Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
“Stop acting like a child – you're immature”: The reversed ageism of practicing self-injury as adult women and the reclaiming of our bodies
Jönköping University, School of Health and Welfare, HHJ, Department of Social Work. Jönköping University, School of Health and Welfare, HHJ. SALVE (Social challenges, Actors, Living conditions, reseach VEnue).ORCID iD: 0000-0001-8948-1055
2023 (English)In: Journal of Aging Studies, ISSN 0890-4065, E-ISSN 1879-193X, Vol. 67, article id 101187Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The practice of self-injury is considered deviant and pathological, and the stereotype of a self-injuring individual is a young, white, middle-class woman. By using an autoethnographic approach, I elucidate how four women and I, aged 35–51, with experiences of self-injury in adulthood, use, internalize, and speak through dominant discourses of self-injury. The practice of self-injury is an embodied one, and self-injury is stereotypically associated with immature, irresponsible, and emotionally unstable young women. As adult women who self-injure, we use and speak through this representation, which, to some extent, affects our self-image and identity as we are often “misrecognized” as full partners in everyday social interaction or when we represent our professions. Still, we resist the idea of self-injury as stemming from immaturity, and we work to reclaim our bodies and agency from the medicalized, ageist assumptions of the practice of self-injury. By doing this, we can also rewrite and transform the meaning of this practice. Our self-inflicted wounds or scars do not define who we are nor our level of maturity, intelligence, and attractiveness. Thus, we acknowledge that we have the right to our own bodies and what we do to that body.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier, 2023. Vol. 67, article id 101187
Keywords [en]
Adult women, Ageism, Autoethnography, Gender, Self-injury, Social stigma, The body
National Category
Social Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-62698DOI: 10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101187ISI: 001098760700001PubMedID: 38012939Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85173651491Local ID: HOA;;911269OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hj-62698DiVA, id: diva2:1806388
Available from: 2023-10-20 Created: 2023-10-20 Last updated: 2023-12-15Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textPubMedScopus

Authority records

Gunnarsson, Nina V.

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Gunnarsson, Nina V.
By organisation
HHJ, Department of Social WorkHHJ. SALVE (Social challenges, Actors, Living conditions, reseach VEnue)
In the same journal
Journal of Aging Studies
Social Work

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
pubmed
urn-nbn
Total: 173 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf