Professor of Social Policy and Sociology, Julia Twigg will discuss fashion and age at the Vice Chancellor’s Esteem Lecture in Grimond Lecture Theatre 1, Weds 4 March, from 6.00pm.
Dress – particularly under the guise of fashion – can seem a lightweight sort of topic, not deserving serious academic analysis, especially in the context of old age where frailty and decline may seem to present both society and individuals with more pressing concerns. But the lecture will suggest that clothing and dress are highly relevant to the analysis of age, and that they intersect with some central issues in relation to later life and its cultural formation, opening up the complex ways in which ageing is both a bodily and a cultural phenomenon. Throughout history certain forms and styles of dress have been deemed appropriate – or rather inappropriate – for people as they age. Older women in particular have long been subject to pressures to tone down, to adopt self-effacing, covered up styles. More recently there have been signs of change. The lecture will explore the extent and significance of these.
Professor Julia Twigg
Professor Julia Twigg’s work focuses on embodiment. In The Body in Health and Social Care, Palgrave 2006, she reflected on the relevance of new theorising in relation to the body for a series of policy relevant areas. These included: age and ageing, disability, medicine and health care, diet and health, social care, public and private space. The main focus of her current work is clothing and age. She has a series of interconnected projects that explore the role of clothing and dress in the changing constitution of age. She has also been particularly interested in analysing care work as a form of bodywork and is the co-editor of a special issue of Sociology of Health and Illness on bodywork.