ABSTRACT
The informal terms employed in quotidian contexts often reveal volumes about the values by which we live. Time, of course, has no distinct substance, and it does have heft, if only in an abstract sense. Broader cultural values bestow time with a certain bulk as we understand when one refers to time “weighing heavily,” as if in its scale and ubiquity it sits like a vast, dominating, even crushing force. Time also flows in a rather more graceful sense, as seconds, minutes, hours ease together in their accumulation. As a cultural construct, time is most surely gendered and like so many other aspects of patriarchal systems, it is dominated by masculine sets of value and privilege. The narratives of age and aging establish norms that, while frequently disparaging of men, tend to impact women in ways that seem more harshly judgmental.
