Aging beyond youth presents challenges for women, who often struggle to remain visible and valued in an ageist society. To hide their age, many older women engage in age-masking beauty work, like coloring gray hair and using anti-aging products. While these practices have been the focus of prior research, limited attention has been given to women's disengagement from them. Moreover, ageist norms and ideologies largely situate disengagement as a failure to conform to youth-centric beauty norms - that is, as "letting oneself go" - rather than reflecting a deliberate decision to reject beauty norms and the objectifying view of women that they represent. To address this issue, we examine women's withdrawal from age-masking beauty work, drawing on in-depth interviews with women who range in age from 56 to 82 (n = 20). Mirroring previous studies, our analyses revealed that all the participants had felt pressure to retain a youthful appearance and had engaged in some form of age-related beauty work over their lives. Our study, however, expands the literature by focusing explicitly on disengagement, revealing three processes through which some women stepped away from age-masking beauty work: Conditional Disengagement, Supported Disengagement, and Practical-to-Critical Disengagement. By shifting the focus from women's participation in age-masking practices to their conscious withdrawal from them, our study reveals how disengagement can reflect an active rejection of youth-centric beauty standards, as well as the objectification of women: It reframes disengagement not as decline, but as resistance.
Older women's maternal roles are often assumed to diminish once their children reach adulthood. As a result, older mothers are marginalized and underrepresented in the media and society. This research examines cultural perceptions and representations of older motherhood in Thailand, a country with one of Asia's fastest-growing aging populations, through the analysis of Kasian Samran, a popular influencer marketing channel featuring the mothers of four entertainment celebrities, and interview data with sixteen Thai women aged 60 to 69. It reveals that the show challenges stereotypes of older mothers as obsolete, dependent, and disconnected from younger generations by depicting them as digitally literate, active, and self-reliant, while reinforcing traditional feminine ideals by glorifying domesticity and maternal care roles. It also associates the celebrity children's accomplishments with 'successful motherhood'. Participants' reflections were closely aligned with these narratives. They aspired to remain independent of their children's care and support while sustaining relationships with them. Some were committed to domestic roles and raising successful children, while attempting to be 'modern agers' by being digitally engaged and relatable to younger generations. This study highlights the paradoxes in the representations of older motherhood in Thailand, a country shaped by modern neoliberal ideals alongside enduring national traditions that uphold familial harmony and domesticity. It contributes culturally specific insights into older motherhood in an underexamined Global South context to feminist and media studies, and it calls for more inclusive and diverse representations of aging women and their maternal roles.
