Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing ― Freeze Frame

Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing interrogates the relationship between women, ageing and celebrity, examining how celebrity culture plays a crucial role in mapping out the social and cultural meanings of 'older' and ageing women. Indeed, with the corporeality of female celebrities being surveilled and scrutinised by popular media forms on a daily basis, celebrity culture now serves a key function in shoring up 'appropriate'/ 'inappropriate' images and directives regarding how women 'should' age. Focusing on an array of historical and contemporary star/celebrity images, including figures such as Bette Davis, 'Moms' Mabley, Jennifer Aniston, Grace Jones and Dame Judi Dench, the book seeks to examine the powerful, contradictory and sometimes celebratory ways in which celebrity culture constructs discourses on the limits and possibilities of ageing femininities.

Deborah Jermyn in Reader in Film and Television at the University of Roehampton. She has published widely on women, ageing and the media, including articles in CineAction, Critical Studies in Television and Celebrity Studies, and is the editor of Female Celebrity and Ageing: Back in the Spotlight (2013).

Su Holmes is Reader in Television at the University of East Anglia. She is the author of numerous articles on celebrity and the co-editor of Framing Celebrity (2006), Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader (2007), and In the Limelight and Under the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity (2011).