyborg - the body mechanically and biologically manipulated to not age
through replacement of the failing parts or induced rejuvenation of others. These thought
experiments raise important philosophical questions about the possibilities of remaining
human if we escape the confines of our human body? Thus the application of this
approach focuses on the avoidance of biological ageing and is thus problematic in finding
ways to re-evaluate the ageing body.
Our central purpose in this paper [and our proposed research] is to question whether the
ageing body constitutes a potential agent of change. There are descriptions in the
literature of modalities of embodied agency which pose similar questions. Feminist
approaches as typified by the work of Emily Martin (1989) and Sarah Franklin (1997,
2006), illustrate the intrusion of gender into science and scientific constructions of the
body and how it works. Their critique of masculine science can be used to gain insight
into problematic views of female ‘natural procreativity’. Critics such as Frieden (1993)
would suggest that feminists are primarily concerned about younger women’s concerns,
for example the control of fertility, leaving the bodies of older post menopausal women
marginalized and unexamined.. The debate within feminism about beauty and sexuality is
also relevant and illuminating. Sanchez and Sanchez (2006) explore the extent to which
cosmetic surgery can be read as younger women positively using agency to reclaim
active sexuality. The emphasis on the feminine condition can also unwittingly foreground
the naturalization of women’s bodies and also contain embedded ageist notions about the
asexuality or undesirability of older women’s bodies.
Bourdieu (1989, 1990) through the concept of habitus brought out the un-selfconscious
bodily practices which are ingrained in distinctive social groups, particularly social
5
classes. Bodily practices are a kind of socially situated repertoire of action, not explicitly
learned rules of behaviour, not rationally calculated or based in biological instinct. This
raises the possibility of an age based habitus with respect to bodily practices, according to
which the type of bodily practices which people take up as they get older reflects the
repertoire of dispositions available to people who reach such ages (Dumas, Laberge, and
Straka 2005).
Inspired by Bourdieu, Crossley (2001) reminds us that we cannot conceive of bodily
practices outside of the social systems in which they are carried out. Here he reinforces
the social dimension of the body, or rather of embodiment. Everything we do in and with
our bodies has social (and cultural) implications. But he also draws attention to the
phenomenological dimension of action. In a bid to transcend the divide which has
appeared in the sociology of the body between those who give primacy to the body as the
object of social control and those who give primacy to the sensate, almost a-social,
dimension of the body, he proposes a meshing of the two sets of processes through the
use of ‘embodied agency’. This is to be understood as our incarnation, our incorporation
of the will to act in socially desirable ways inasmuch as these fulfill what we perceive to
be idiosyncratic, almost basic needs.
Shilling (1993) on the other hand envisages embodied agency as a mechanism with the
potential to lead to social change, but this requires more elaboration. This is a useful
development which opens the door for the development of a sociology of ageing bodies
which points the way to something different.
Hargreaves (1994) has convincingly shown how women’s bodies have been ‘socialised’
into inferior competence by patriarchal structures, manifested in the foregrounding of
women’s reproductive role over the attainment of competent physicality, mediated by
class. This process of enfeeblement has been shown by Vertinsky (1998) to affect
expectations of appropriate physicality among older women and in particular to
contribute to much of the disability which is held to be a correlate of ageing. Responses
to this process of enfeeblement are problematic. A range of such strategies has been
identified. For instance, (Hurd 1999) described how older women living in a retirement
complex in Californian had developed strategies for dealing with physical ageing. Of
note were the lengths these women would go to retain appearances of physical
competence even when beset by ill-health and impending disability. In other words,
bodily competence and function structured access to symbolic capital. They also had
recourse to the mind/body relationship, foregrounding the mind over the body in a bid to
retain symbolic capital.
These are of course culturally recognizable tropes to talk about the body. Our interest is
whether these work as a way of resisting ageing in a meaningful way, that is in a way that
redraws the boundaries of symbolic, social and cultural capital. We need to think about
fitness clubs and beauty centres as loci or structures in which cultures of ageing and
related patterns of embodied agency are negotiated.
What is needed therefore is an articulation of what precisely would be resisted in this
process of redrawing, at the level of the individual/identity, at the level of culture (what is
it that we do and what value is attached to it), and at the level of social structures (what
position do we occupy). We argue that these are key questions which should underpin a
6
sociology of the ageing body. We propose to do this through an examination of fitness
and beauty, or rather of the ways in which what are identified as the key losses of ageing
are embedded in what appears to be constructed as a war against ageing. [specifically
what is the relationship between bio-gerontological science (or biology more generally)
and the anti-ageing practices of clients of fitness centres and beauty clinics. ]
We can start to engage in this critical process by examining fitness and beauty practices
and the claim that is made on their behalf that they can be used to fight the war against
ageing (Vincent 2006b). We have already established in what discursive context the
propagation of the idea of fighting ageing had arisen and been given legitimacy
(biomedicine, the debate about ageing as normal or disease, its association with disease,
the rise of biogerontology). We can draw attention to the shift to neoliberal ideology
with its emphasis on the management of risk and the shift in responsibility for this to
private individuals, in a bid to reduce state and collective responsibility and control costs.
We have also highlighted the role of consumption as a route into third age lifestyles and
identities which are meant to provide a route out of marginal status at the individual level.
A number of commentators have pointed out how with the decline of collectivists
approaches to social welfare and increasing individualization of old age, responsibility
for securing old age passes from the state to the individual, and that includes
responsibility for maintaining good health and attaching blame to those who indulge in
life style practices which endanger their health in later life (Estes et al 2003). Thus body
projects for fitness and health including anti-ageing practices are constructed as a
personal responsibility. In order to subject these processes to sociological scrutiny via
fitness and beauty, we have to ask a set of questions:
- what is the prevalence of these techniques?
- what claims are made on their behalf and by whom?
- who takes them up (age, class, gender)? and why?
- what are the social relations on which the development of these techniques rely? in
particular what power relations are played out?
- what narratives of ageing and old age do they give rise to and who controls them?
- what dispositions do they encourage or give rise to?
- who benefits from these techniques? What happens if/when they don't work?
In other words, to the extent that engaging in these techniques amounts to embodied
agency, does it also lead to transformations in the social position of old people and the
cultural value of ageing?
What would the latter look like? What would we like it to look like?
We propose to engage in a study using observational, ethnographic and interview
techniques to explore these questions. As a preliminary to that data we can explore
existing studies and national data sets.
Fitness and beauty.
Fitness
7
The evidence on the prevalence of fitness activity amongst the general population is
mixed, suggesting less overall fitness activity but increasing specific use of fitness clubs
and their facilities. Active engagement in fitness activities is structured by class and by
age. The Health Survey of England has asked a standard question about engagement in
physical activity for well over a decade. The question is overly specific for our purposes,
recording whether the respondent reports engagement in a number of specific sporting
(including indoor and outdoor swimming and ‘keep fit’) or recreational activities
(including dancing and darts):
Health Survey England: Percentage reporting physical activity measure
90
80
70
60
50
1993
1999
2004
40
30
20
10
0
16-24
25-34
35-44
45-54
55-64
65-74
over 75
All
The trends indicate a systematic decline in activity from the youngest age groups.
However, the latest survey suggests an increase in such activities for all but the youngest
group and most marked increased in the over 75 years olds.
8
Health Survey of England Exercise and sport
index by class and year.
70
60
50
1993
40
1999
30
2004
20
10
0
I
II
IIIN
IIIM
IV
V
Total
There is a straight forward class gradient in the responses to the measure. However the
greatest falls in reported activity over the period are for the unskilled manual workers
(class V) and least for the professional white collar workers (class II).
Physical activity is an area which is being encouraged and marketed as anti-ageing, as a
way of ‘reducing or preventing functional declines linked to secondary aging’ (Goggin
and Morrow 2001: 58). Certainly the association of fitness and health is well established
in the public mind, not least in response to health education with respect to high rates of
heart disease. However, the phenomenon of the rapid grow of the fitness industry in
terms of employment, commercial activity and its association with looking good and
resisting ageing needs a cultural explanation.
The growth of the fitness industry has been phenomenal. According to Crossley (2005:2)
citing a Mintel (2003) survey “the number of health clubs in the UK and the rate of
subscription to such clubs have risen steadily and consistently over the last 10 years.
There was an 18% increase in the number of private health clubs in the UK in the four
year period between 1998 and 2002 alone, with numbers of members of such clubs
national rising from 2.16 to 3.78 million…” This expansion in the numbers involved is
matched by its commercial success. Under the headline – “UK Health & Fitness Sector in
Best Shape Ever”, the Fitness Industry Association report in their 2006 State of the
Industry report that “The UK Health & Fitness Sector, valued at almost £2.5 billion, has
grown in value by 4% over the last 12 months. It now has more members than at any time
in its 20-year history. The strongest growth in membership was amongst the top 10
brands.”
Crossley (2005, 2006) looked at motives for attending a fitness club. He makes the case
for seeing such attendance as essentially a socially integrating occasion. His account of
motives of fitness club participants links directly to a view of ageing as loss.
“[there] …. Are those who account for their presence at the gym by reference to lost
fitness, sometimes through injury but more often through ageing and lack of
exercise, which must be recouped for sporting activities to resume ‘at the start of
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the season’. The most common account of starting at the gym, however, focuses
upon the need to lose weight, tone up and get fit.” (Crossley 2005:7)
Sassatelli (2001), in an Italian context, identifies
“Straddling commercial culture and physical discipline, fitness gyms occupy a
highly significant cultural space. The practices and discourse of body control, health
maintenance and the promotion of physical efficiency may serve the need of
western nations to regulate an ageing population. But they are increasingly
delivered by the private market of goods and services.” P.407
“Abstract as the ideal of fitness may be, its characteristics stress certain key values:
the instrumentality of the body, the naturalness of fitness in enhancing that
instrumentality and the authenticity of the subject who acquires a better body by
his/her own efforts. Gyms unfurl and govern individualism. Although attendance is
voluntary, clients do not rely only on their own free choice to enhance the training
and the resultant transformations. On the contrary, they appeal to the idea that by
working out with weights, step and exercise bicycles they can discover their own
body and its naturalness, thereby becoming better, stronger selves.” P.409
Sport medicine has developed as a site in which the link between exercise and
improvements in conditions associated with biological ageing has been investigated and
established. There is indeed sizeable evidence to show that sustained physical activity is
beneficial at all ages, especially in those aged 65 and over. For instance regular, long
term training has been shown to keep the risk for CHD low and stable (Mengelkoch et al.
1997), even among women, whether or not they use HRT (DeSouza et al. 1997). It can
improve lower body strength consistent with a lowering of the risk of falling among postmenopausal women (Washington, Shaw and Snow 1998). In a study comparing active
and inactive male and female participants in two age groups (18-30 and 60-80 years)
McFarlin et al (2006) have shown that physical activity reduced inflammation which is
responsible for the increased age-related risk of developing cardiovascular disease,
diabetes mellitus, cachexia and osteoporosis.
Policy-makers have become sensitive to the issue of encouraging older people to
exercise, precisely because of its putative health benefits (see for instance
http://www.fitness.gov/). In Scotland in a report commissioned by Sportscotland, the
national agency responsible for sport development in Scotland, it is proposed to design
initiatives which will be sensitive to the physical limitations of older people and
surmount their shyness and self-consciousness and erode ‘contextual’ barriers, such as
the belief that one should rest in later life (Nicolson 2004) to encourage people to
exercise.
Material from sports science and sports medicine suggests three themes relevant to the
task of critiquing anti ageing ageism:
1. exercise as a 'cure' (for falls),
2. exercise as prevention against ageing and
3. the fragmentation of the ageing body into parts which can be exercised, ie restored or
changed, with a view to its reconstruction into a fit(ter) and functional whole.
The claims made on behalf of exercise in later life and attempts to establish exercise as a
cure for the decrements of biological ageing, have to be understood within a framework
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which seeks to render ageing as undesirable and optional. Sassatelli remarks (see below)
on the recourse to the natural/authentic body as a way of rejecting or legitimating
particular practices. Those fitness club consumers engaged in fitness practice may have
presented themselves to her as normalizing their bodies but they can also be seen as denaturalising and unsettling culturally appropriate norms of bodily ageing. The
biologisation of the ageing body evident in sports science can be seen as a return to the
‘natural’ body, albeit within the terms of biology/sports science (see Merleau-Ponty
1965). In other words, this body reconstructed by exercise is one which has been ‘spoilt’
by social codes to be less active as one ages and which sports science is trying to restore
to a level of functioning it might otherwise not have lost in a state of ‘nature’. The
problem of course is that in doing so, it also deepens the medicalisation of old bodies –
(see Tulle 2007) and it tells us nothing about this putative state of nature.
Beauty
In parallel to fitness practices there are considerable variation between social groups in
the extent and manner in which they engage with ‘beauty therapies’ and evidence of
change over recent times. The Quarterly Employment Survey is a long running
internationally co-ordinated government survey of employment by sector. Over the last
ten years there have been significant declines in industrial employment and growth in the
service sector. Within the service sector the job categories showing most growth are
(largest growth first);
Rank
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Standard Job category
85.32:Social work without accommodation
85.11:Hospital activities
85.14:Other human health activities
92.62:Other sporting activities
85.12:Medical practice activities
93.02:Hairdressing,other beauty treatment
90.00:Sewage,refuse disposal etc
92.31:Artistic,literary creation etc
92.34:Other entertainment activities
92.20:Radio,TV activities
92.33:Fair,amusement park activities
92.71:Gambling,betting activities
93.04:Physical well-being activities
This data suggests that both the beauty industry and fitness services are employing
increasing numbers of people. As indicated by survey data, commercial data and industry
activity projections beauty therapy and cosmetic surgery use is expanding. A particular
feature of the beauty industry is the development of marketing strategies and
development of new techniques labeled as ‘anti-ageing’. These are not particularly
marketed at the highest demographic age groups but rather those in their thirties and
forties. Market surveys from Allegra suggest that “The UK beauty salon market is
estimated at 12,370 units in 2003 and is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of
8% to 14,425 outlets in December 2005. Total revenue for salon-based outlets is
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forecasted to grow at a rate of 11% per year to reach £1.15 billion by 2005 across 8,855
units.” (http://www.allegra.co.uk/project-beauty-keyfindings.html)
From 1997 to 2004, there has been a rapid growth in cosmetic interventions in the US for
all procedures. Professionals identify two categories of procedures: surgical and
minimally invasive procedures. In 2004, the five most performed surgical procedures in
the US were liposuction, rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery and facelift. In
the same year, the five most performed minimally invasive procedures were botox
injections, chemical peel, microdermabrasion, laser hair removal and sclerotherapy.
(http://www.cosmeticplasticsurgerystatistics.com/statistics.html)
The main users of cosmetic procedures are women, who in 2004 had 90% of cosmetic
procedures performed, a 49% increase on the previous year. The peak age-range is 35-50
with 45% of procedures performed on people in this age-range, 25% on people in the 5164 age-range and only 6% of procedures performed on people aged 65+.(ref) Most of
these procedures can be used to efface or minimize visible signs of ageing.
Recent literature suggests that the world of beauty therapy, including cosmetic
intervention, contains ambiguities and cultural ambivalence. So despite the rapid growth
in use, Sassatelli (2001) points out the paradox of valorization of what is natural at the
same time as trying to transform the body in ways which disguise ageing.
“The people I interviewed were very critical of commercially widespread ‘invasive’
techniques like plastic surgery. Plastic surgery, most of them claimed, changes your
body directly, but in an ‘unnatural’ way, without making it work, without exploiting
its intrinsic capacity, and this is why it clashes with fitness. Even a young woman
worried about her appearance like Loretta says that she ‘doesn’t trust’ the scalpel: ‘I
wouldn’t like to change like that… it’s against the nature of ageing like removing
flesh, having a face lift. Old age affects everyone, and you are as you are. I can’t
understand it! It’s against nature! Dieting or working out is always natural, even
make-up can help, but that is something that leaves you free to return to how you
were before. With surgery you can’t”. pp. 404-5
The beauty industry is involved in the management of femininity as well as ageing. It is
suggested that the beauty clinic provides a space in which women can meet on their own
terms. Sharma and Black together and separately present studies of the social life of
beauty clinics and the attitudes of the staff and customers. (Sharma and Black 2001,
Black and Sharma 2002, Black 2002, 2004). The practices and therapies provided by the
industry have a highly diverse set of relationships with medicine, science and scientific
knowledge. The extent to which customers and providers make sense of aesthetic
procedures as anti-ageing has not been well examined as to-date the tendency has been to
focus on feminist critiques of surgical procedures. Debra Gimlin (2002) has done
important work of cosmetic surgery, some types of which are constructed as ‘antiageing’. In a recent paper (Gimlin 2006) she contrasts the body as project approach,
which is developed by Shilling in particular but drawing on Turner, and Featherstone and
Hepworth, with the approach of Leder (1990) for whom the body is phenomenologically
and socially absent until brought to our notice, for instance when it becomes
dysfunctional or damaged. Gimlin finds merit in both, emphasizing through her empirical
work on cosmetic surgery her subjects’ desire not to enhance beauty but to become
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‘normal’ when they provide verbal justifications for engaging in cosmetic surgery. There
is an observable disjuncture between research commentaries of beauty clinics inhabited
by women who want to be normal and pampered and feel good about themselves on the
one hand. While there is also evidence on the other hand of the marketing of clinics and
procedures as explicitly rejuvenative, through invasive techniques, legitimated through
hard science visualized in white coats and stainless steel instruments.
Those engaged in beauty practice present themselves as normalizing their ageing bodies
but they can also be thought of as de-naturalising and taking away the normative
character of bodily ageing. We should not take this concept of naturalization for granted
but rather see how it is used in different discourses and ‘expose’ its socially constructed
nature. In both fitness and beauty contexts “naturalization” is used to legitimise the
normality of anti-ageing body transforming practice. Plastic surgery enables patients to
feel normal about their body as somehow closer to its ‘natural model’; and fitness club
consumers can feel they have returned their bodies to a normal natural condition
uncorrupted by the problems of modern urban life. However in both contexts the
‘naturalisation’ of the body can also be construed as delegitimising forms of anti-ageing
bodily manipulation. So plastic surgery is seen as abnormal and denaturing the natural
flesh, while the dramatic muscles of over-seventy year old body builders are seen as the
equivalent of ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ and thus also constructed as ‘unnatural’. We do
not wish to use the concept of ‘naturalisation’ as a tool of regulation – for instance in the
association of ageing and inevitable decline. But in order to unsettle the embedded
ageism in anti-ageing practices it is also necessary to question the biologised version of
the ageing body as consisting of tractable components which people have a moral duty to
sustain in their “naturally” functional condition.
Conclusion: Is anti-ageing really cultural resistance?
We tentatively suggest a model of the mutual inter-connections between the knowledge
work of the scientific and non-scientific branches of the anti-ageing movement and the
anti-ageing body work conducted in beauty clinics and fitness centres as set out in figure
1.
Insert figure 1 here.
We see such a relationship mediated by both institutional and cultural activity. The first
part of the paper sought to provide a critical analysis of the possibilities and potential for
a cultural re-evaluation of ageing bodies. The second part of the paper sought to
document the growing institutionalisation of fitness and beauty practices. The final
section presents a critique which suggest that there is an important element of ageism
entailed in the increasing effort put into resist bodily ageing.
We started with the standard definitions of ageism. However we are now in a position to
propose a somewhat wider definition, broadening out the definition of ageism to include
the cultural marginalisation of old age through the ageing body. We wish specifically to
include the cultural rejection of ageing and old age through the search for ways to avoid
or eradicate them.
The cultural apprehension of the life course in segments using various classifications and
classificatory practices (how we tell who is old or ageing) is probably a cultural
13
universal. However there are important differences in the ways these systems have been
defined and ‘used’ over time. As Minois and later Cole showed, late Medieval
classifications for instance were theological interpretations of the lifecourse which sought
to make sense of the meaning of life (life as a journey of spiritual discovery). They also
acted as ideal-types of a life well led in a wider context of low life expectancy and
uncertainty. The most readily available classification in the contemporary West is
chronological age in years and its institutionalization and naturalization as biological age.
We argue that this type of classification contains the possibilities for cultural ageism and
ageist practices. For example to claim merit for turning back the clock and to shed years
through biological or other manipulations carries ageist implications. There is no doubt
such ageism is ubiquitous, which on one level makes it so odd that a stronger counter
cultural resistance is not more readily identifiable.
One possibility is that anti-ageing constitutes a social movement which provides a
liberation from ageism. Its strategy for countering ageism is to create ageing as
something that is unnecessary and can be avoided by the appropriate body work. No-one
need experience the indignities of ageism if they engage in the correct avoidance
techniques – including beauty and fitness ‘therapies’. However, we would present a
counter argument which sees anti-ageing practices as deeply ageist. Anti-ageing is a
highly commercialised business which does not challenge the central dynamic of ageist
oppression but collaborates, enabling exploitation through fitness and beauty products.
Indeed as Katz (2005:193) argues there is an anti-ageing ageism buried deep in our
culture:
“… the cultural responses to aging that derive from popular gerontological,
commercial, marketing, media, and even governmental spheres… …point to the
expectation that we can become successful members of a new and bold senior
citizenry if we could just grow older unburdened by the limitations of aging. But
how can we grow older without aging, and why is this desirable? Why is this
happening now, and what cultural conditions support it? Is the problem that we
struggle against morbidity and decline, or that we refuse to give morbidity and
decline any meaningful place in our society? And most importantly, who benefits
and who suffers from a culture that idealizes growing older while denying aging?”
The same counter argument was made with the liberating value of youth cultures. The
musical styles were commercialized and resistance channeled into non-revolutionary
directions / ways which did not challenge the social and economic structure. Successive
waves of rebellious youth cultures were produced as each was successively tamed and
commercialized. Best that can be said of youth culture is that, even if it did not change
society in any fundamental way, it was a source of innovative cultural creativity and good
fun.
Even this defense is not available for the activities of anti-ageing entrepreneurs. While
the evidence shows that fitness clubs and beauty salons can be pleasant social occasions it
can be persuasively argued that their activities and anti-ageing practices like them
actively inhibit finding new and valuable ways of growing old. Even although many in
the anti-aging movement see themselves as challenging, through alternative medicine,
“big pharma” and letting people take control of their own health and bodies, the effect is
to marginalize and silence those whose bodies fail the required standard.
14
Figure one. Model of social process/ cultural practice with respect to the ageing body
Knowledge work:
Scientific practices
Bio-gerontology
Biology
Medicine
Alternative/Holistic medicine
Cultural Work:
Institutional Work:
Ageist / Anti ageist practices
Governmental practices
Reproduction of stereotypes /
existing cultural categories
Commercial practices
Health and non commercial
practice
Cultural innovation / creativity
Domestic and familial practice
Body Work:
Fitness practices
Beauty practices
Other e.g. diet
15
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