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Baby Boomers, Age, and BeautyBaby Boomers, Age, and Beauty

This book is a rich exploration of the baby boomers – those coming of age in the sixties and now entering old age – the influences that have shaped how they perceive ageing appearance, how they define ageing and beauty, and the meaning of appearance, beauty, and identity. The book draws from a variety of sources from ageing research, history and gender studies and a diverse group of interviewees.

The longevity revolution and shifting notions of identity coalesce as older women and men seek to find new modes of self-presentation as they age. Ageing is a profoundly embodied process, yet older people’s concerns about appearance and beauty is perceived, by many, as trivial or a function of consumer society. Investigating notions of appearance and beauty as a core human concern, the author explores Western cultural notions of beauty. What then is beauty in old age? Is it even a possibility given the history of youth and aesthetic preference? The book seeks to bring forward ideas of age and beauty as defined by baby boomers, how they see themselves and how they are seen.

The author makes us understand that it is both the universal and the particular that determine how we behold beauty.
— Prof. Dr. Roberta Maierhofer, University of Graz, Austria

Woodspring’s book gives a lively tour of our disparate responses to the common urge to remain forever young, in a generation that lives longer then any before.
— Professor Neal M King, Virginia Tech, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, USA

Woodspring reminds us of the tyranny of the omnipresent stereotypes of what successful (i.e. glamourous) ageing looks like. This book is a timely reminder that the perspectives of older people should no longer be ignored.
— Emerita Professor Nichola Rumsey OBE, University of the West of England, UK

Paperback/Kindle: 349 pages
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited (25 Sept. 2018)
ISBN-10: 178754236X
ISBN-13: 978-1787542365

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For bulk purchase (25+ copies) please contact Kimberly Wiley (UK) or Katie Frudd (US) at Emerald Publishing.

Baby Boomers Time and ageing bodies - book coverBaby Boomers: Time and Ageing Bodies

This ground-breaking study of the baby boomer generation, who are now entering old age, breaks new ground in ageing research. This post-war cohort has experienced a range of social, cultural, and medical changes in regard to their notions of body, from the introduction of the Pill and the decoupling of sex and procreation to the H-Bomb and Earthrise. Yet, paradoxically, ageing is also universal. This exciting book reflects the intersection of time, ageing, body and identity to give a more nuanced and enlightened understanding of the ageing process.

An important study of the ‘baby boomer’ generation, drawing upon an impressive body of scholarship. The study explores some fascinating links between the experiences of this cohort in the 1960s and the shaping of attitudes and identity in later life.
— Chris Phillipson, University of Manchester

The Baby Boomers revolutionized being young. As time catches up with them they are destined to change what it means to grow older. Woodspring’s study gives us a fascinating perspective on what that might look like.
— Jan Baars, University for Humanistic Studies, The Netherlands

Baby Boomers’ variegated dimensions assure its potential, as the cohort comes face to face with advanced ageing and dying, to transform interpersonal relations and societal structures. Naomi Woodspring, a Boomer herself, rethinks the meanings and contexts of time and embodiment in later years. Baby Boomers offered me fresh perspectives.
— W. Andrew Achenbaum, University of Houston

Paperback/Kindle Reissue: 224 pages
Publisher: Policy Press; 1 edition (11 April 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1447346629
ISBN-13: 978-1447346623

Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Policy Press (29 Feb. 2016)
ISBN-10: 1447318773
ISBN-13: 978-1447318774

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