text: THE INVISIBLE GENERATION': QUESTIONING AGEISM, CHALLENGING MYTHS, REFASHIONING SELVES | Proceedings of the International Conference on Future of Women Proceedings of the International Conference on Future of Women
  Vol 1 No 1 (2018): Proceeding of the International Conference on Future of Women 2018 /
  THE INVISIBLE GENERATION': QUESTIONING AGEISM, CHALLENGING MYTHS, REFASHIONING SELVES
  Alka Singh Vasanta College for Women, Rajghat Fort, Varanasi, India
  DOI: https://doi.org/10.17501/icfow.2018.1104
  Keywords: Ageism, body, beauty myth
  The old age is perceived as a foreign body, said Simone de Beauvoir in her essay The Coming of Age (1970). Influenced by Sartre's existentialism she emphasized the idea that the subject sees old age through the perception of others. It is a twin process of objectification: the look of others who sees female body as an object of hostility and also a woman's image of herself who feels that the body is different from her. Jeannette King calls women who are over fifty "the invisible generation" in her book Discourses on Ageing in Fiction and Feminism: The Invisible Woman (2012). She asserts that woman loses her identity after fifty because a woman's value has historically been determined by her reproductive ability, her beauty and sexuality. Gullette points out the absence of a discourse on ageism in feminism scholarship. The present paper explores the grounds of marginalization of ageing women in the Indian context from cultural and feminist standpoints and the paper aims to make ageing women visible in the literary and feminist discourses with special reference to four contemporary plays: Mangalam by PolieSengupta, Harvest by ManjulaPadmanabhan, Tripurari Sharma's Bahu and Aurat by Rasheed Jahan.
  Calasanti, T., 2006, Ageism and Feminism: From "Et Cetera" to Center. NWSA Journal, 18(1), pp. 13-30.
  de Beauvoir, S., 1970,The coming of age. Print ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
  Friedan, B., 1993,The Fountain of Age. Print ed. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  Gullette, M. M., 1997. Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife. print ed. US: University Press of Virginia.
  Hall, D. E., 2004. Subjectivity. Print ed. New York: Routledge.
  Jahan, R., 2005. Woman (Aurat). In: T. Mukherjee, ed. Staging Resistance: Plays by women in Translation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 517-538.
  Jeannette, K., 2013. Discourses of Ageing in Fiction and Feminism: The Invisible Woman. Print ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
  Marinova, D., 2013. Cultural Alienation in the Ageing Person. Psychological Thought, 6(2), pp. 264-282.
  Moore, S., 2009. No matter what I did I would still end up in the same position': age as a factor defining older women's experience of labour market participation. Work Employment and Society, 23(4), pp. 655-671.
  Mowl, G., 2000. The Ageing Body and the Homespace. Area, 32(2), pp. 189-197.
  Nielsen, T. H., 1987. The Creation of Patriarchy. Vol. 1. Women and History by Gerda Lerner. Acta Sociologica, 30(2), pp. 229-232.
  Padmanabhan, M., 1998. Harvest. Print ed. New Delhi: Kali for Women.
  Pohl, J. M., 1993. Ageism within Feminism. IMAGE: Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 25(3), pp. 199-203.
  Samiezade'-yazd, S., 2010. Ageism is a Feminist Issue. Feministing Community. [Online]
  Available at: http://feministing.com/2010/07/27/ageism-is-a-feminist-issue/.
  Scott-Maxwell, F., 1979. The Measure of My Days. Printed ed. US: Penguin Books.
  Sengupta, P., 2010."Mangalam." Women Centre Stage: The Dramatist and the Play. print ed. New Delhi: Routledge.
  Singh, A. & Mukherjee, T. T., 2013. Gender, Space and Resistance: Women and Theatre in India. In: T. Sharma, ed. Daughter-In-Law (Bahu). print ed. New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, pp. 306-365.
  Sontag, S., 1972. The Double Standard of Ageing. Saturday Review of The Society, pp. 29-39.
  Thomas, R., 1993. The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America. Print ed. US: CUP.
  Waxman, B. F., 1997. To live in the Centre of the Moment: Literary Autobiographies of Aging. Print ed. USA: University of Virginia Press.
  Wilinska, M., 2012. Is there as place for Ageing Subject? Stories of Ageing at the University of the Third Age in Poland. Sociology, 46(2), pp. 290-304.
  Wolf, N., 1991. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are used Against Women. reprint ed. UK: Vintage.
  Woodward, K., 2017. Rereading Simone de Beauvoir's The Coming of Age. Age Culture Humanities, Issue 3.
  Singh, A. (2018). THE INVISIBLE GENERATION': QUESTIONING AGEISM, CHALLENGING MYTHS, REFASHIONING SELVES. Proceedings of the International Conference on Future of Women, 1(1), 30-36. https://doi.org/10.17501/icfow.2018.1104