When we examine popular cultural representations of old age in contemporary western societies we tend to find two sets of images. In the first place there are the ‘heroes of aging’, those who adopt a positive attitude towards the aging process and seem to remain ‘forever youthful’ in their work habits, bodily posture, facial expressions and general demeanour. The second refers to those individuals who experience severe bodily decline through disabling illness to the extent that the outer body is seen as misrepresenting and imprisoning the inner self, something we have referred to as ‘the mask of aging’ (Featherstone and Hepworth, 1991a; 1995, forthcoming).