Da velhice estigmatizada à dignidade na existência madura: novas perspectivas do envelhecer na contemporaneidade.

This article aims to reflect about the aging process and the various contemporary perspectives that pervade them, addressing the paradox that moves from a more positive perspective and one with stigmatizing bias of aging in contemporary times. It was used the dialectical method by a bibliographic survey of the productions, in Portuguese, about aging in a contemporary perspective on the EBSCO and Scielo databases between 2004 and 2014, from descriptors contemporary, elderly and social stigma. Among the main findings of the study, it was observed that the stigma of "being old" supports itself on the idea that the aging, in essence, produces suffering from several orders, loss of autonomy, fragilities, physical disabilities, isolation, constituting the end of the possibilities of maintaining a dignified life. On the other hand, considers the possibility of growing old with quality, consisting of conserve the dignity, live an old age filled with pleasant experiences, with deep meanings provided by the exercise of self-knowledge. Old age, as a segment of life with their features and characteristics, not necessarily must mean a time of suffering, weaknesses and declines, it can also be lived with quality, with the elderly as the protagonist of his own life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]