Aging as emasculation? Rethinking aging masculinities in contemporary U.S. fiction

This article explores the representation of men’s aging experiences in contemporary U.S. fiction. While most gendered approaches to aging have focused on women, which has contributed to the cultural invisibility of older men, this study focuses on men’s aging experiences as men, thus challenging the inverse correlation between masculinity and aging. To do so, the article draws on a selected number of contemporary U.S. male-authored fictional works, which question the widely held assumption that aging is a lesser concern for men, or that men and women’s aging experiences may be simply defined as opposed. The literary corpus includes male authors from different backgrounds so as to illustrate how (self-)representations of aging men vary according not only to gender but also to class, race, and sexual orientation, among other factors. The article thus ends up challenging the conventional equation of men’s aging processes with (sexual) decline, exemplifying their plurality as well as irreducible contradictions.