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Anti-ageing Machinery in the Czech Republic: Mapping the System

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2023

Abstract

Ageing is the greatest achievement of humanity: we age because we do not die prematurely. Yet it is still not accepted as something to "look forward to".

This is mainly due to low levels of health, but also to the social stigma of old age and its visuality. Being old or even just "looking old" is a source of gendered disadvantages.

Anti-ageing is an umbrella term for a system with many actors, goals and levels that seeks to slow, stop, reverse, or at least mask ageing. Because it is a very broad field, in our mapping we focused on only one cog in the system, namely anti-ageing aesthetic surgery, where we set the problem "Anti-ageing aesthetic surgery as a new axis of inequality for women in the Czech Republic".

We map the social inequalities built into how and to whom anti-ageing offers its solutions and look for the neuralgic points where (mainly female) bodies are disciplined, and ageing remains as a life program for the poor.