De-gendered or Re-gendered? Rethinking Ageing Masculinity Through Conversations About Car Advertisements

Historically and culturally, a close connection has been built between the car and masculinity. This relationship is particularly evident in representations in advertisements. Masculinity is also commonly depicted as something that declines in old age. Based on these two presumptions, this study focuses on how elderly men construct the relationship between car and masculinity through car advertisements and how they construct their sense of masculinity. The specific aim of this research is to explore how elderly men in Türkiye construct the relationship between cars and masculinity through car advertisements. The general aim is to observe how elderly men construct their masculinity in the Turkish context. Using a qualitative methodology, two focus-group interviews were conducted with a total of eleven male participants over the age of sixty. The purposive sampling method of criterion sampling was used in the research. Data collected in Amasya, Türkiye, in July 2022 were analyzed using the qualitative-analysis software MAXQDA. According to the results of the research, elderly men see the car as a masculine object and as a primary/essential object for men; they also agree with the stereotype that a car adds some masculine characteristics to and/or reflects the masculinity of its owner. Yet they also associate reliable cars and a safe driving style with feminine characteristics and with old age. As a result, it can be said that elderly men in Türkiye experience a fluid, bricolage masculinity, shifting between different masculinities depending on the situation or context. These findings have the capacity to contribute to the formulation of numerous new research questions concerning the relationship between masculinity and ageing, an issue that has hitherto been largely overlooked in existing literature.