Jag vill inte se ut som en tant

Länge leve tanten

Abstract

What is a "tant"? Roughly translated this can be a granny, auntie or old lady, but this doesn't capture the multilayered meanings of the Swedish concept. Here tant can be used both as a courteous phrase for addressing an older relative, or an older woman regardless of kinship, but the concept also has a derogatory meaning. This can be seen by the use of the word "tantig" that is frumpish, unfashionable or dowdy.

In this essay Karin Lövgren, explores the Swedish concept of the tant. She uses popular culture in the form of handbooks for the middle aged woman on how to not appear old and news paper articles and columns on the illusive tant. She analyses, through using the theoretical concept of doing age how age is being ascribed with references to clothes and sartorial outfits, preferences in music, use of technology like computers or mobile phones, and even potted plants. The tant comes across as a representative for a different historical era, representing both the ordinary and the mundane. Mostly she is used as a marker of ageing that seems to stand for someone past her prime, old-fashioned, obsolete, no longer modern or sexually attractive. As such the tant is used as an abbreviation for an ageing women don't want to identify with.