„Forever Young?“: Intersectional Perspectives on Aging, Fitness, and Health

By: Gabriele Sobiech

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Synopsis: The demographic change presents new, primarily financial challenges for the state, politics, and the economy (level of power and domination relations). Aging (doing age) should be understood as a social construct that primarily offers self-empowerment opportunities for those who can follow the trend of age activation through sports/fitness due to higher educational qualifications and greater financial resources, and who maintain a healthy lifestyle. The goal of this project was to analyze fitness studio advertising from an intersectional and inequality-reflective perspective based on the structural categories of body/aging, gender, and class. It aimed to interview trainers with a focus on older active individuals (representation level) and to take a differentiated look at the self-techniques of older women active in fitness studios gathered through a qualitative interview study (subject level). On one hand, working on the body can strengthen one's own social positioning; on the other hand, devaluing others who do not follow the trend can give rise to a new form of 'lookism.'