Never-aging Stories: Western Hegemonic Masculinity Scripts

This article offers a conceptual model for understanding masculinity that stresses the temporal dimension. While deconstructing masculinity according to various factors, gender scholarship has disregarded one of the most crucial ones: age. In this respect, current theorization fails to recognize time as the basic dimension of the human condition. Combining the ideas of Bernice Neugarten with the central metaphor of narrative theory, the present model considers masculinities as temporal scripts. It is claimed that each culture, in a given time and place, offers its men hegemonic masculinity scripts that attach masculine ‘social clocks’ to men's life courses.