Too old for photosharing?: (re) construing successful aging through select Instagram handles of Indian older female influencers

ABSTRACT

Our standards of beauty have become sufficiently diverse. However, the representation of older women continues to be marginalized in mainstream media platforms, with the dominant ageist message revolving around the notion of ‘failure.’ For a woman, the ‘horrors’ of aging are felt more conspicuously, which renders her a devalued commodity. Within Indian society, aging is further contested by varied socio-cultural factors that prescribe an older woman to dress, behave and act according to her age and firmly reprimand any transgression from normative practices. This paper explains the complexities related to the prevailing aging/anti-aging discourses and discerns how older women influencers engage in challenging the negative stereotypes (like body shaming and sexageist derision) through the model of successful aging. Through select Instagram handles, the study analyses how the graying individuals collectively seek to direct or reclaim their power to forge alternative narratives/perspectives that encourage the aging/aged self to ‘be’ in her skin. The visual content from the Instagram profiles of Manjri Varde, Ravi Bala Sharma, Rajani Chandy, Seema Anand, and Usha Soman, who serve as representatives of redefining aging with purpose, has been critically analyzed. The results obtained have delineated how the social networking site has emerged as a space of resistance and empowerment- redefining beauty, desire, and agency within the contemporary youth-centric Indian culture and rendering possibilities that one can explore while growing old.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The emergence of new media in the mid-1980s had a revolutionary impact on communicational and visual technologies entailing a change in the social and cultural landscapes, creating new creative and communicative avenues, and increasing productivity and educational opportunities. It promoted a new relationship between media technologies and subjects (users and consumers) and implicated a shift in the social and personal experience of time and space both at local and global levels (Lister et al., 2009).

2. Garima Chaurasia is a social media personality and TikTok star known for her musical videos and has won the heart of many Indian followers through her sensational appearance and classy fashion sensibility.

3. The Indian actress and model, Manushi Chhillar won the Miss World Beauty Pageant 2017 and serves as a prominent face, advocating beauty with a purpose.

4. The model cum fashion blogger, Mrunal Panchal is known for her TikTok reels and makeup videos on Instagram.

5. A popular beauty, fashion and lifestyle blogger, Shaurya Sanadhya Tulshyan is famous for her skincare and dressing tips.

6. Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space (1991) describes ‘representational space’ (p. 39) as those spaces which are directly lived through its associated symbols and images. Thus, such spaces are utilized by the users, artists, writers and philosophers who primarily seek to describe through their work/creation and are passively experienced by the audience who use their imagination to appropriate and change what they perceive.