Bodily insights from the crone woman : perceptions of health & beauty

Abstract

This thesis, entitled Bodily Insights From the Crone Woman: Perceptions of Health & Beauty examines body image as reported by elderly women across their lifespan from a feminist perspective in the year 2001. The author, Clara Maria Spijkerman, traces the life stories of ten older women over the age of sixty who currently live in a mid-sized Canadian city. This paper explores the relationship between old age, beauty and health within contemporary North America in an attempt to discover the role of bodywork in old age. It evaluates the extent to which contemporary North American ideals of beauty and health, as stipulated by the medical community, affect women in old age. In a society that is youth-oriented it might be expected that older women pursue bodywork in an attempt to create an outer body surface that reflects their feelings of inner youth. However, as this study discovered, older women are more likely than their younger counterparts to pursue bodywork strictly for the health-related purpose of maintaining their independence. Health status as defined especially by physical mobility is considered by them to be the central means through which they will maintain active participation in society as opposed to being rendered socially invisible.