title: " I take the good with the bad, and I moisturize": defying middle age in the new millennium.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine how women in their 40s understand "middle age" in the context of sociocultural ideas about the life course.
  
  
  METHODS
  In-depth interviews were conducted with a subset of 53 volunteers (19 European American, 17 African American, and 17 Latina) from a community-based longitudinal study of premenopausal women between 40 and 48 years of age living in the San Francisco Bay area.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Qualitative analysis of the interview showed that women in their 40s are less concerned about menopause and more concerned about their health, well-being, and appearance. This trend was seen across ethnic groups. Menopause was not a prominent feature in the narratives that these women told about middle age. Whereas menopause was understood as a natural event that was out of women's control, health and appearance were deemed as something that women can and should control. By taking care of themselves, the women felt that they were able to act and look younger, thereby challenging what middle age means.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These women articulated a perspective about middle age as less about a chronological number and more about individual responsibility and control of one's well-being. Scholarly attention has continued to focus on menopause itself as a phenomenon and thereby fails to engage in how the meaning of middle age may be in a process of reconceptualization.
authors.affiliation: University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-0646, USA. yewoubdar.beyene@ucsf.edu
authors.forename: Yewoubdar
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Beyene
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gilliss
authors.forename: Kathryn
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000375:Aging; D001290:Attitude; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D005006:Ethnicity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008593:Menopause / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012495:San Francisco