In this article, we examine the existing sociocultural research and theory concerned with the aging body. In particular, we review the body image and embodiment literatures and discuss what is known about how older adults perceive and experience their aging bodies. We analyse how body image is shaped by age, culture, ethnicity, gender, health status, sexual preference, and social class. Additionally, we critically elucidate the embodiment literature as it pertains to illness experiences, sexuality, the everyday management of the aging body, appearance work, and embodied identity. By outlining the key findings, theoretical debates, and substantive discrepancies within the body image and embodiment research and theory, we identify gaps in the literature and forecast future, much-needed avenues of investigation.

The literature on patient-physician interactions has largely ignored the perspectives of older adults with multiple morbidities. Featuring in-depth interview data from 16 men and 19 women with an average of six chronic conditions, this study focused on how participants perceived and experienced the care provided by their primary care physicians. Participants suggested that physicians caring for patients with multiple chronic conditions should be thorough, amenable to gate keeping, trustworthy, and open to different decision-making styles. However, many study participants perceived that they received inadequate care due to the personal failings of their physicians, constraints of medical consultations, and societal ageism. Consequently, many of the participants, especially the women, employed various strategies to maximize the care they received and manage their physicians' impressions of them as worthy patients. Our findings suggest that elderly patients with multiple morbidities perceive that their health needs are not being adequately met.

Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 35 men and women aged 73-91, this article examines the ways in which older adults with multiple chronic conditions talk about and prepare for death and dying. While the focus of the original study did not include questions concerning the end-of-life, the majority of our participants made unprompted remarks regarding their own and others' mortality. The participants discussed the prevalence of death in their lives as it related to the passing of significant others, as well as their own eventual demise. Additionally, the men and women expressed hopes and fears about their impending death, in particular with respect to prolonged pain and suffering, institutionalisation, and a loss of mental acuity and independence. Many of our participants also described their end-of-life plans, which included making funeral arrangements, obtaining living wills, and planning their suicides. They further reported a number of barriers to their planning for death, including a lack of willingness on the part of family members to discuss their wishes as well as a scarcity of institutional resources and support. We discuss our findings in relation to the extant research concerning older adults' experiences of death and dying, as well as Glaser and Strauss' (1971) theory of status passage and Marshall's (1986) conceptualisation of authorship and the legitimation of death.

This paper examines how older men perceive, experience and internalise ageist prejudice in the context of their everyday lives. We draw on in-depth interviews with 29 community-dwelling Canadian men aged 65–89. Although one-third of our participants were unfamiliar with the term ageism, the majority felt that age-based discrimination was prevalent in Canadian society. Indicating that they themselves had not been personally subjected to ageism, the men considered age-based discrimination to be a socially distant problem. The men explained their perceived immunity to ageism in terms of their youthful attitudes and active lifestyles. The men identified three groups who they considered to be particularly vulnerable to age-based discrimination, namely women, older workers and frail elders residing in institutions. At the same time, the majority of our participants had internalised a variety of ageist and sexist stereotypes. Indeed, the men assumed that later life was inevitably a time of physical decline and dependence, and accepted as fact that older adults were grumpy, poor drivers, unable to learn new technologies and, in the case of older women, sexually unattractive. In this way, a tension existed between the men's assertion that ageism did not affect their lives and their own internalisation of ageist stereotypes. We consider our findings in relation to the theorising about ageism and hegemonic masculinity.

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