Re)imagining the ageing body: Sexuality and embodied transformations in later life
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/LSE.2026.65.05Schlagworte
ageing, older adults, sexuality, bodyAbstract
This paper presents the qualitative component of a mixed-methods study on sexuality in later life, based on research with heterosexual older adults in residential care homes in Croatia. Moving beyond biomedical narratives of decline, it explores how participants perceive and negotiate bodily changes, body appearance, intimacy and sexuality as affective processes of acceptance and adaptation. The analysis situates the ageing body as a site where ideals of ageing are both reproduced and contested, revealing and questioning experiences of attractiveness, desire, and social value. Through open-ended focus groups, older adults articulated embodied practices that challenge normative assumptions about vitality and loss, agency and autonomy. The paper argues that these bodily practices both process and reproduce social and gender distinctions while generating new imaginaries of intimacy and sexuality. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on the politics of embodiment and proposes inclusive understandings of ageing that emphasize agency, and the potential reconfiguration of the self.
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