Never-aging Stories: Western Hegemonic Masculinity Scripts

Abstract

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. Following the presentation of the theoretical model, its possible application is explored, focusing on the hegemonic masculinity scripts as they have being materializing in Western cultures. Failing to take into account old age, these are essentially incomplete scripts. Two main reasons for this disruption are identified: the portrayal of elderly people as ungendered, and the construction of older men that depict them as a transparent and paradoxical social category, and indicate an inverse correlation between masculinity and aging. It is further shown that these images are strikingly reflected in academic theory and research. The absence of cultural guidelines for being both a ‘true’ man and an aging person is discussed as the context within which contemporary older men struggle to build respectable identities.