They are known as “damas” and they take to the squares to dance. Despite the criticism, these Chinese women are reshaping the new standards of old age.
They dress in brightly coloured clothes and twice a day, morning and evening, they take over public squares to meet and dance to music — played at full volume, without exception. The dancing grannies are a phenomenon that has been widespread throughout China for more than twenty years, and they repeatedly make the news — internationally, too — because of the reactions they provoke among local residents. These are mostly protests against the deafening music.
The story often focuses on the outcome and the dynamics of confrontations that range from the tragic to the picturesque, while also chronicling the latest scheme to silence and boycott these daily gatherings. The most recent technological tool, reported by news outlets around the world, is a device capable of remotely disabling the dancers' speakers — a product that apparently flew off the shelves online, triggering a rush to snap them up.
They provoke amusement, tenderness and admiration, yet they can also seem excessive, folkloric, libertine or simply annoying. The truly interesting question, however, revolves around this: why do they receive such media attention and generate so much debate? In brief, the reason is that they do not conform to the socially accepted standards in China — those of the middle-aged woman who is no longer sexually desirable, withdrawn into the domestic sphere, servile and available, devoted to caring for grandchildren and managing the household economy.
Beyond failing to match the Chinese model of ageing, however, the interest of the international press — from the Guardian to CNN — signals a similar distance from the Western model, with the added note of exoticism. In other words, what emerges is that the dimension of old age needs to be reinvented at a global level, and "the dancing grannies" are contributing to that process.
"Dama", which literally means "big mother", is the term used to describe the middle-aged women who in 2013, in China, began pouring all their savings into buying gold after its price collapsed — triggering, according to some, a kind of tsunami that even rattled Wall Street. But while the gold affair has now been almost entirely forgotten, the term "dama" has instead taken on an increasingly derogatory meaning.
Teng Wei, director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at South China Normal University, has studied the semantic value of this word from a sociological standpoint, defining it as: "A useful shorthand to describe middle-aged women who refuse to adopt the graceful, maternal ways that Chinese society expects of them at their age. Almost all recalcitrant women who are getting on in years run the risk of being labelled 'damas'. They are often portrayed as gossipy, selfish and entirely lacking in taste, as well as being made the scapegoat for a whole range of social ills."
Teng Wei's conclusion is decidedly blunt: "When we use 'dama' as an insult, what we are really doing is suggesting that there is something inherently wrong with being a middle-aged woman. It is discriminatory, classist, and it is time to stop."
Meeting daily in public squares to dance is undoubtedly an opportunity to forge new relationships, get physical exercise for free and, why not, display one's own femininity. The age of the women taking part in these gatherings is steadily falling; many are even under fifty, which makes calling them "grannies" all the more misleading. Behind this now well-established and widespread habit there is also the need to fill a void — the one left by a society that on one hand has changed radically and rapidly, yet on the other struggles to let go of its stereotypes.
For Claudia Huang, an anthropologist at the University of California who conducted an eighteen-month ethnographic research project in Chengdu, near the Tibetan plateau, "these women are trying to carve out new identities for themselves because they have no recognisable or achievable ways of growing old." Huang writes: "Such attempts are not always well understood or welcomed by the Chinese public. Rapid social changes have led to a decline in the social status of the elderly, but the gender expectations that limit women's ability to live according to their own desires have remained pervasive."
Driven by modernisation, the economic reform launched in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping led to the restructuring and privatisation of thousands of state-owned enterprises. Huang, in her research, writes that female workers bore the most negative consequences of these reforms: many were made redundant because they were tied to their families and therefore less productive, unable to relocate to other cities and incapable of adapting to change.
The result is a generation of women who found themselves in forced retirement at forty, yet far from recognising or accepting themselves as such — that is, as retirees. To this must be added the one-child policy, which dismantled the family model and eliminated even the role of the elderly as reference figures for children and grandchildren.
This reading, which emerges from the case of the Chinese "dancing grannies", offers thought-provoking insights that are equally relevant to a broader, global-scale discussion. Many societies are ageing rapidly, and the "silver economy" — the economy that invests in older generations as first-tier consumers — has opened up the possibility of choosing how to age.
Huang cites the emblematic case of Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old Dutch retiree who in 2018 asked a judge to change his registered age, reducing it to 49. Mr Ratelband cited age discrimination in the workplace, as well as the fact that he felt, both physically and mentally, between 40 and 45 years old — a condition his own doctor confirmed. The Dutch court's response was, unsurprisingly, negative, though it did acknowledge the widespread social tendency to feel fully in one's prime even in later years, and the freedom to perceive one's age in an entirely personal way. But on paper, the years cannot be changed.
If Mr Ratelband's case raised more than a few smiles, Huang likewise points out that most of the "dancing grannies" are nonetheless "aware that their efforts to create a new kind of old age seem ridiculous to others. By creating a gendered aesthetic of ageing that reflects and responds to their generational experiences, these women are challenging us to devise a new model of old age. The 'damas' have shown that it is possible to chart a new course in life's journey. When younger people imagine themselves as older, there is now a wider range of possibilities."
There are "dancing grannies" in other countries too, such as the Milwaukee group in the United States. But dancing is just one option among thousands, and the search for a new identity concerns women and men alike. The point is that more and more people want to reclaim a leading role in their own lives, regardless of their registered age, the embarrassment, and the judgement their unexpected behaviour may provoke in others. They are opening up new paths, and they are doing so for everyone.