QUALITATIVE HEALTH RESEARCH / July 1999Banister / WOMEN’S EXPERI NCE OF CHANGING BODIES Women’s Midlife Experience of Their Changing Bodies

The purpose of the ethnographic report described in this article is to discuss midlife women’s perceptions of their changing bodies within the Western cultural context and to provide a basis for health care with women. The narratives of 11 midlife women (ages 40-53) were obtained. Data were analyzed using Spradley’s (1979) Developmental Research Sequence Method. Results of the study indicate that women’s midlife experience of their changing bod-ies encompasses a broad spectrum, full of contradiction and change. Issues of loss, cultural influences that perpetuate ageism and sexism, lack of consistent information about meno-pause, questioning, redefining self, and self-care, all played a central role in the women’s lives during this time of transition. Midlife is a complex time of transition for women that encompasses a broadspectrum of experience that is full of contradiction and change (Levinson, 1996). Midlife often is defined by chronological age or by the condition of one’s body (Lippert, 1997), which has an important influence on how one sees one’s self. However, how one perceives one’s self is also situated within a social, cultural, and historical context and includes one’s cultural1 knowledge of aging, gender, and social roles. The extensive physical changes that occur to a woman in midlife ca