| Summary: | The purpose of the study is to examine how women around forty describes appearance and age. The focus of the analysis is the idea of age, appearance and gender. The study is based on seven interviews. The analysis of the material is based on a cultural analytic perspective, with inspiration from the theory of performativity, a constructivist understanding of gender, appearance and age, intersectionality and Pierre Bourdieus capital theory. The results of the study show that experience of age and appearance is constructed and given meaning in relation to other aspects of power, including gender and social class. The experience of age is constructed in relation to norm systems and context. The results show an experienced dissonance between subjective and chronological age. Appearance-based age changes are associated with negativity. Attempts to escape aging can be understood as a way to seek control over death. The study concludes that conceptions of appearance and aging affect the interviewers’ way of understanding and talking about themselves.
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