Aging, Agency and Anti-Aging Discourses: A Mixed-Methods Study on Romanian Women 50+ and the Revival of Gustian Sociology

Abstract

In recent decades, old age has increasingly been framed in aesthetic, commercial, and technological discourses. For older women in particular, old age has come to be depicted less and less naturally and more and more as a problem to be addressed or concealed, creating both symbolic exclusion and new markets for “peri-menopausal wellness” or “anti-aging” products. Digital culture intensifies these imperatives within a paradox in which older women become invisible within mainstream publicity while hyper-visible as targets for beauty and health markets. In Romania, these dynamics converge with a distinct post-socialist path. Women aged 50 and above were raised during the period of state socialism, which utilized femininity for demographic objectives while simultaneously limiting consumerism. Following the workshops of 1989, neoliberal principles emphasizing self-optimization, beauty, and digital skills brought forth new contradictions, resulting in many women navigating the tension between traditional caregiving roles and modern expectations for productivity and youthfulness. This article looks at how Romanian women over 50 respond to anti-aging narrative in virtual and corporeal spaces. Based on questionnaire data among respondents in the 50 Plus Community and ethnographic observation at a wellness workshop (“Am curajul să trăiesc!” [“I have the courage to live!”], May 2025), research balances quantitative scope and qualitative depth. It explores how women interpret, oppose, and recast cultural narratives about aging against the background of centennial reflections on Dimitrie Gusti’s first monographic field studies and his methodological spirit revived to respond to twenty-first-century challenges.