“Don’t Be Trying to Box Folks In”

Youth-centeredness presents a “deficit model” of aging and stigmatizes elders. Social constructions reduce the aging process to illness and asexuality. Western conflations of beauty and youth render older adult sexuality disgusting and/or abnormal. Grounded theory methods utilized to interview older women ( N = 20) about love, intimacy, and sexuality reveal more complex and heterogeneous narratives than we are socialized to believe. While important commonalities were reported across age cohorts, relationship statuses, and sexual orientations, sociohistorical as well as psychosocial factors, such as the feminist movement, attitudes about aging, experiences of ageism, and views on sexuality, demonstrate both within- and between-group differences.