However, there is a constant danger of staying alive: becoming older. Although
all stages of the life course have their own consumer profile, they are
not equally respected. The idealization of youthfulness promotes the image
of an eternally young adult for whom age and generational differences don’t
seem to exist. But this image is meant to satisfy the aged, not the young,
who will still think that all these people are “old” and that aging should be
avoided.
Typically, children want to become older, and older people want to stay young. In between, we fi nd young adults who don’t bother because age has not yet become an issue and those who are becoming aware that their ages are going up. Here, the anti-aging industry comes to the rescue, reconstructing the life course again by depicting aging as an avoidable decay and offering remedies that can never be consumed too soon. It makes young adults aware of the imminent dangers of staying alive and of what they could do about these dangers, building a billion-dollar industry involving cosmetic surgery, diets, nutritional supplements, resorts, and training regimes.
what does it actually mean to say that “60 is the new 30”?
“Take Years Off Your Looks and Add Them to Your Life”
Even when somebody feels fi ne, there is a widespread “gerontophobic shame”: the old person hides her hands, dyes her hair, tries to get rid of wrinkles, and feels she is in the way of all those young hurrying persons even if she evades rush hour
A solution is offered for all parts of the body that suffer from Exclusion, Activism, and Eternal Youth 71 Newtonian gravity.
In the obsessive self preoccupation of the anti-aging culture, any diminishing sexual interest is made into something problematic for which all kinds of commercial solutions are offered, presented in a terminology of empowerment and emancipation (King and Calasanti 2006).
Whatever the problem—fear of failure, stress, depression—there is help in the form of the most advanced science,
A new sexual revolution is taking place. The first revolution separated sexuality from reproduction. This time, the revolution is aimed at the infinite continuation of sexual preoccupations: “forever functional” (Katz and Mar- 72 Aging and the Art of Living shall 2003; Marshall and Katz 2002).
it is not surprising that according to recent surveys the pharmaceutical industry is much more interested in the development of “lifestyle drugs” than in developing medicines for rare and thus less lucrative diseases or for diseases that are predominant in poor countries
The desire not only to live better and improve living conditions for everyone but to escape senescing and death has a long and interesting history. The Greek mythological tales of the Argonauts tell us of the sorceress Medea, who transformed her father-in-law, Aeson, into a young man by cutting him into pieces and boiling him in fragrant spices, tomato, cypress, and, of course, magic herbs. Those herbs did the trick, for when the malicious Medea showed the daughters of Pelias the splendidly rejuvenated Aeson and seduced them into trying to do the same for their old father, things came to a bad end. They didn’t have the necessary magic herbs, and nothing remained of Pelias but the pieces.
Even the famous Francis Bacon was engaged in scientific research on the prolongation of life. In 1632 he published a manual in Latin that was translated into English as The Historie of Life and Death, with Observations Natural and Experimental for the Prolongation of Life. In it he advised using tobacco, opiates, betel nuts, and sex to stay young, since all these had a “fi ring” effect and thus fought senescing, which according to traditional Galenic insights consisted of “dehydration” and “chilling.” This belief brought him an early death. He caught a cold when carrying out an experiment in which he tried to prove that meat can be kept fresh by frosty air and then insisted that he should be nursed in a damp bed in order to prevent the feared “dehydration.” He died of pneumonia.
In such a world, where aging humans are portrayed as configurations of badly functioning parts, living longer will become a matter of maintenance, transplantation, or implantation of technical equipment or organs that are specially cultivated for such purposes.
As soon as aging is medicalized, death tends to be seen as the result of an illness that can not be fought effectively. According to the most prestigious classification of death causes, the “International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems,” “old age” cannot be a cause of death (Hayflick and Moody 2003).
'
Since this classification is used in the completion of legal death certificates, it might, according to Leonard Hayflick, even be illegal to declare that someone died of old age. There is no room for natural causes of death, although there is a category of unnatural causes (i.e., accidents and crimes).
Typically, children want to become older, and older people want to stay young. In between, we fi nd young adults who don’t bother because age has not yet become an issue and those who are becoming aware that their ages are going up. Here, the anti-aging industry comes to the rescue, reconstructing the life course again by depicting aging as an avoidable decay and offering remedies that can never be consumed too soon. It makes young adults aware of the imminent dangers of staying alive and of what they could do about these dangers, building a billion-dollar industry involving cosmetic surgery, diets, nutritional supplements, resorts, and training regimes.
what does it actually mean to say that “60 is the new 30”?
“Take Years Off Your Looks and Add Them to Your Life”
Even when somebody feels fi ne, there is a widespread “gerontophobic shame”: the old person hides her hands, dyes her hair, tries to get rid of wrinkles, and feels she is in the way of all those young hurrying persons even if she evades rush hour
A solution is offered for all parts of the body that suffer from Exclusion, Activism, and Eternal Youth 71 Newtonian gravity.
In the obsessive self preoccupation of the anti-aging culture, any diminishing sexual interest is made into something problematic for which all kinds of commercial solutions are offered, presented in a terminology of empowerment and emancipation (King and Calasanti 2006).
Whatever the problem—fear of failure, stress, depression—there is help in the form of the most advanced science,
A new sexual revolution is taking place. The first revolution separated sexuality from reproduction. This time, the revolution is aimed at the infinite continuation of sexual preoccupations: “forever functional” (Katz and Mar- 72 Aging and the Art of Living shall 2003; Marshall and Katz 2002).
it is not surprising that according to recent surveys the pharmaceutical industry is much more interested in the development of “lifestyle drugs” than in developing medicines for rare and thus less lucrative diseases or for diseases that are predominant in poor countries
The desire not only to live better and improve living conditions for everyone but to escape senescing and death has a long and interesting history. The Greek mythological tales of the Argonauts tell us of the sorceress Medea, who transformed her father-in-law, Aeson, into a young man by cutting him into pieces and boiling him in fragrant spices, tomato, cypress, and, of course, magic herbs. Those herbs did the trick, for when the malicious Medea showed the daughters of Pelias the splendidly rejuvenated Aeson and seduced them into trying to do the same for their old father, things came to a bad end. They didn’t have the necessary magic herbs, and nothing remained of Pelias but the pieces.
Even the famous Francis Bacon was engaged in scientific research on the prolongation of life. In 1632 he published a manual in Latin that was translated into English as The Historie of Life and Death, with Observations Natural and Experimental for the Prolongation of Life. In it he advised using tobacco, opiates, betel nuts, and sex to stay young, since all these had a “fi ring” effect and thus fought senescing, which according to traditional Galenic insights consisted of “dehydration” and “chilling.” This belief brought him an early death. He caught a cold when carrying out an experiment in which he tried to prove that meat can be kept fresh by frosty air and then insisted that he should be nursed in a damp bed in order to prevent the feared “dehydration.” He died of pneumonia.
In such a world, where aging humans are portrayed as configurations of badly functioning parts, living longer will become a matter of maintenance, transplantation, or implantation of technical equipment or organs that are specially cultivated for such purposes.
As soon as aging is medicalized, death tends to be seen as the result of an illness that can not be fought effectively. According to the most prestigious classification of death causes, the “International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems,” “old age” cannot be a cause of death (Hayflick and Moody 2003).
'
Since this classification is used in the completion of legal death certificates, it might, according to Leonard Hayflick, even be illegal to declare that someone died of old age. There is no room for natural causes of death, although there is a category of unnatural causes (i.e., accidents and crimes).
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