{"id":5108,"date":"2018-09-21T11:19:50","date_gmt":"2018-09-21T15:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=5108"},"modified":"2018-09-22T07:39:52","modified_gmt":"2018-09-22T11:39:52","slug":"why-its-just-fine-to-fail-at-successful-aging-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2018\/09\/why-its-just-fine-to-fail-at-successful-aging-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Why It\u2019s Just Fine to Fail at \u201cSuccessful Aging,\u201d Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

More about what\u2019s wrong with the concept of \u201csuccessful aging\u201d\u2014a topic explored in Parts 1 and 2 and in<\/em> Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives (2017),<\/em> a collection of essays edited by Sarah Lamb<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 What else is problematic about \u201csuccessful aging\u201d?<\/p>\n

It medicalizes the aging process. <\/strong>In an essay about selling youthful sexuality as \u201csuccessful aging,\u201d Emily Wentzell defines \u201clifestyle drugs\u201d as pharmaceutical treatments\u2014ranging from baldness cures to eyelash lengtheners\u2014that cause social distress rather than physical harm. The emotional relief the treatments provide is real, she observes, but the sources of pain are not medical conditions but social expectations for how bodies should be\u2014expectations that advertising and medical practice aggressively promote.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, rather than questioning or challenging cultural expectations, people who cannot meet them increasingly turn to pills that will change their bodies,\u201d writes Wentzell, which is dangerous, increases health care costs and promotes unrealistic expectations, once again setting us up to fail as these strategies inevitably fall short.<\/p>\n

Viagra exemplifies this trend, which, Wentzell notes, has \u201ca range of social consequences.\u201d While it counters the damaging stereotype that olders should not be sexual, it promotes a narrow vision of what connotes \u201chealthy\u201d sex and suggests that people should want to have sex the same way throughout their lives. She found a very different attitude in the working-class Mexican men she studied, who perceived erectile dysfunction drugs as dangerous, and even absurd, and were content to shift from \u201cmacho masculinities\u201d to \u201cbeing faithful, caring, and emotionally present for their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of their wives experienced the transition as \u201ca beautiful change.\u201d Wentzell ends the essay with an appeal to question Euro-American ideas of aging as a pathology. \u201cWe can fight against this trend by basing our ideas of successful aging on people\u2019s diverse and culturally specific social needs, rather than on the expectation that healthy aging means \u2018staying as young as possible\u2019 for everyone, everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ethnocentric.<\/strong> The prevailing successful-aging model is deeply linked to deeply American cultural ideals about productivity, independence and control over our bodies and our futures, even in old age. Anna I. Corwin\u2019s study of Catholic nuns describes a very different value system. The nuns ceded control and agency to the Divine, which helped them accept changes with equanimity; they valued interdependence over independence; and they saw \u201cbeing good\u201d as more important than \u201cdoing good,\u201d so retiring or becoming disabled carried no stigma. As a group, Catholic nuns are happier, healthier and have fewer cases of Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

A \u201cnew paradigm for well-being across the life course\u201d proposed by Meika Loe likewise \u201cemphasizes learning to \u2018be\u2019 in a culture of doing.\u201d She calls it Comfortable Aging. This model requires interdependency, is about accepting vulnerability and limitations and involves coming to terms with mortality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we can fail at being \u2018successful\u2019 or \u2018productive,\u2019 personal comfort is subjectively defined and attainable,\u201d Loe points out. \u201cImportantly, most structural issues linked to Comfortable Aging are non-age-specific\u2014social respect, affordable housing, community-oriented neighborhoods, access to transportation, dependable services, and care that honors all stages in the lifecycle\u2014these are universal needs.\u201d In other words, a society in which it\u2019s OK to age comfortably is one that supports all its members all along the life course.<\/p>\n

One valuable aspect of Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession<\/em> is its global perspective. Many in the majority world find ultrapositive images of aging unrealistic and counterproductive. Lamb has done extensive fieldwork in West Bengal, where, far from being idealized, \u201ctoo much independence is commonly regarded as the worst thing that can befall one in old age.\u201d More than 80 percent of India\u2019s 65+ population live with their families, embodying \u201ca relationship of lifelong intergenerational reciprocity.\u201d There\u2019s nothing demeaning about receiving care and support of all kinds, including with toileting. Imagine that!<\/p>\n

As Lamb points out, we have much to learn about aging well from some Buddhist, Hindu and Catholic ways of thinking, which \u201chighlight transience as a fundamental part of being human,\u201d rather than denying or stigmatizing the changes that accompany us along the life course.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan we not accept signs of aging\u2014even if they include declines, vulnerabilities, and ephemerality\u2014as in some ways a meaningful part of life?\u201d Lamb asks. \u201cShouldn\u2019t it be possible to regard old age and death not as intolerable outrages, nor as failures of medicine and self, but rather as inevitable facets of life, defining in part what it is to be human?\u201d<\/p>\n

That less \u201csuccessful\u201d world would be a better one for all: less fear-filled, more communitarian and more open to the transcendent possibilities of life itself.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for part 1 of this three-part series and here<\/a> for part 2.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More about what\u2019s wrong with the concept of \u201csuccessful aging\u201d\u2014a topic explored in Parts 1 and 2 and in Successful Aging as a Contemporary Obsession: Global Perspectives (2017), a collection of essays edited by Sarah Lamb.  What else is problematic…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Why It\u2019s Just Fine to Fail at \u201cSuccessful Aging,\u201d Part 3<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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