Gender, beauty and youth

perceptions of women of different age groups about young female appearance and feminine appearance

Abstract

The aim of this study is to understand how female representations circulating on Instagram, from the perspective of the appearance of youth and aging, are interpreted by women of different age groups who use Instagram. To this end, the work revisits issues related to gender constructions and patriarchy (Adelman, 2016; hooks, 2004; Nicholson, 2000; Saffioti, 1987, 2015), and develops a contextualization about the transformations of the ideal female aesthetic model based on Novaes (2010), Sant’Anna (2022) and Del Priore (2000) and the denial of the aged appearance in female faces based on texts by Debert (1997, 2003, 2004) and Sibilia (2011, 2012, 2016). To meet this objective, we conducted in-depth interviews with six women from three age groups: two between 30 and 39 years old; two between 40 and 49 years old; and two between 50 and 59 years old. As part of the results, we understand that youth is associated with values ​​of beauty and health, often with their meanings crossed, confused or considered synonymous. This reinforces the beauty-health-youth triad that must be achieved by preventing or eliminating all characteristics that do not convey the established ideal, such as marks that demonstrate skin aging, converted into negative values ​​for women. These perceptions reverberate in their use and appropriation of Instagram, a network of image power that plays an important role in the construction of their self-perceptions.