In the text, I analyse feminist strategies in the contemporary Polish art field that problematise the hypervisibility/invisibility of the female body and the dictates of youth and beauty; I also examine the practices of age- and gender-based discrimination. For this purpose, I refer to the reflection of feminist researchers as well as projects by Iwona Demko and Agata Zbylut who use new technologies and social media in their creation. I will also let the creators speak by themselves: I asked them about the manifestations of ageism and sexism they had encountered during their careers.
In the text, I take up the issue of affirmation of the ageing body in the practices of selected performance and choreography artists: Boglárka Börcsök, Simone Forti, Anna Halprin, Ewa Partum, Eszter Salamon, and Iza Szostak. The text is divided into two parts. The first one refers to the experience of the passage of time embedded in the specific body of performers born in the 1920s and 1930s. In the other, I track the body‑to‑body translation of experience, in the works I am interested in, consisting in the cooperation of artists from different generations, where this corporal and kinaesthetic exchange takes place.
The text discusses the questions of the ageing of actresses in Polish theatre and the impact of age on the roles they can play. In my work, I consider the stereotyping of female roles and the age‑related limitation of the scope of employment and stage presence of actresses. I analyse the way women are perceived on stage, referring to the concept of glamour and the phenomenon of deglamourisation. I also discuss the increasing awareness of the problem in the theatrical culture.
The text presents the ways in which some productions are an attempt to face this problem by problematising the issue, by giving voice to women, and giving actresses the opportunity to present their own experiences on stage. In the article, I refer to the theatre productions including: Ciotunia, dir. Weronika Szczawińska, Instytut Teatralny im. Zbigniewa Raszewskiego; Łatwe rzeczy, dir. Anna Karasińska, Teatr im. Stefana Jaracza w Olsztynie; Aktorzy żydowscy, dir. Anna Smolar, Teatr Żydowski im. Estery Rachel i Idy Kamińskich; Michał Buszewicz, Edukacja seksualna, Teatr Współczesny w Szczecinie.
The author poses a question about the sources of non-conformity between fashion and the stage of life. It may stem from the fact that fashion demands changes – and people would rather avoid them as years go by – or from the fact that, in the context of fashion, self-expression is associated with the search for oneself, with the attempts to discover and express one’s own identity that has yet to be stabilised. Another reason may be that to construct the body in fashion is to aim for physical attractiveness, understood as sexual or erotic appeal – constituted by the features of youth in both fashion and culture. Lastly, the author suggests working on many different styles of old age in fashion and making them equal to the styles of youth. Building these styles not on novelty, but on memory. Not on the pursuit of change, but on elderly people’s identity.
The main research subject is the context in which old age appears in advertisements. The aim of the research is to indicate the role of advertising in the media discourse on the elderly person’s place and role in society. The author assumed that the image of old age in advertisements affects, on the one hand, the perception of the seniors’ place in society, and, on the other hand, the audiences’ attitude towards themselves. Qualitative analysis of the content has been selected as the research method. The research material consists of advertising spots from the period 2012–2022.
The text discusses the contemporary image of ageism, i.e., age discrimination, based on both current research on the phenomenon and selected exhibitions in the field of visual arts. Old age is perhaps the last taboo still in place. Death, on the other hand, remains too abstract, phantom‑like, culturally falsified and retouched to return to the tracks of serious discourse. In the neoliberal reality, more and more anti‑ageing movements and initiatives, like the rebellion of old age, represent, perhaps, the last bastion of a truly revolutionary spirit. The ambivalence of old age extends between the heroism of life as a creative synthesis and the abasement of collapse, disintegration, decay. Thus, discriminatory and stereotypical practices of insufficient, erroneous, or false representation or marginalisation of old age and elderly people, although present in the history of art and media from their very beginning – have only been at the centre of social attention for several years. The author reflects on the effectiveness of contemporary anti‑ageing activities undertaken to change the status quo that harms elderly people, emphasising the need to treat the phenomenon not as individual but systemic discrimination that creates and perpetuates social inequalities based on stereotypes and prejudice.
For years, women would suffer the effects of menopause. However, contrary to appearances, they suffered not from the effects conditioned by changes in the body, but because of the social perception of those effects. The ageing women were locked up in mental institutions, subjected to absurd medical procedures, e.g., uterus excision. Or, lastly – killed. As Mona Chollet claims in Witches, it was mainly menopausal women who died at stakes, on gallows, on scaffolds, in dungeons and deep wells. They could have been victims of the political struggle for spiritual power – having knowledge and experience that could have made them unwanted authorities of a specific community. First of all, the natural change in the woman’s body has been made a shameful disease that needed a treatment. However, the fight against this change is only a fight against windmills which brings even more misfortunes to women. Because, perhaps except for Dorian Gray, no one has been able to stop the ageing process or overcome death. What if we treated this change affirmatively? What if we looked at menopause as a desirable transition? If we were to look for a way to free ourselves from the obligation to be forever young and attractive, imposed by the patriarchy? Let us become proud champions of ageing, just like we are champions in other fields! The article aims to look for the positives of life after menopause and to try to indicate the possibility of menopausal transition in the social field.
