Laughable Old Men

Abstract

A popular adage states that men age like fine wine, in the sense that they improve with age, while women's ageing is likened to cheese, in the sense that ageing is "only good to a degree [before] the mould" (Webb 2011, 33) sets in; and hence they would need to be cast aside. This was described by Susan Sontag as the "double standard of ageing," a pattern according to which men are 'allowed' "to age without penalty, in several ways, that women are not" (1972, 31). In light of such droll statements, which on the one hand combine the mounting pressure to age successfully, stay fit and look young with a mounting social and cultural invisibility of women in older age, it seems unsurprising that ageing studies and gerontology have tended to explore female experiences of ageing -leading to what Arber et al. have termed the academic 'feminisation of aging ' (2011, 7).While gerontological literature has by no means ignored the experiences of ageing men -after all, "men's experiences have formed the basis for much research" (Hurd Clarke et al. 2014, 4) -this androcentric foundation has been largely under-theorised, as few "studies [have examined] old men as men or [have attended] to masculinity as a research topic" (Calasanti and King 2005, 4; original emphasis). Similarly, research on men and masculinities has been largely inattentive to older men. Although references to ageing, age inequalities, intergenerational relationships, disability, illness, care and death do occur, they arise as afterthoughts, usually secondary to matters such as class, race and ethnicity. It may, thus, "in some sense be plausible to speak of old(er) men as invisible" (Sandberg 2011, 48), at least academically. Ageing studies have focused on women, while masculinity studies have been centred around "experiences that typify younger men" (Spector-Mersel 2006, 76) in a "concerted effort to understand middleaged and younger men's lives" (Thompson 1994, 9). Although this overview seems to imply that older men are untouched by old age, this is by no means the case, as older men may find themselves in a precarious situation in later life, perched between the ideals of mid-life and the (physical) realities of ageing. Ageing processes, ageism, "bodily changes and disruptions, and disability pose considerable problems to the established authority, social power and status of many ageing men […] and to their gendered, embodied identities" (Jackson 2016, 12). As such, older men are tasked with negotiating often disparate cultural representations that either regard later-life masculinities as 'failing masculinities' or as forever youthful.And yet, such realities of ageing are scarcely explicitly portrayed both in advertisements and in works of popular culture. Indeed, older men "have typically been portrayed as esteemed, happy, and affluent experts, grandparents, professionals, […] active leisure participants," sportsmen, or surrounded by "material wealth, […] status