Too old for photosharing

(Re) construing successful aging through select Instagram handles of Indian older female influencers

Bibliographic Data

ID21537582
AuthorsDebashrita Dey (0000-0002-4262-3797, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, India), Priyanka Tripathi (0000-0002-9522-3391, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, India, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume50
Issue10
Pages955-971
Publication date2024-10-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Gerontology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0360-1277 • E-ISSN: 1521-0472
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03601277.2024.2368318
OpenAlexW4399817113
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited30

Our standards of beauty have become sufficiently diverse. However, the representation of older women continues to be marginalized in mainstream media platforms, with the dominant ageist message revolving around the notion of ‘failure.’ For a woman, the ‘horrors’ of aging are felt more conspicuously, which renders her a devalued commodity. Within Indian society, aging is further contested by varied socio-cultural factors that prescribe an older woman to dress, behave and act according to her age and firmly reprimand any transgression from normative practices. This paper explains the complexities related to the prevailing aging/anti-aging discourses and discerns how older women influencers engage in challenging the negative stereotypes (like body shaming and sexageist derision) through the model of successful aging. Through select Instagram handles, the study analyses how the graying individuals collectively seek to direct or reclaim their power to forge alternative narratives/perspectives that encourage the aging/aged self to ‘be’ in her skin. The visual content from the Instagram profiles of Manjri Varde, Ravi Bala Sharma, Rajani Chandy, Seema Anand, and Usha Soman, who serve as representatives of redefining aging with purpose, has been critically analyzed. The results obtained have delineated how the social networking site has emerged as a space of resistance and empowerment- redefining beauty, desire, and agency within the contemporary youth-centric Indian culture and rendering possibilities that one can explore while growing old

Developmental psychology · Influencer marketing · Successful aging · Child Development and Digital Technology · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Medicine · Psychology · Gerontology

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