AnticAging:Are You For It or Against It? Growing Older Without Aging? Positive Aging, Anti-Ageism, and Anti-Aging By Stephen Katz erontologists, gray and sexism as a term that political activists, . identifies how prevailing ‘community workers, and Powerful rhetorical and forms of injustice and policy makers predict that the twenty-first century will be an era of unprece- dented, positive aging. ‘Their forecast is supported by the populational and longevity revolutions that are already occur- ring, accompanied by a dynamic shift in images of aging in the media, advertising, and public consciousness. The new positive images of aging depict activity, autonomy, mobility, choice, and well-being in defiance of tradi- tionally gloomy stercotypes of decline, decrepi- tude, and dependency. Key to the understanding of this development is the idea of “ageism? introduced by Robert N. Butler in 1968 during a housing dispute when he was chair of the District of Columbia Advising Committee on Aging (Butler, 1969, 1990). But- Jer went on to become the first director of the ‘Ameérican National Institute on Aging, in 1976, and remains a gerontological pioneer, while the notion of ageism has become a valuable way of putting a name to the widespread bigotry faced by older adults. Today, ageiom: joins meism marketing practices support ideals of timeless living. inequality —_victimize human differences. At the same time, the ideals of positive aging and anti- ageism have come to be used to promote a wide- spread anti-aging culture, one that translates their radical appeal into commercial capital. In so doing, and aided by powerful rhetorical and marketing practices, anti-aging culture is effec- tively reinventing notions of maturity, aging, and elderhood with ideals of timeless living and growing older unburdened by the signs of aging. This paper takes a critical look at these ideals and their production within marketing and lifestyle literature, beginning with a dis- cussion of the “postmodern life course” as a frame of reference. ‘TIMELESSNESS AND ‘THE POSTMODERN LiFE COURSE In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, profound changes in labor relations, social programs, retirement and demographic patterns, and the medical and cultural stretch- Winter 2001-0228 GENERATIONS ing of middle age into later life have led promi- nent cultural gerontologists to observe that the modem chronological and generational bound- aries that had set apart childhood, middle age, and old age have become blurred and indeter- minate (Basting, 1998; Bhikie, 1999; Cole, 1992; Featherstone, 199s; Eeatherstone and Hep- worth, 1991; Gilleard and Higgs, 2000; Gul- lette, 1998; Woodward, 1991). In other words, the modern life course, with its origins in the industrial standardization of age-graded insti- tutions and populations in the nineteenth cen- tury, has given way to a “postmodern life course” organized around the priorities of a consumer society. This movement has inspired real estate, finance, cosmetics, and leisure enter- prises to target a growing, so-called ageless “seniors” market (usually ae at ages 3° plus) and fashion-a range of “uni-age” bodies, fashions, and identities that recast later life as an active, youthful consumer experience (Mey- rowitz, 1984). Of course, the postmodern life course also has created new avenues for self care and self-definition in late life, thus empow- ring elders to innovate resourceful roles and ‘ways of life both for themselves and for those who will follow. In both cases, by mobilizing new segments of the population of older Amer- icans in anticipation of extracting the “gold in gray” (Minkler, 1991), the private sector has expanded the realms from which the images that portray what it means to be old are derived, Market jargon such as boomers and cempty-nesters as itself become part of a popu- lar sociogerontological vocabulary aimed at dis- guising the negative realities of poverty and inequality in old age. Most important, the postmodern treatment of traditional age caregories has fostered new cultural experiments with time and timeless- ness. Historians have demonstrated that mod- em society operated within a calendrical world, where the values of mechanical factory time and historical progress were intrinsically linked to the family and generational practices of everyday life (see Chudacoff, 1989; Daly, 1996; Gillis, 1996). In many ways the clock face became the figurative face of modernity itself and its pre- occupation with uniformity and permanence. ‘The economies associated with postmodern Winter 2001-02 ing as continuously active and problem-free, Fee ar SRE op ST time, however, emphasize replication, speed, impermanence, and. inmost ‘Bauman (1992) states: Ina life composed of equal moments, speaking of directions, projects, and fulfillments makes no sense. Every present counts as much, or as little, as any other. Every state is as momentary and passing as any other, and cach one is—potentially—the gate opening into ‘ternity. Thus the distinction between the mundane and the eternal, transient and durable, mortal and immor tal, is all but effaced. Railylife isa constant rehearsal of both mortality and immortality —and ofthe futility of set- ting one against the other. Simmultanciy replaced history asthe location of meaning, What counts —what has the power to define and shape—is what is around here and. now, “Older” and “younger” objects are all on the same plane, that of the present. Timelessness or simultaneity is thus a central resources in a consumer society where every activity—from leisure to education, health pro- motion, and even death and dying (Wernick, 1995) —is conceived as a lifelong projects. For example, retirement communities modeled after Sun City, Arizona, are often publicized as pas- toral “escapes?” “villages” “havens? and “parks” They constitute what Blaikie (1999),calls “land- scapes of later life” (also see Laws, 1995, 1996), Tn realty these housing developments tend to isolate aging communities and potentially mask retirement i the contradictory effect of presenting eldethood and growing older as ageless, timeless experi- ences while simultaneously making them sepa- rate segments of the life course. This situation leads Robert Kastenbaum (1993) to observe that in the original Sun City, “time is the time of busy and robust adults in their prime years... . it’s a funny kind of time, though” The adver- tising industry also portrays the new anti-ageist, positive older person as an independent, healthy, flexi-retired “citizen?” who bridges mid- dle age and old age without suffering the time- related constraints of either, In this model, as Ekerdt and Clark (2001) comment, “retirement is not old age” Kastenbaum and other critical gerontolo- gists are justified in examining our culture’s new, more positive vision of elderhood, becausepopular images and professional programs that connect positive aging to anti-aging tend to overlook the hardships experienced by many older adults who suffer from illness, poverty, loneliness, and marginalization (Cohen, 1998; Cole, 1992; Ekerdt, 1986; Hepworth, 1995; Mooxly, 1988). For example, a recent Canadian study of working people ages s5 to 64. shows that the large numbers of people in this cohort—mostly men—who have left the labor market in Canada in the past decade (because of early retirement programs, job loss, and poor health) have greater chances of being poor and dependent than do middle-aged people (Cheal and Kampen, 1998). ‘These and other critical arguments remind us that what is thought of as “positive” aging is part of a continuum of images and forces that configures old age and the life course. As Mike ‘Hepworth (199s) comments: Positive and negative styles of ageing into old age are not objectively distinctive physical conditions wait- ing to be discovered, but are socially constructed moral «categories reflecting the prevailing social preference for individualised consumerism, voluntarism and decen: tralisation. [These] foster an accelerating age-consciousness where the ear of ageing into old age tends to predom. inate, and old age is consequently perceived as a “social problem™ which ean only be resolved by normalising styles of ageing prescriptively designated “positive” . and discouraging or even punishing styles of ageing defined as deviant. In equating the virtues of positive aging with successful aging, and anti-ageism with timeless anti-aging, both professional and commercial fields share common ground in their struggle to represent the new aging, At the same time, positive agendas based on activity and mobil- ity can downplay traditionally crucial values such as wisdom and disengagement by tansting u dependency (Katz, 2000). Thus, this internal aiqueotth OF the positive construction of aging not only draws our attention to the vacuous- ness of popular anti-aging imagery, but also to the deeper tension that exists between views of older people as empowering political and social forces, and views of them as “imagineered” (to Anti-Aging: Are You For It or Against It? use a suggestive term by Glenda Laws [1995]) communities of marketing demographics. MARKETING ‘MATURITY’ ‘The literature on marketing to older adults is a prime example of how the postmodern agenda for timeless, positive aging is aligned to new frameworks for growing older based on consumerism. Some of the leading texts in this field are Jeff Ostrofs Successful Marketing to the 50+ Consumer: How to Capture One of the Biggest and Fastest-Growing Markets in America (1980), Stephan Buck’s The s+ Market: Explor- ing a Golden Opportunity (1990), Rosemary Breckler’s If You've Over 50, You Are the Target (1991), George Moschis’s Gerontagraphics: Life- Stage Segmentation for Marketing Strategy Devel- opment (1996), and Ken Dychtwald’s Age Power: How the 21st Century Will Be Ruled by the New Old (1999). These texts are accompanied by hundreds of papers and studies in such jour- nals as American Demographics, Prychology and Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Research, and in the reports, brochures, and websites of new American consulting and marketing orga- nizations such as AgeWave, Primelife, Lifespan ‘Communications, and Lifestage Matrix Mar- keting, In order to convince the corporate world that marketing to older adults is a booming industry, this literature has developed sophis- ticated technical vocabularies that transfigure the life course into market segments and con- sumer profiles. As a result, aging as a chrono- logical process is masked or disappears entirely. “This is necessary, as marketing professors Dale A. Lunsford and Melissa S. Burnett (1992) report in a paper on “selfimage.” because the “New Age elderly” have a “cognitive age younger than their chronological age”; hence the appeal to a younger selfimage can increase the purchase of new products or the switching of brands. In other words, New Age older con-, ‘sumers are not attracted to products specifi marketed to “older people even though mar- keting surveys have shown that among this cohort traditional values based on thrift, hon- sty, and hard work take precedence over the attraction to “the new” or “the latest” The authors conclude that “the challenge for mar- keters is to develop products that meet the ‘Winter 2001-0230 GENERATIONS of the elderly without becoming ible emblem of age that others can see” ‘Thus, masking age becomes a key strategy in developing what has become the “mature mar- ket? The word maturity is being used with increasing frequency because it is a chronolog- ically neutral term available as a sign for posi tive images and lifestyles. Yet, if age is to be masked, choosing what kinds of images and lifestyles should be used in the media for “mature” advertising is also a challenge ( Karz, 1999; Sawchuk, 1995 wasisdifforentiot= ing the mature market from other markets. Marketing language is a component of the strategy to depict maturity and consumerism as intrinsically linked in the life cycle. In marketing literature, the life course itself seems to have no particular timelines, goals, or boundaries, only transitions among transient networks of spend- ing, owning, and investing, Subjectiviny jp later, Aifeis reduced toa spurious cluster of consumer, ay identities, In short, asthe title of Patrick Flana- gan’s 1994 report in Management Review rec- ommends, “Don’t Call ‘Em Old, Call ‘Em Consumers.” But in order to “call em con- sumers.” marketers require more than just new vocabularies and imagery; they also need to ulation aging in terms of demographic targets and market “segments” SS SRUISh he ar oT Marke segmentation in later life, George Moschis (1996) has invented the term gerontagraphics. Moschis is a professor of marketing and director of Georgia State Uni- versity’s Center for Mature Consumer Studies, a member of the university's Gerontology Pro- gram faculty, and the instructor of a first-ofits- kind course titled “Marketing to Older Adults” Hiis text, Gevontographies: Life Stage Segmentation ‘for Marketing Strategy Development, is a sophis- ticated compendium of research in social geron- tology, life-course studies, and consumer behavior. In the author’s words, gerontographics “g.alife-stage model” developed “to help mar- ketgrs better understand the heterogeneous older consumer market.” Moschis's life-stage model consists OF a quartet of subgroups of the older adult population (ages 55 and older), the schematic results of a comprehensive survey of biophysical, behavioral, health, and contextual Wi ter 2001-02 factors, Each subgroup is differentiated on the basis on its product preferences and lifestyle Othe sand tines STE maTRSE SSE ments by examining such factors as restaurant- use patterns or household credit and financial indices (Morgan and Levy, 1996). Overall, gerontographics is part of the larger trend to define, segment, and empower a new consumer oriented older population. Yet, the discussion ofsuch a group rarely mentions gender or eth- nic differences, class and poverty, or rising healthcare and housing costs. Not only does the “gold in gray” financial marketing strategy assume that middle and older ages are periods in which wealth naturally and easily accumu- lates for everyone, but also that the life course has an unvarying gravitational pull toward con- sumer festyles and identities premised on expanding exercise of choice. (On the one hand, while the new marketing literature uniformly criticizes negative ageist images of aging and decries the invisibility of later life in promotional culture and advertis- ing, much of its “maturity” segmentation typolo- gies are patronizing and simplistic. Their supposedly Soe ete aes ‘characterizations oF social types and roles can be as stereotypically ag as the more conventional images that the mar- eters denounce (see Gabriel, 1990). On the other hand, there may be more bridges connecting the marketing and geron- tological camps than walls separating them, for ‘wo reasons. First, increasingly more market- ing research uses gerontological thinking and proclaims an alliance with it. For example, ina paper called “Gray Marketing” Coleman and Miilitello (1995) cite the work of the gerontol- ‘ogists Carroll Estes and Meredith Minkler on the commercialization of aging. David Wolfe, author of Sering the Ageles Market (1990), backs up his views on the role of values in older-con- sumer behavior by citing Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, and James Birren (1992, 1994). In Gerontographics, George Moschis (1996) pro- vides long discussions on gerontological the- ory that would not be out of place in a ‘university-level gerontology course. In fact, most literature provided to managers and marketers today contains substantial gerontological, psy- chological, and sociological data. Andrew Blikie(1999) makes the insightful point that “market researchers sometimes appear to know more about what goes on in the minds of today’s elders and midlifers than social scientists do” Second, if the critics of are right in concluding that timelines and life courses are being reordered through the dislo- i orrran oe ao then geron- Blonse ae callensed fogists are challenged fa cen thele multidisciplinary scrutiny to new areas. Chris Gilleard (1996) puts it very well when he says, “Exploration of the cultural means by which become the central task for a refashioned social geTomology centaur fo tar nakeis the place of coum ohacinte neater ed population.” Tf perontologists, professionals, SWrschoMats in the field of aging leave it up the corporate world to frame our i of contemporary later life, however, then they will miss a great opportunity to provide gen- uuine anti-ageist leadership in an era in which anti-aging enterprises provide an increasing pro- portion of the images of aging. Indeed, futuristic writers are already pursu- ing critiques of aging in consumer society. For example, science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire (1996) is a compelling fable about a spooky gerontocracy that comes to dominate social life in the twenty-first century, where grow- ing older without aging is the norm. Sterling takes us into a future where the “scope of geron- tological research alone was bigger than agri- culture? and where much of this research gocs into the preservation of older “posthuman” bod- ies. His cautionary perspective is neatly encap- sulated in one scene where the novel's central female character, who is over 90, enters a vir- tual architect's office. ‘The chairs were puffy, overstuffed, and swaddling comfortable. Old people’ chairs. They were the kind of chairs the top-flight famiure designers had begun mak- ing back in the 2070s, when firiure designers suddenly realized that very old people possessed al the money in the world, and that from now on very old people were ‘going to have all the money until the end of time. 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