Home Institution
Wesleyan University
Publication Date
Fall 2019
Abstract
The sexual lives of women over the age of 50 are often forgotten from just about every medium. This research hopes to uncover how aging women interpret their current sexual selves, sexual histories, and changing bodies. In thinking about this, four women were interviewed about their life stories surrounded love, passion, and sex. Each of these women told brave accounts of their lives and through their narratives, we were able to draw theoretical conclusions about bodily shame, age performativity, and prescribed stereotypical roles. These four stories, told individually as to support each woman's personal narrative are vastly different yet intersect in many ways. The research concludes an important theoretical analysis of an aging woman's connection to life and how both age and gender are situated in a faulty timeline. Their unforgettable stories explore what life looks like as the years slip away and show how the process of aging is a universal human struggle.
Disciplines
Dutch Studies | Gender and Sexuality | Gerontology | Geropsychology | Oral History | Social and Cultural Anthropology | Women's Studies
Recommended Citation
McCann, Cordray, "Sex and Senesce: A Exploration of Aging Women’s Sexual Selves" (2019). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 3215.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/3215
Included in
Dutch Studies Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Gerontology Commons, Geropsychology Commons, Oral History Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, Women's Studies Commons
Program Name
Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender