{"id":5106,"date":"2018-09-20T14:03:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T18:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=5106"},"modified":"2018-09-21T11:25:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T15:25:04","slug":"why-its-just-fine-to-fail-at-successful-aging-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2018\/09\/why-its-just-fine-to-fail-at-successful-aging-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why It\u2019s Just Fine to Fail at \u201cSuccessful Aging,\u201d Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part 1 of this series of blogs argues that, as a model for growing older, \u201csuccessful aging\u201d leaves ageism unchallenged or contributes to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

What else is problematic about \u201csuccessful aging\u201d? There are some insightful answers in a collection of essays called Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives<\/em> (2017), edited by Sarah Lamb.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s classist.<\/strong> Because aging \u201csuccessfully\u201d requires education, leisure, passports and access to good health care and nutrition and exercise\u2014all of which are expensive\u2014it overlooks social inequalities. Successful agers are assertive patient-consumers, upholding their civic duty by taking good care of themselves! The emphasis on personal responsibility dovetails with neoliberal and very American ideals of self-governance and independence. This relieves the state of responsibility, which in turn makes it less likely that the less well-off will receive the public support that could make it possible to age well\u2014or even to age at all.<\/p>\n

I knew about this class bias but hadn\u2019t given any thought to how it plays out in the arena of caregiving. In an essay about older Chicagoans, Elena D. Buch writes, \u201cEfforts to promote successful aging that focus on increasing self-determination and independence implicitly prioritize the well-being of vulnerable older adults over the well-being of their also-vulnerable care workers, strengthening existing social hierarchies based on race, class, and gender.\u201d Caregivers, many of whom are immigrants working for extremely low wages, work hard to make their care and themselves\u2014their cooking, their values, their private lives\u2014as unobtrusive as possible. Thus they are invisible as individuals with cultures and identities of their own. Oof.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ableist.<\/strong> The successful-aging model assumes that olders are healthy and just have to stay that way. There are no canes or wheelchairs in sight. Where does that leave those with chronic conditions, or with a disability, whose numbers inevitably increase with age? An essay by Jessica Robbins Ruszkowski describes Poland\u2019s Universities of the Third Age, a popular educational and social institution in Europe that promotes active aging. Because illness would mean entering the Fourth Age (dependence and decrepitude), \u201cthe concept of the Third Age thus makes illness unthinkable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is exclusion, instead of inclusive visions of aging that \u201cgo beyond binary constructions of activity and passivity, success and failure, productivity and unproductivity, and health and illness,\u201d Ruszkowski writes. As an alternative, what if funding weren\u2019t restricted to \u201cprograms focusing on active aging as such, but toward ensuring that people have the ability to support whatever kinds of social activity they find meaningful?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Janelle S. Taylor writes in an essay about friendship in the face of dementia, the conventional, successful-aging narrative requires stopping the clock: achieving physical, cognitive and social stasis. This presupposes an \u201centire social world \u2026 in which other people are also not aging in complicated ways alongside one,\u201d and in which it makes sense to step away from friends who become incapacitated.<\/p>\n

Do so and we forfeit participation in what Taylor calls a \u201cmoral laboratory.\u201d Those who hang in \u201cdescribe friendship after dementia that is capable of changing<\/em> rather than simply enduring; and they describe dementia as an impetus for personal and interpersonal transformations<\/em> that can involve learning, growth, and unexpected gifts in addition to very real experiences of sadness and loss.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s shame-inducing<\/strong>. If we\u2019re responsible for the way we age, yet unable to control its course, aging becomes a source of shame and embarrassment. As Abigail T. Brooks writes in an essay about why North American women have cosmetic surgery, those who have surgery sometimes look down on those who don\u2019t, which can give rise to \u201cthe blaming and shaming of olders for simply being and growing old and for failing to do anything<\/em> about it.\u201d We experience natural physical transitions as betrayal. It\u2019s an embarrassment or worse\u2014a moral or political failure\u2014if the trajectory changes, as in the case of a high-achieving, active woman in her 70s who experienced her cancer diagnosis as a personal failure.<\/p>\n

It perpetuates gender stereotypes:<\/strong> The advertisements and products that promote \u201csuccessful aging\u201d \u201creinforce white, middle-class, heterosexist norms of male performance and female beauty,\u201d writes Sarah Lamb. Women are supposed to focus on maintaining beauty and men on their capacity to perform, whether in bed or at the gym, which reinforces active and passive stereotypes\u2014desire on the part of men, desirability for women.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuccessful aging\u201d \u201cmeans accepting that how you look (i.e. having a youthful appearance) matters<\/em>,\u201d writes Brooks. This requires both taking personal responsibility and engaging in hard work, although the women she studied didn\u2019t describe it as work. Those who reject this equation of youth with beauty, and appearance with value\u2014a choice that\u2019s hard work in itself\u2014\u201creap rewards as they forge new relationships to their aging bodies and as they realize new avenues for self-expression outside of the body altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for part 1 of this series and here<\/a> for part 3.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part 1 of this series of blogs argues that, as a model for growing older, \u201csuccessful aging\u201d leaves ageism unchallenged or contributes to it. What else is problematic about \u201csuccessful aging\u201d? There are some insightful answers in a collection of…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Why It\u2019s Just Fine to Fail at \u201cSuccessful Aging,\u201d Part 2<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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