On the Hunt for Noble Savages: Romance Tourism and Ageing Femininities

Abstract

<jats:p>Casual sexual encounters are closely wedded to leisure travel, and have received a lot of attention in both theoretical and empirical work. However, the relationship between romance tourism and female ageing remains largely under-researched. This article offers critical insights into the interplay of the successful ageing and sexual relationships abroad of older women travellers. It shows that romance tourism has both positive and negative implications for women’s physical and psychological health and wellbeing. Although exotic escapes help reconnect women with their youthful selves, enhancing a sense of self-confidence and challenging the narrative of decline, casual sex may also generate conflicting feelings once the travel romance is over. This article also encourages the rethinking of the complexities of ageing femininities, sexual activity and health risk in ‘silver’ romance tourism today. Additionally, it argues that the sexual health guidelines and information campaigns should adopt a more multifaceted approach to sexual expressions, and encourage alternative views towards sex and sexuality in later life, in order to not create a rather oppressive ideology among older women.</jats:p>

Is Sex Tourism Intention Uncontrollable? The Moderating Effects of Ethics and Law

“…Furthermore, the claim that only men are sex buyers has been criticized for its basis on gender bias. Indeed, several scholars argue that female tourists are romance tourists rather than sex tourists because, in contrast to male tourists, they seek emotional and long-term relationships with local men (Pruitt and LaFont 1995; Stončikaitė 2020). However, women can be sexually aggressive and exploitative in tourism destinations (Taylor 2001; Weichselbaumer 2012).…”

Existential and Psychological Problems of Aging: The Perspective of Ukrainian Lyrics’ Art Representation

“…"Older women are subjected to negative notions of ageing and often perceived as asexual, deformed, sagging and unappealing, which makes them even more vulnerable, unseen and ridiculed". "Therefore, older women are more likely than older men to experience discrimination, and be regarded as asexual and unattractive" (Stončikaitė, 2020). It can be said that if the problem of the body distorted by old age is discursively raised, it means the female body, because "women has been constructed as body -through the body-mind binary -throughout Western cultural history" (King, 2013, p. 148), as "performing age is principally a bodily effect anchored in visuality", thus "the older female body is paradoxically both hypervisible and invisi- ble" (Woodward, 2006, p. 163).…”

“…It is worth mentioning the observations of I. Stončikaitė (2020): "If, in contemporary western understandings of beauty and sexual appeal, grey hair and wrinkles translate into maturity and wisdom in men, in older women they are often seen as the antithesis of femininity, and as markers of grandmothering and nurturing". P. Midianka in his poems involuntarily evinces not only gender stereotypes about the elderly, but also the cultural and psychological "asymmetry" of masculine and feminine situations of aging.…”