Well Aged: What Aging Means for Men

     It is often said that men age better than women- that whereas older women's wrinkles are unsightly, older men's wrinkles are badges of honor.  In our increasingly more media-saturated society, however, it seems that increasingly, men are subject to similar ideals about youth as women.  On the connection to youth and beauty, Roger Scruton writes that "there is hardly a person alive who is not moved by the beauty of the perfectly formed child," (Scruton 53) but concedes that there exists "the beauty of an aged face, which has emerged, as it were, from a life of moral trials," (Scruton 54).  Thus, a paradox appears: we want to preserve our youth for as long as possible and (after a certain age milestone) to look younger than our true age, but we also hold a certain reverence for those who we decided have aged well.  We want to stay as close to the image of "the perfectly formed child" for as long as possible, but we also admire beautiful older people.  For my final journal, I want to explore why we think that men supposedly age better than women and what the limitations on male aging are.
     For stars like Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver, Helen Mirren, George Clooney, Denzel Washington and John Slattery (Roger Sterling on Mad Men), their age becomes part of their selling point.  However, while George Clooney and Denzel Washington have both graced the cover of Esquire, one would be hard pressed to find a woman over 45 who graces the cover of a mainstream fashion magazine.  On the surface, this seems to send the message that men of a certain age are still desirable while women are not.
     Perhaps, however, it is not that men are allowed to age and still be attractive, but that the ways in which men and women are allowed to age are different.  In a study on age and gender in anti-aging advertisements, Toni Calasanti notes that anti-aging products marketed to women focus on perfecting and rejuvenating the body to attract or remain attractive to men (Calasanti 344), men's anti-aging products are marketed to men with a focus on staying "young by enacting a masculinity that involves performance in areas of physical strength and sex," (Calasanti 345).  Even if men are allowed to display their crow's feet and laugh lines, they are expected to perform athletically and sexually like younger men.  Stars like Brad Pitt may be aging, but as long as they remain in shape and do not use (or do not admit to using) Viagra, they are still sexy.  By extension, normal men who maintain their muscles and their manhood can still be sexy, too.  It is worth noting that maintaining physical strength does relate to appearance, as exercising changes the way a body looks.
     The images that define men in the media heavily influence the dialogue around men's aging.  According to Richard Dyer, "the typical portrayal of men," is "images of men doing something," (Dutton 339) and that even when they appear relaxed, male models pose in such away that "the muscles are emphasised, hence drawing attention to the body's potential for action," which means that "the body quality most promoted in the objectified male body is musclarity," (Dutton 339).  That men in images always appear to have the potential for action translates to power- the power to accomplish feats of strength and the power to move and to act.  This gives men in images much more power than women in images, for whom "being looked at" signifies "powerlessness (or at least passivity)" (Dutton 335).  While men may be objectified in certain images, "the exposed male body is... an inescapable affirmation of... masculinity and patriarchy," (Dutton 335).  Thus, the benchmark by which men's attractiveness is measured is power- physically and sexually.  The loss of muscle mass and erectile disfunction that come with old age represent a loss of male power- a loss of masculinity and a loss of attractiveness.
     Increasingly, men are subject to the same scrutiny in appearance when it comes to wrinkles and other signs of aging.  In the documentary Youth Knows No Pain, the audience is introduced to several male characters who actively fight the signs of aging, most notably, a plastic surgeon who regularly uses Botox on himself and a man who underwent cosmetic surgery and now gets acting gigs and is often mistaken for Jack Nicholson.  That these men undergo cosmetic procedures with the same casual attitude about it as women demonstrates a shift in the way that men approach aging.  Men's media sources such as Askmen.com are beginning to run articles on how to prevent wrinkles and companies like Nivea now offer wrinkle creams just for men.
     Images of aging males are also the victims of photoshop.  Whereas images of aging women are either noticeably photoshopped, such as this image of an entirely wrinkle-free Twiggy:

this one of Sarah Jessica Parker:

or the Burlesque poster in which Cher and Christina Aguilera appear to be the same age despite a 30-plus year age difference:

or not pictured at all, images of aging men are digitally altered in specific ways that allow them to show some signs of aging.  

For example, this is George Clooney at an awards show:

He clearly shows signs of aging such as forehead wrinkles, crow's feet around the eyes and graying hair.  However, on the cover of the April 2010 Indian GQ, George Clooney looked like this:

Here, his wrinkles have been smoothed out, but not entirely and his face has been lit in such away that it makes his skin appear brighter and younger.  On this magazine cover, he is the very definition of aging gracefully.

This is Brad Pitt, allegedly without any digital alteration, on the cover of W:

Here's Brad Pitt on a 2009 cover of Esquire:

It is clear that the second picture has been altered, but like George Clooney's magazine cover, it has been altered to reduce signs of aging, not to eliminate them.  That women's signs of aging are entirely eliminated while men's are merely reduced sends the message that women are not allowed to age.  This, combined with the obviousness of the digital alterations in aging women's images, contribute to the idea that women do not age well and therefore need significant digital (and cosmetic surgery) enhancements to look good in their old age.  Men are perceived to age better than women because they appear to not need photoshop and are allowed to age (but only to a certain extent).  The reality is, of course, that all people age and some do it more gracefully than others, regardless of gender.  

     These images are harmful because digital alteration is applied not only to models and the celebrities seen above, but also athletes, political figures and even "ordinary" citizens (Wheeler 182).  Even though as consumers, "we are used to unreal images," (Wheeler 182), they "diminish the self-esteem of impressionable readers," (Wheeler 185).  We internalize these images, either as what we should look like or as what we want to look like, and we can never measure up.  Images of aging men are particularly dangerous because they look more realistic; for the viewer, it is harder to see the digital alteration in George Clooney's GQ cover than Cher's Burlesque poster.  Despite the fact that these photographs "constitute visual fiction," (Wheeler 181), it appears that these men just age extremely well, which raises the standard for all older men in the same way that a flawless model on the cover of Vogue raises the beauty standard for all women.  

     No longer are men's standards of aging confined to maintaining physical strength and sexual ability; men are more and more becoming subject to similar image-based standards as women.  As the media we consume become part of our "extended nervous systems" (McLuhan 57), we are inundated with images and advertisements all dictating how to look, what to wear and even how to age.  For its part, technology has allowed women and men to slow down the aging process through cosmetic procedures, digital photo enhancements, pills for medical conditions and all sorts of skin products that allegedly reduce wrinkles.  We have become "differently human," in the sense that technology "allows us to bypass some of our most fundamental physical absolutes," (Dyens) such as aging.  As for the question of if men age better than women, it appears that it is not that men age better, but rather that society views men's aging as different from women's.  Men are allowed to show wrinkles, so long as they are not too deep, so long as they stay physically fit and so long as they are still able to have sex.  However, standards are changing and men are starting to combat the same signs of aging that women combat.  

Works Cited

Calasanti, Toni M. "Bodacious Berry, Potency Wood and the Aging Monster: Gender and Age Relations in Anti-Aging Ads." Social Forces 86.1 (2007): 335-55. Project Muse. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.

Dutton, Kenneth R. "The Body Observed." The Perfectible Body: the Western Ideal of Male Physical Development. New York: Continuum, 1995. 321-55. Print.

Dyens, Ollivier. "The Crater in the Yucatan." Metal Flesh and the Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over. Print.

McLuhan, Marshall. "Media as Translators." Understanding Media; the Extensions of Man,. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. 56-61. Print.

Scruton, Roger. "Human Beauty." Beauty. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Wheeler, Tom. "Cosmetic Retouching: Skin Deep?" Phototruth or Photofiction?: Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. Print.

Youth Knows No Pain. Dir. Mitch McCabe. HBO, 2009.