ABSTRACT
When it comes to discourses of age and ageing, the focus in popular media and broader cultural representations has routinely defaulted to notions of frailty, decline and exclusion and yet, as life expectation across Western states is extended, what it means to be, to possess, an ageing masculine body is evolving, producing different cultural meanings of sexy male bodies as they age, in the service of consumerism. Masculinities among younger and midlife men often require projection of autonomous and fully independent selves, but as men age and embrace ageing masculinities, they also perceive themselves relative to others, that is, they focus on their relationships with others, defining themselves through these relationships and the obligations they engender. Throughout this book, we have examined how forms of consumption and the presentation of an insistently sexualised masculinity have become increasingly important to practices of gender. This chapter considers how these might intersect with ideas of ageing.
