Sexual Subjectivity of Ageing Women in the Series Grace and Frankie

In neoliberal political rationality, older women are associated with reduced social value, powerlessness, and asexuality. It is against this background that we set out to examine the representation of older women’s sexual subjectivity in the television series Grace and Frankie. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of “technologies of the self,” we show how different practices performed by the series’ two protagonists, Grace and Frankie, help them negotiate with the normative power that shapes their positions as ageing women. By unpacking the different technologies of the self that each character performs, we demonstrate how they manage to sustain a sense of sexual subjectivity. We suggest that the television series identifies contemporary options for transformative practices, which may serve older women in their efforts to deal with restrictive neoliberal constructions of old age.