Description:
Middle-aged spread, midlife crisis--just what is middle age, anyway? Unlike puberty or menopause, there are no specific biological occurrences to define it; is it when your hair starts to gray (or fall out), when supermarket checkout clerks start referring to you as "ma'am," or when you realize your favorite movie heartthrob is just a couple of years older than your kids? According to Margaret Morganroth Gullette, author of Declining to Decline, middle age is little more than a marketing ploy. In a culture such as ours in which youth is worshipped and age despised, a concept such as middle age is the catalyst for a booming business in hair dyes, exercise machines, diet powders--and hot little red sports cars. If middle age is merely a concept, Gullette argues, then it's up to us how we choose to view it. We can buy into society's script of slow decline and loss of all that was valuable (i.e., youth, hard bodies, a taste for Pepsi-Cola) or we can see it as progress--a time when we are financially more secure, less encumbered by debt or child-raising responsibilities, and--hopefully--wiser about the ways of the world than we were in our salad days. Revising our attitudes about aging won't be easy, Gullette cautions; society is against us. Still, Declining to Decline is a refreshing wake-up call, a reminder that you're only as old as you feel.
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