Aging and the Lived Experience of Embodied Womanhood

Purpose: This phenomenological study engaged older women in reflection on the meaning and uses of food and eating—conceptualized as the food-body-eating-self phenomenon--to illuminate the experience of aging in a social/cultural context that values thin, taut-skinned youth (Saucier, 2004; Zerbe, 2004). Food and eating are culturally normative tools women use to shape the body/self to meet appearance-based standards of worth and acceptability (Lynch, 2005; Piren and Cormier, 2005). While the relationship between eating attitudes/food behavior and body image/sense of self among adolescents and younger women has been well-researched, this phenomenon among older women has received less attention (Saucier, 2004; Zerbe, 2003). For the older woman who is subject to the biological givens of the aging process, realizing that the body does not meet these cultural standards jeopardizes self-esteem and increases the potential for depression and anxiety (Saucier, 2004). The perception that postmenopausal women are not concerned about weight, body image, and appearance, together with the culturally consonant preoccupation with dieting and weight loss, impede the recognition of these mental health issues and the identification of eating disorders (ED) in older women (Zerbe, 2004).

Methods: Fifteen women—African American, Latina and White, 62-to-91 years old; members of a senior center in a large, racially and ethnically diverse, lower socio-economic urban apartment complex--were each interviewed for 1-to-11/2 hours, four times, during a ten-month period. Loosely structured, in-depth interviews--digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim--were conducted to elicit rich, textural descriptions of the meaning and uses of food and eating through the dimensions of body and self. Transcripts were organized into fifteen books and analyzed using phenomenological data analysis protocols (Wertz, 2005; Giorgi, 1997; Moustakas, 1994): 1. Reduction: setting aside assumptions/biases; 2. Immersion: repeated reading; 3. Reflection on the recordings and transcripts; and 4. Identifying, clustering and imaginatively varying (associative reflection) meaning units, yielding the essence of the food-body-eating-self phenomenon: embodied womanhood.

Results: Embodied womanhood, contextualized by the lived experience of aging, illuminates the particular struggles of older women whose embodied self(s) are continually challenged as healthy and whole by appearance-based cultural standards of female value. The women described aging as an intensely personal, highly visible experience lived-out in a social-cultural context with rigorous standards for female self presentation in which the body/self of the older woman is treated as an object and exposed to harsh scrutiny and evaluation. Participants shared their self-preservative strategies including the uses of food and eating to shape the body in order to maintain dignity, represent the self as empowered, demonstrate capabilities, and embody resilience and self determination.

Conclusion: The knowledge generated from this study contributes to reshaping the cultural discourse about women aging; contributes to the timely identification of ED in older women, and to early intervention and prevention efforts. It supports the development of programs and services that are humanizing rather than objectifying; that are attuned to the embodied self(s) of older women, and to the social structural, cultural issues that affect the health and well-being of women in the second half of life.