[The experience of others and becoming a senior citizen].

The study aims to describe the perception of seniors on the exercise of citizenship in the light of the thought of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, based on the notion of the sexed body and the other's body. Discloses was from the participation of 13 elderly, members of acquaintance groups in the city of Jequié/BA, which produced experiential descriptions in three focus group meetings, during the month of April in 2012. Such descriptions were submitted to ambiguity analytics, a technique that consists in suspending the theories and notice the ambiguities inherent in them. From this analysis, two categories have emerged: being an elderly citizen in the expression of the sexed body and being an elderly citizen in the expression of the other's body. The reflections have shown that the inclusion of elderly women in acquaintance groups and their desire to exercise citizenship occur, primarily, by the need to be accepted in society and recognized as subjects of law.