The Aging Body Pierre Bourdieu Analysis

Introduction
Society’s youthful norms on beauty hold power over women’s relations to their embodiment. Over the course of this semester, Professor Griffin explored alternative interpretations of the aging body. One proposition made was that in regards to females and the aging body, older women are less concerned with their bodily appearance. In this context, ageism works to undermine the confidence of older women and lower their expectations of themselves. As a consequence, it produces a ‘giving in’ effect as a method to cope with the aging process. Another interpretation explored was how older women become more concerned with their bodily appearance and take great efforts to counter the effects of aging. To manage bodily aging meant to fight

Thus, our social existence is shaped by classificatory actions and desires managed by specific distinctions in our case social classes. These assumptions are central to Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory of practice. Bourdieu composed the term ‘habitus’ to encompass how the constitutions of principles subjectively shape dispositions, demeanors, perceptions, and evaluations. So the habitus is prejudiced to social practices and lifestyles.
Present day social status, values, and activities are centered on the consumption of goods and services. Thus, for women to claim existence in later life, they must participate in consumer societal practices on bodily appearance. Bourdieu argued that for women and their physical appearance; the attention devoted, time and effort invested, and the awareness of product benefits, are proportionate to material expenditure. Older women’s self-presentation can be intrinsically linked to quantifiable conditions used for maintaining the youthful self. Moreover, economic and cultural capitals validate certain fashions, tastes, and practices, to align with the current social structures, endorsing notions of materialization and bodily

The level of economic and cultural capital influenced the time horizon, sub-sequentially influencing women’s actions and decisions. In later life, the aging women’s dispositions were linked to attitudes about bodily appearance and the use of beauty enhancement practices. For working class women, short-term investments satisfied their aesthetic desires, such as clothing, jewelry, and make-up. The upper-class women adopted beauty practices with long-term returns because their economic capital was greater than that of the working-class