The Vulnerable Body

This chapter investigates the cultural phenomenon of female actors publicly addressing illness in the later stages of their careers, staging a vulnerable body marked by both pathology and the passage of time. These practices emerge within a contemporary media environment shaped by a structural discursive tension: on the one hand, the persistence of a youth-oriented model that privileges performance, efficiency, and the aesthetics of youth, particularly in relation to female bodies; on the other, a growing public emphasis on inclusivity, diversity, and self-acceptance, which appears to open new spaces for the recognition of vulnerability, illness, and ageing.