What Frailty Can Tell Us About Successful Ageing: Towards a Different Paradigm for Ageing Well

Abstract

This paper considers the concept of successful aging by means of a dialogue with the concept of frailty. This dialogue reveals the limits and blind spots of both concepts as well as their apparent dichotomy and the importance of understanding both the objective and subjective experience of aging. In particular, the dialogue highlights that both frailty and successful aging are social constructs that derive their meaning from what society values (autonomy, youthful capacities). They cannot by themselves account for the fact that flourishing and frailty are often found together whilst conversely successful aging may not bring satisfaction. I argue that the arts and humanities supply us with conceptual and methodological tools with which to revisit what it is to age well offering a holistic approach that combines sensitivity both to older people's lived experience and to the underpinning material conditions and embodied realities. For this purpose, and building on previous scholarship in cultural gerontology, I suggest the unique value of concepts and frameworks associated by Simone de Beauvoir. When brought into alignment with the tenets of cultural and narrative gerontology, these concepts facilitate a rich understanding of the nuances and paradoxes of flourishing in deep old age which can also aid in restorying both old age and the life course more generally. I illustrate this through two examples: a feminist self-help guide to aging, which accepts both limitations and growth and a film that imagines the possibilities of authentic aging even despite a context of poverty, patriarchy, and Alzheimer's disease.

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