[ecrea] CfP Feminist Media Studies Special Issue: " Gendered Ageing Bodies in,Popular Media Culture”

Call for Papers

Feminist Media Studies Special Issue:

Gendered Ageing Bodies in Popular Media Culture

Edited by Iolanda Tortajada, Frederik Dhaenens, Cilia Willem


This Special Issue of Feminist Media Studies will explore the
interconnections between gender, ageing bodies and popular (media)
culture in global societies. How is ageing addressed by cultural
expressions world-wide in terms of gender displays and heteronormative
discourses? What kind of consumerist imperatives are circulated across
the globe, and what are the particularities that distinguish communities
and cultures?

Although in some contexts age is more positively viewed, and for example
elderly women are revered, the dominant imperative is to ‘stay young’ as
long as possible. When looking young becomes a model of success, both
age denial and the shame of ageing emerge as widespread responses. An
inevitable attitude of resistance to ageing ends up pervading the way
age is generally conceived of. Therefore, however paradoxically, the
ageing process is turned on its head and becomes an anti-ageing
consumerist enterprise that is but an attempt to slow down or even
reverse ageing. Embodiments of the ‘successful’ ageing model show up in
many western media representations of ageing (see, among others, Soden,
2012; Ylänne, 2012; Dolan, 2014; Whelehan and Gwynne, 2014). Mature
bodies are only interesting to media and popular culture insofar as they
can potentially be used as visible proof of a deferred ageing process;
otherwise, they remain hidden from the public eye, as they are
considered to be abject bodies that do not fit the aforementioned model
of successful ageing.

It is the global circulation of the neoliberal consumerist ethos that
ultimately drives the representation and performance of ageing.  An
important question, then, is what role gender plays in the interaction
between cultural contexts, age and mediated cultures. Age and gender
structure each other in a complex back-and-forth feedback exchange: the
body becomes a site of struggle, a battlefield of sorts, where ageism
and heteronormativity shape ageing experiences (Halberstam, 2005;
Slevin, 2006). The female body is the one enduring the most opprobrium
in that regard:  "[t]he youthful structure of the look […] exhorts women
to pass for younger once they are a certain age" (Woodward, 2006, p.
162). However, it is not just about media representation: media create
the philosophic and social parameters of ageing itself.  A key question
is how this subject helps us understand and theorize media in a
consumerist neoliberal and global environment.

Ageing and ageism are important issues for feminism; however, feminist
theorists have only recently begun to take them up. This special issue,
Gendered ageing bodies in popular media culture, should provide us with
an excellent opportunity to go into all these topics in greater depth.

Possible topics in relation to this theme may include (but are not
limited to):

·       Female and male ageing bodies in global popular media culture
(magazines, pop music, TV, film, blogs…)

·       Divas’ and stars’ ageing bodies

·       Ageing in factual media (journalism, news and documentary
production)

·       Technologies of ageing

·       Mediated ideologies of life span

·       Sexuality, Reproduction and Ageing

·       Overcoming ageist representational strategies

·       Aesthetics of the ageing body

·       Reception of discourses regarding ageing

Aims & Scope

Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum
for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and
communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical,
cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of
sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new
media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist
researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual
perspectives.

Peer Review Policy

All research articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review,
based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by at least
two scholars.

Please submit a 350-word abstract as well as a short (1-page) CV to
Iolanda Tortajada ((iolanda.tortajada /at/ urv.cat)) by 15 May, 2016. Authors
whose abstracts are selected will be notified by 1 August, 2016 and
asked to submit complete manuscripts by 15 January, 2017. Acceptance of
the abstract does not guarantee publication of the paper, which will be
subject to peer review.



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