hillyer, barbara the embodiment of old women - silences

7/29/2019 Hillyer, Barbara the Embodiment of Old Women - Silences

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Frontiers, Inc.

The Embodiment of Old Women: SilencesAuthor(s): Barbara HillyerSource: Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1, Identity, the Body, and theMenopause (1998), pp. 48-60Published by: University of Nebraska PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3347132 .

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The Embodiment f Old Women:Silences

In 1994, for the firsttime, I foundmyselfattendingcloselyto the embodimentof two old women,myselfandmy mother.I wasjust enteringyoungold ageatsixty,and she old old ageat eighty.Moresignificantly,ur bodiesrequired urattention.Gradually,uringthe preceding ear,Motherbecame rail,and thenher kidneys,lungs, and heartbeganto fail.Abruptly, fell, brokemy elbow,which was slow to heal,and thus discovered hatI hadosteoporosis.Both of ushadosteoarthritisndunpredictableackpain.Iwascaring or Mother nhospi-tals,in herhome, and then in a nursinghome until she died, a year ater.In-tenselyattuned o herbodyandfrustratinglyware f the limitationsofmyown,I did whatI alwaysdo, triedto thinkaboutwhatwe wereexperiencinghroughthe feminist heorythat is mylifework.What I have discoveredduringthe pastthreeyearsas I havepursuedmynewlypersonal nvestigationsf feminist iterature bouttheembodiment f oldwomen is a seriesof significant ilences:discussions f women's mbodimentnwhich old women are not mentioned;discussions f agingthatfocuson meno-pauseasthe crucialbodilyevent;storiesof old women's"successfulaging" hatemphasize ctivity nd achievementsifoldbodieswerenot afactor; ld women'spersonalnarrativeshatrefer o their/ourbodies asif theywereunimportantowhatever tory s beingtold.My bodyandmymother'swereterriblymportant, entral actorsn every-thingwe mightdo.The silencesdiscountthatsignificance r hide it. Myinten-tion here is to examine he silencesas a firststeptowarddevelopinga feministanalysis f the embodimentof old women. This essay,my notes towarda femi-nisttheoryaboutold ageas an embodiedphenomenon,movesthroughanalysisof silencetoward heoreticalspeech.Before1994, in my scholarlywork on disability, had paidconsiderableattention o the embodimentof women,but I had not realizedhow little of theCopyright1998byFrontiersditorialollective

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substantialfeminist theory about women's bodies focuses on or even gives a side-long glance at old women.' Some important books on women's bodies don'tevenmention old women or aging in their indices. Instead they have usually empha-sized either the body concept of women in the reproductiveyears (and, recently,in menopause) or cultural objectification, especially of young women. KathyDavis's book about plastic surgery,Reshaping he FemaleBody,for example, men-tions face-lifts, eyelid surgery, and liposuction, without situating these proce-dures in relation to age, aging, or ageism.2The book is mainly about breastaug-mentation and reduction, which is probably the form of plastic surgery leastrelated to old women's experience, though we cannot know that for certain untilold women tell us their stories. Listeningto Our Bodies,a collection of essays, issubtitled The RebirthofFeminine Wisdom.3Despite the long and multiculturaltraditions associating wisdom with age, "feminine wisdom" in this book is notseen as wisdom that comes with age and experience. Similarly,Minding theBody,anotheranthology,includesonly threeessayson aging, two by middle-agedwomenand only one by an old woman.4The several feminist books on female beauty and the beauty myth do men-tion aging in their indices, but the indexed passagesarevery brief references tosuch things as the existence of some cultures that honor age or to women whowere firedfor looking "tooold."'5Wendy Chapkis'sdiscussion of "The Politics ofAppearance"does include loose skin, a sagging body, graying, wrinkling, andgaining weight, and makes the important connection between acceptanceof thesephysicalsigns in (presumablymiddle-aged)women and acceptanceof old women.'Chapkis uses direct quotations from many different women as the basis of heranalysis,including some from women who draw attention to their age. Only oneof these women, aged seventy-nine, is "old."The others are middle-aged (fortyand fifty-five).

Surelythe body-awarenessthat pervadesour culture has as serious implica-tions for old women as it does for young. Although face-lifts and tummy-tucksmay begin in middle age, the pressuresthey represent derive from stereotypesabout old age as much as from the compulsory natureof youth. The first womanI knew of who died of anorexia nervosa was an old woman, yet anorexia is fre-quently described as primarilya disease of adolescence. The woman's sister,whotold me about her death, said, "She starved herself. It was like anorexia."Theword "like" reflects the (probably medical) assumption that anorexia does notoccur in old women. Anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, and chronic di-eting are discussed as if only young women had such experiences, yet we knowthat malnutrition is a seriousproblem for some old people. Curiously, those who

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makethispointneverconsider hat it mightbe related o thebeautymythor tochronicdietingwhen the symptomsappearn old women. Malnutrition n oldpeopleis attributed o entirelydifferentcauses,such as poverty,druginterac-tions,or mentalconfusion,which arenot often consideredn discussions f an-orexia n young people.Again,aswith beauty,books on eatingdisorders o nothaveagingor old womenin their ndices.7Summarizingeveral enturiesfanorecticehaviorngirlsandyoungwomen,Joan acobsBrumberg ointsoutthat"there re ashionsndiagnosis":the norexicpopulationhasa highlyspecific ocial address."'Contemporary merican oci-etydiagnoses norexianyoungwomenperhapsoofrequently,s"wasting" aybe a symptomof manyotherdiseases.Becauset is expected n girls, t maywellbeignorednolderwomen,while uchothereating isordersscompulsivevereatingmay be expected n middle-agedwomen. Nevertheless, he silence about oldwomen'sbeauty-inducedelationshipswith food is pervasive.t is asif atsixtyalifetimeof cultural ndoctrination boutthebodydisappears.Disabilityiterature oes mentionaging,almostalwaysn awaythat s inci-dentalto the issuesunderdiscussionand to advocateallianceswith peoplewhoareor willbedisabled stheyage.The one recentbookaboutdisabilityhatdoesnot treatagingasincidental o its theoreticaldiscussion s SusanWendell'sTheRejected ody,which repeatedly tresses hat cultural nsensitivity o disabilityand chronic llnessreinforcemisunderstandingsf old people'sexperience ndthatyoung(er)peoplewith disabilitiesare themselvesoften insensitive o indi-vidualexperience f disabilityn old age.'Nevertheless,Wendell's ook is aboutdisabilitynyoungandmiddle-aged eople,and old women's wnstoriesarenotcited.Another mportant xceptiono thetrendof ignoringold womenaltogetherwhenspeakingof the bodyis MargaretGullette'sDeclining oDecline,which isaboutagingas aculturally onstructed isease.'1Gullette ets forthanimportanttheoretical, oliticalanalysis f ageandproposesanagetheorydistinctlydiffer-ent fromtheculturallyonstructed arrative boutaging hatwearetaught romchildhood-the narrative f decline.Gullette'shesis s that the ideologyof de-clineculminatesn middleage.The subtitleof Declining o Decline s CulturalCombat ndthePoliticsofMidlife.To read hisbookwhilethinkingbeyondmidlifeto oldageraisestroublingquestions.Theargument boutage deology spersua-sive,but the experienceof peoplewho reallyaredecliningis excludedby thefocuson middleage,andno theoretical asishasyetbeenworkedoutfor distin-guishingamongpeoplewho haveand thosewho have not experienced ondi-tionstruly n thebodyandnot solely n theculturally rescribed arrative. his

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is not to discountGullette's oint that ourexperience f ourown bodies is cul-turallymediated,butto suggest hatstillmissing s a theoryabouttheexperienceof old womenwho areunable o be conventionally ctiveorproductive.Itmaybe thatthese wo feministbooksspeak espectfullyf theold woman'sbody preciselybecausethat is not the primary ocus of concern.That is, oldwomen'sbodieswill bearscrutinyassupportingmaterialortheoryon another,relatedgroup(disabledpeopleor middle-agedpeople),which might be moredifficultto sustain f theywere the sole subject o be considered.To attend di-rectly o the disabilities f oldwomen raisesdisturbingquestionsabouttheveryage ideologythatGulletteproposesas an alternativeo the ideologyof decline.Apparently o one is yet ready althoughGulletteandWendellmaywell be astheyage)to lookatabilityanddisability stheyareexperienced ywomenin oldage. Or rather,no one has yet looked at abilityin old women in a way thatincludesanordinaryunderstandingf theirembodiment.We knowthatdisabilityncreaseswithage,thatphysicalimitationsassoci-ated with agingtend to be chronicor recurrent, nd that the longera womanlives,the morelikelyshe is to be livingin a narrowingphysicalspace."SusanPfisterandMollyDoughertyattend o old women's mbodimentn anexcellentdetailedsummaryof the physicalchangesassociatedwith aging, categorizingthemas"(a) oss of functionalcells/tissue, b) diminishedefficiencyof anorganor system,or (c) reduction n reservecapabilities f the body."12hesephysicalchangesassociatedwithaging nvolveallorgansandsystemsn thebodyto somedegree.While heyarenotintrinsicallyisablingandarenotinthemselvessymptomsof "disease"),heycontribute o the"slowing own" hat mostpeopledescribeashappeningn oldage,sometimebetweenagessixtyandninety.AsSusanWendellobserves,"Unlesswe die suddenly .. most of us will livepartof ourlives withbodiesthathurt,that movewithdifficultyor not atall,thatdepriveusof activi-ties we once took forgranted."13gainandagain,old women'spersonalnarra-tivesmentiona fearof falling hat sbasedon the stiffnessofjointsand on dimin-ishedphysical trength, eading o decreasedmobility, speciallynwinter,and tostayingat home, even when they are otherwisehealthy.14Healthyindividualsmaybe unable o driveand thusmaybe more confinedto home andneighbor-hood thanhealthstatusalonewouldpredict.15 lagging trengthmaypreventawomanfromwalkinghalfa blockto amailboxorpicking lowersn thegarden.16Chronic illness furthernarrows he ordinary paceof one'sdailylife. In "ad-vancedage," hurchattendance ecomes essregular,ndparticipationnvolun-taryorganizationseclines.17nyoungerwomen(fiftyto sixty-four),withdrawalis directly correlated with perception of poor health.'" Especially among work-

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ing-class people, social isolation and inactivity are associated with "young"oldage (sixty-two and over).19Furthermore, old people's concern with avoiding anursing home may cause individuals to "stayhome," to be more confined thanthey would be if a less restrictive environment could be conceptualized.20 Whena nursing home becomes necessary,a woman's personal living space contractsusually to half a room.21I emphasize these changes not to reinforce an inappropriate narrativeofdecline but to suggest that we areunlikely to resist such narratives,when they areinappropriate, if we are unable even to recognize, let alone accurately evaluate,changes in our bodies and social environment that are authentically connectedwith or caused by aging. Decreased flexibility, slower response time, and a de-creasedcapacity to recover from stressare not markers of disability, but they dochallenge the person experiencing them to reexaminesuch prioritiesasspeed andundifferentiatedactivity or at least to plan one's time more carefullyand perhapsto change factors contributing to poor health (smoking, lack of exercise, poornutrition). May Sarton says, "It'sa strangetransformationof a person who usedto be quick and volatile and who now has to become slow and careful."22DorisGrumbach, less ill but generally more conscious of age limitation in contrast toillness, says, "Privately stillwar againstmy elderly condition of weakness, frailty,powerlessness, but now I accept its inevitability. Publicly, I am quieter abouteverything."23And Betty Friedan, relentlessly optimistic about the positive as-pects of aging, nevertheless advocatesknowing the body'slimitations: "Realag-ing changes in body tissues have to be taken into account if older personsare notto be under- or overtreated [medically]."24 1would suggest that under- or over-reacting to one's own changing body is equally likely if one is not fully awareofwhat those changes are.Like adolescence, young old age is a time of very rapid physical change. Inthe absence of illness or such high riskbehaviors as smoking, alcohol abuse, andpoor nutrition, one might expect these changes to be very interesting indeed tothe one whose body is involved. Adolescents are expected and even encouragedto find their body changes interesting. There should be an expectation that oldwomen will be as interested in these changes as younger women are interestedinmenarche, pregnancy, and menopause or young athletes in tendonitis, carpaltunnel problems, and sprains. Being interested in, and talking about, the physi-cal changes associatedwith aging should be considered a normal developmentalway of caring for oneself. Here we encounter another public silence about theembodiment of old women.

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Physical limitations increasebody awareness.Such body consciousness anda cultural beauty standard based on youth and fitness combine to create a di-lemma for an old woman attempting honesty about her body/her self. If sheacknowledges the physical changes that do, in fact, characterizeage, and if sheescapes the societal pressure to deny limitation and mimic the appearance ofyouth, she will at once be faced with the cultural stereotype of old women aswhiny complainers.To be interested n one'sbody while resistingasimple-mindednarrativeof decline requiresthoughtful attention to the ways in which a changeof skin or muscle tone, of complexion or hair color, of coordination or flexibility,is just a change, not an emblem of death or of social inadequacy.To pay suchcareful attention and then not talk about it is to resignifythe subject as unspeak-able or at least beneath notice. But to speak is to name oneself declining, lesscompetent, or unable to take life's minor challenges in stride (a youthful, vigor-ous stride).A young old woman like me, then, looking for old women's representationsof their/our embodiment, must learn to read past two opposing cultural pres-sures that shape old women's narratives: he pressureto present oneself in whatGullette names a narrativeof decline and the pressureto present oneself as "suc-cessfully"aging. In popular conceptions of old age the two narratives are oftenintertwined so that they convey something like this: I accept my decline, which isno big deal, and then I live an active, apparentlyyouthful, life. One of the manycomplications that surround the reading (or hearing) of such a narrative is thedifficulty of figuring out exactlywhat physical situation is being described.

Cindy Patton, writing about the bodies of people with AIDS, says "Atten-tion and surveillance, silence and the relinquishing of control over one's ownmeanings are discursive effects symptomatic of relations of power."25 f we areforced to observeour bodies through the controlling magnifying glassof ageism,to allow the narrativeof decline to control its meaning, or instead to remainsilent in some pretense that change is not occurring or is shameful, then we areindirectly acknowledging the power of those who define us and our own fearoflosing power if we are observed to be declining and, worse, to be admitting itpublicly.So awoman, not yet disabled, but interested in discussing how her body haschanged, perhapshow her joints are stiff in the morning or her gait uncertain ondecorative brick pathways, instead of thinking about how she integrates theserealizations into her life, must consider whether she will be seen as too frail toparticipatein other aspectsof her busy life or too slow to accomplish whatever itis she is expected to do. She must also consider whether she is violating some

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group norm, such asthe assumption that allwomen aresupposed to be exhaustedand overworked, or that the only way to reach a goal is to rush toward it. Shemust consider whether mentioning any limitation will cause others to believethat they are being asked to take care of her or to listen to her "whining."Smallwonder, with all these things to consider, that old women often choose not tospeak openly about their bodies.Of course, some women do. May Sarton, Doris Grumbach, and FloridaScott-Maxwell come immediately to mind. It is notable that all three arediarists.Although their journals/memoirs are written for publication, the genre itself is aprivate one and thus a suitable location for personal observations of publiclyinappropriate ideas. These three also write about others' responses to their per-ceived complaints. Grumbach, in her 1991 memoir Cominginto theEnd Zone,included many passagesdescribinghernegative feelings about the bodily changesof her sixties alongside detailed descriptions of those changes.26 n her later vol-ume, ExtraInnings (1993), she recounts the many negative responsesto her ear-lier "complaints."Readersreprimandher for not rejoicingin what remainsto herinstead of observing the body's decline. Grumbach replies:"I needed to set myown record straight, unpalatable as it might be to some readers."Not to do so,she says,would be "dishonestlycheerful."27Similarly,Scott-Maxwell, citing Dr.Johnson'scomment that telling one's troubles is asking for pity and praise, says,"Verygood. You often need and deserve both pity and praise. Perhapsyou needto shareyour weakness .... But it is more than that. You ask to be met at thepoint of your reality."Elsewhere, Scott-Maxwell says that she will attempt thesilence that her listeners probably preferto her energy-draining "excessive alk,"but the need "to be met at the point of your reality"accounts for her willingnessin the diary,and thus eventually in print, to describeher particularold old (butnot always ill) body.28

Sarton, even as she describes her physical reality,asserts,repeatedly, hat herlimitations are not age related. Presumably,were she not ill, she would be physi-ologically much the same as in middle age. Sarton is an acute observer of otherchanges that come with age (for example, reduced emotional volatility), but, inresisting the cultural assumption that old people are weak and sick and with-drawing toward death, she refuses to see any such characteristicsin her agingbody-they areonly in her sick body.To understand the subtlety of this distinc-tion, one has only to remember that Sarton was a lifelong smoker and so couldnot be expected to know what her body was like in the absence of the "cause" fher illness. When she speaks of the things her body will not do, she does notnotice the ordinarychangesso crucial o Grumbach: ooseteeth, looseskin, wrinkles,

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"the pull of gravity on the soft tissues of my breasts and buttocks," thinningbones, "watereddown" muscles, the softened walls of her abdomen.29Even if Sarton had not smoked, she would surely have died. In a death-denying culture, the very fact that old people do eventually die makes the rest ofus uncomfortable. Scott-Maxwell says, "With one friend of my own age, wecheerfully exchange the worst symptoms, and our black dreads as well. We fre-quently talk of death." However, she feels prohibited from doing so with anyoneelse: "Talkingof one's health, which one wants to do, is generally full of risks."The result of avoiding such risks, of making the listener uncomfortable or ofbeing negatively judged, she says, is a "false cheerfulness."30Like Grumbach,Scott-Maxwell understands that dishonest cheerfulness is requiredby others andthat it discounts one's reality.For an old woman to speak of what is happening in her experience of herown body,she must defy the culturalprescriptionof falsecheerfulness.She could,of course, be genuinely cheerful, but if that were so, the good humor would notbe prescriptiveand externally imposed, nor would it be predicatedon denial thatbodily change had taken place. If she is not genuinely amused, she need notexpect us to be. For us to hear the full range of old women's stories, we mustabandon some of our expectations. Forexample, the daily details of using a cane,being cautious about falling, or experiencing weakening vision and hearing willdefy our expectation that an old feminist continues to be superwoman or is al-ways optimistic about the activities of old age. Further,such revelations aboutthe everydayhere and now challenge the expectation that the wise old womanshould demonstrate her wisdom only by telling stories about what her life waslike as a girl or young woman.Such expectations are limiting for healthy old women; they are disastrousfor the frail elderly who cannot present themselves as "productive,"busy mem-bers of a product-oriented society. Inactivity is interpreted so negatively for any-one of any age in our society that there is no margin of acceptance for those whomust be inactive. The disability rights agenda is based on the premise that withcertain accommodations a person with a disability can be as productive as othercitizens.31Thus, these potential allies of an old person who is frail and inactive,having based their political movement on a productivity standard,have no basison which to value that person'snoncontribution.32 Seeing frail old people asnonproducers reinforcesageism and has public policy implications, for examplein health care rationing.It is no surprisethat in order to avoid being stereotyped as old, weak, andworthless women present themselves as old but young at heart, old and strong.

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Internalizedageism can lead to a woman'sdevaluing her own frailty,and thus herown embodied self. She may silence her own body narrative not only because"complaints"cause problems, but also because her internalized ageism makes itimpossible for her to recognize the meaning of her body'sexperience.Another possible reason that we hearso few old women's stories about theirown embodiment may lie in the wisdom that comes with life experience. Aftersixty years of colds, flu, sprained ankles, sore muscles, menstrual cramps, hotflashes, insect bites, allergic reactions, and so on, having aching joints or a pro-truding belly may not rank as an experienceworthy of mention. The accommo-dations one makes to such ordinary physical events areprecisely that: ordinary.In writing one's life narrative, she might not mention aches and pains or theeffects of medication because these are seen as simple background facts of life.We may know less than we might wish about the embodiment of old womenbecause old women take it for granted.

Developmentally, it is appropriate and even necessary for women to taketheir bodily changes into consideration. This does not mean that one who findsher skin less elastic or her hearing less acute than before, her metabolism moresluggish or her energy level reduced, should not be concerned with nutrition andexercise; rather, that her consciousness of these changes can contribute to theself-knowledge that underlies growth at any developmental stage.33The fact that I cannot go to the libraryand easily find old women's accountsof their own embodiment does not mean that old women arenot talking aboutit, just that the accounts are not being published. Some may avoid publicationbecause they areunwilling to be stereotyped as complainers or negative thinkers.Some may want to be seen as young(er) or more active, as achievers, workers,leaders(as if leaders never have disabilitiesor grayhair). Some may write and notfind a publisher or find a publisherwho edits out the references o embodiment.Young(er) readersmay not want to know what old(er) women's bodies are like.Gerontologists are not interested in physical experiences that arenot symptomsor diseasesor social problems or treatment issues. But old women aretalking,notto gerontologists but to each other.

My best friend and I (at seventy-four and sixty-three) meet for lunch once aweek to talk about everything. Every discussion includes one or more bodilytopics, on which one of us will subsequently do a little research. Our talks de-scribe what is happening to each of our bodies and to those of our close friends.We know a lot about the processof aging. I have not readany discussions similarto these. The only one I know of that comes close is Mary Meigs'sessayabout atalkamong four friends, allyoung old women, about the changes that come with

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age.34They speak-and laugh-about forgetfulness, memory blanks, hands lessaccurate than they used to be, slight weaknesses or quiversthat requirenew strat-egies for doing familiar tasks, tiring easily,going to bed early and waking in thenight. More importantly, they describe these ordinary changes in ways that sug-gest how they live with them and how they may be able to use the changes totheir advantage.Meigs saysthat her artmay become freerbecauseher hand is lesscontrolled and controlling. Memory loss, a common experience of old age andone of the ones most feared, is summarized by Geri Berg and Sally Gadow aswhen "thememory winds around and restructuresitself.""5 his capturesa truthof my friends' and my own experience:The memory is not "lost,"but one mustaccess it in a differentway.The same is true of other apparentlosses, from mobil-ity to reading. One restructuresone's way of using a changed ability. Wendell'sresponse to chronic illness is another representation of the way a life may berestructuredwhen one accepts the reality of physical change: "It [recognizingherself as disabled] also required reimagining my life with a new, much morelimited, and perpetually uncomfortable body, and then reorganizing my work,home and relationshipsto make this different life possible."36When these discus-sions areamong friends who have no inclination to distrust each other, we get asense of the significant impact of minor changes without having to see them asmore-or less-important than they are.I am looking for old women's narrativesabout their embodiment, and I amnot finding quite what I am looking for. I find short stories by young womenabout what they think their grandmothersarelike, or what they think the worldmight be like to an old woman. I find essays by people who areconcerned aboutthe impact of old women's disabilities on their caregiving, middle-aged daugh-ters. I find occasional sentences or subordinate clauses in longer narrativesaboutsomething else, perhaps a memory of another time or an account of a currentactivity. I find defenses against ageism and claims of late life vitality.The silences about embodiment in these narrativesaredifficult to interpret.For example, there aremany clues in a collection of interviews with old women,SixtyYearsOn:WomenTalkAboutOldAge.37Several women's stories contain asentence or two about limited mobility or recent illness, and the editors' intro-ductionssometimes mention these mattersandsuch issuesas fearof falling.However,it is not clear whether the interviewers asked about bodily changes or whetherthe occasional sentences were all that the women had to sayabout their changingbodies. The editors say that the interviews were edited to eliminate repetitions.The readercannot tell if referencesto embodiment were repetitious or if repeti-tions, if any, might have revealed more details or different attitudes.

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Gullette argues that women should not talk publicly about "anythingal-legedto be a 'symptom'exceptin an unrecordedconversationwith another womanor man who loves you reciprocally."38 therwise, she says,such symptoms will beused against us. I believe this warning must be taken very seriously.After all, ourwritings about menopause and premenstrualsyndrome have been used againstus, as have any other statements that could be interpreted to imply weakness.However, such fears, such prudence, need not silence us. Instead, I suggest thatwe continue to speak to those intimate confidantes, but also to each other in thelargerwomen's studies community, not because feminists can be trusted not tobe ageist or committed to a narrative of decline, but because this has for thirtyyearsbeen the arenafor our earliest and most intensive consciousness raising.I do not believe that any of the silences, indirections, or partial revelationsdemonstrate that old women's embodiment is like their own at middle age or isunimportant to them. But as I search for the comments and clues that they doprovide, I understand that the place to find the existing record is in those occa-sional sentences scatteredthrough other stories, and the place to find whole em-bodiment narratives,beyond diariesof famouswomen like Sarton and Grumbachand Scott-Maxwell, is in the future, when all of us feminists who have lived to beold decide to raise consciousness on this point as we have on so many othersbefore now.39

Notes1. BarbaraHillyer,Feminism ndDisability Norman:University f OklahomaPress,1993), 168-73.2. KathyDavis, Reshapinghe FemaleBody:The Dilemmaof CosmeticSurgeryNewYork:Routledge,1995).3. StephanieDemetrakopoulos,Listeningo OurBodies:TheRebirthofFeminineWis-dom(Boston:Beacon,1983).4. PatriciaFoster, d.,Minding heBody:WomenWriters nBodyand Soul(NewYork:Doubleday,1994).5. NaomiWolf, TheBeautyMyth:HowImages fBeautyAreUsedAgainstWomenNewYork:WilliamMorrow,1991).6. WendyChapkis,Beauty ecrets:Women nd thePoliticsofAppearanceBoston:SouthEndPress,1986).7. Almostno informations available boutwomen'snutrition n oldage, accordingoKathleenM. Merchantand KathleenM. Kurz,"Women'sNutritionThrough heLifeCycle:SocialandBiologicalVulnerabilities,"n TheHealthofWomen: GlobalPerspective,d.JudithTimyanandJillGray(Boulder:WestviewPress,1993), 63-90.

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8. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History ofAnorexia Nervosa (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1988), 13-14. Brumberg'sindex does not include agingor old, but it cites fifty-seven pages on adolescents, with cross-referencesto "FastingGirls and College Women." Brumberg's atest book, TheBodyProject:An IntimateHistoryofAmerican Girls (New York:Random House, 1997), is about the develop-ment of body awareness in girls. What happens to that awareness fifty years laterremains to be seen.

9. Susan Wendell, The RejectedBody: Feminist Philosophical Reflectionson Disability(New York:Routledge, 1996).10. Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Poli-ticsofMidlife (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).11. Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch, eds., Womenwith Disabilities:Essaysn Psychology,Culture,andPolitics (Philadelphia:Temple University Press,1988), 3; Elias S. Cohen,"What is Independence?" in Aging and Disabilities: Seeking Common Ground, ed.Edward F. Ansello and Nancy N. Eustis (Amityville, N.Y.: Baywood Publishing,1992), 79; and StanleyJ. Brody and Malcolm H. Morrison, "Agingand Rehabilita-tion: Beyond the Medical Model," in Ansello and Eustis, Aging and Disabilities, 41.Ansello and Eustis describe disability in old age, 3-4; as do Janet Ford and RuthSinclair, ed., Sixty YearsOn: Women TalkAbout Old Age (London: The Women'sPress, 1987), 3. Most of the stories in this book reiterate this theme. Although shedoes not mention old women, Karen P. DePauw suggests that spatialanalysiswill bean important basis for disability theory in "'Space:The Final Frontier':The Invis-ibility of Disability on the Landscape of Women's Studies," Frontiers:A Journal ofWomen's tudies 17:3 (1996): 19-23.12. Susan Pfister and Molly Dougherty, "Growing Older," in Women'sHealth: A Rela-tionalPerspectiveAcross heLife Cycle,ed. Judith A. Lewis and Judith Bernstein (Bos-ton: Jones and Bartlett, 1996), 193. The summary, a dense list, is 193-95.13. Wendell, TheRejectedBody, 18.14. Ford and Sinclair, Sixty YearsOn, passim.15. Ford and Sinclair,Sixty YearsOn, 3.16. Stephen Robitaille, "Writing in the Upward Years:May Sarton," in Conversationswith May Sarton, ed. Earl G. Ingersoll (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi,1991), 193-94; and May Sarton, Endgame:AJournalofthe Seventy-NinthYear NewYork:W. W. Norton, 1992).

17. BarbaraPayne and FrankWhittington, "OlderWomen: An Examination of PopularStereotypes and Research Evidence," in The Older Woman: Lavendar Rose or GrayPanther,ed. Marie Marshall Fuller and Cora Ann Martin (Springfield, Ill.: CharlesC. Thomas, 1980), 20-26.18. Letitia T. Alston and Jon P Alston, "Religion and the Older Woman," in Fuller andMartin, The OlderWoman,271.

19. Arlie Russell Hochschild, "Communal Life-Styles for the Old," in Fuller and Mar-tin, The OlderWoman,201-2.

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20. EliasS. Cohen, "What is Independence?"in Ansello and Eustis,Agingand Disabili-ties, 95.21. Lucy Bregman and SaraThiermann, First PersonMortal: PersonalNarrativesof Ill-ness,Dying and Grief(New York:Paragon House, 1995), 25.22. Sarton, Endgame,67.23. Doris Grumbach, Cominginto theEnd Zone: A Memoir (New York:W W Norton,

1991), 184-85.24. Betty Friedan, The Fountain ofAge (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1993), 424-25.25. Cindy Patton, InventingAIDS (New York:Routledge, 1990), 3, cited by JacquelynZita, "Heresyin the Female Body,"in The Other Within Us: FeministExplorations fWomenand Aging, ed. Marilyn Pearsall(Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997), 109.26. Grumbach, ComingInto the End Zone, passim.27. Doris Grumbach, ExtraInnings:A Memoir (New York:W. W. Norton, 1993), 126-27, and passim.28. Florida Scott-Maxwell, The Measureof My Days (New York:Penguin, 1968), 44-45, 125.29. Foster,Minding the Body,77; and Grumbach, ComingInto TheEnd Zone, 80-81.30. Scott-Maxwell, The MeasureofMy Days, 31-32.31. For a discussion of the unwillingness of disability theorists to classifydisabled peoplewith the frail elderly, see Wendell, TheRejectedBody, 18, 206.32. For a full discussion of the relationships of disability, productivity, and pace, see

Hillyer, Feminismand Disability, 46-71.33. Zalman Schachter-Shalom and Ronald S. Miller, FromAge-ing to Sage-ing:A Pro-found New Visionof GrowingOlder(New York:Warner, 1995), 16.34. Mary Meigs, "Memory is as Uncertain as Grace," n Fiercewith Reality:AnAnthologyofLiteratureonAging, ed. MargaretCruikshank (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Pressof St. Cloud, 1995), 111-17.

35. GeriBergand SallyGadow,"TowardMore Human Meanings ofAging" in Cruikshank,Fierce with Reality,226.36. Wendell, TheRejectedBody,26.37. Ford and Sinclair, Sixty YearsOn, passim.38. Gullette, Declining to Decline, 108, 1239. See also, Friedan, The Fountain ofAge; and Gloria Steinem, Moving BeyondWords(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 249-83.

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