From the inevitable to the undesirable: The experience of the stigma of the aging process in the contemporary world

Abstract

This article discusses the aging process in the western contemporary world, based on a phenomenological research developed with collaborating subjects who are in the life stage of maturity. This work has followed the phenomenological method based on Merleau-Ponty. The results provide elements that point towards the understanding of aging as an ambiguous experience, conveying multiples senses; it translates at the same time the identification with a negative stereotype and the refusal to bear a mark that inferiorizes or excludes people: the stigma of been old. Getting old in an environment composed by the worship of youth and beauty, that imposes an aesthetic pattern as an ideal to be conquered by everyone, transforms this experience, which is an inevitable biological phenomenon, into a undesirable cultural phenomenon.