Declining to decline : cultural combat and the politics of the midlife
In Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife, Margaret Morganroth Gullette argues that aging in America is a culturally constructed disease with an adolescent exposure and a midlife onset. Targeting men as well as women, our culture pressures us to shed youthful attributes and optimism about the future. This, she says, constitutes the "middle crisis" of our time - not a private psychological condition but a collective problem. Even our reactions have been channeled: buying remedies, telling stories of self-hating nostalgia, feeling envy of youth, alienation from the elderly, and fearing fifty. Gullette asks us to open our eyes to this manipulation and to resist it
Print Book, English, 1997
University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 1997