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Aging attractively: Women's learning experiences in a beauty salon
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to explore how attitude formation and learning change throughout adulthood to include new models of attractiveness as aging occurs. American culture continues to present youth-based images of attractiveness that hold men and women to a standard impossible to achieve as they age, contributing to perceptions of failure, loss and depression (Thorson, 1995). The present research focused on identifying and clarifying how women are socialized and what standards of attractiveness are in fact used by aging women. This study is intended to help clarify how aging adults find and use models for maintaining attractiveness. The study used a qualitative grounded theory approach, which affords a method to investigate perceptions of attractiveness in aging. The setting, a beauty salon, was considered an appropriate place to investigate the role the image professional plays as aging women focus on their physical attractiveness. As people in mid-life move into their senior years, they are changing programs and services in every area of the culture (Dychtwald & Flower, 1990). One such service, devoted entirely to socialization about body image, is the beauty salon. The beauty salon provided an appropriate setting in which to study how older people form attitudes and perceive their own and others' attractiveness. The study was limited to women participants who are all clients of the same beauty salon. Ultimately, the lack of information on women, aging and attractiveness led directly to the qualitative design of the present study and the following research questions: (1) Where do women find social comparisons for attractiveness as they age? (2) How do women's images of attractiveness change as they age? (3) Are personal appearance preferences in women resistant to change over time? (4) Is there an appropriate "mature" image for women as they age & what does it look like?
Subject Area
Womens studies|Marketing|Gerontology
Recommended Citation
Franks, Lucinda Jean, "Aging attractively: Women's learning experiences in a beauty salon" (1998). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9826083.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9826083