ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how other appearance-related talk and practices in which participants engaged made older age relevant and contributed to casting them as older. It focuses on two aspects of participants’ talk and practices that resonate with the wider literature. The chapter explores how participants’ talk and practices more or less overtly displayed their orientation to broad social norms of age-appropriate appearance. Through this talk and these practices participants display, too, their own investment in their appearance management. Participants’ comments about appropriate appearance display at least their awareness of social norms of appearance for older women, including the need to adapt one’s attire with age. In short, in the relative tightness or looseness of their hair appointment making and attending practices, in the care they continued to devote to their attire and other aspects of their appearance, particularly when going out or for social events, participants displayed themselves as more or less invested in their appearance.
