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Biomedical Gerontology
Main article: Biogerontology

Biomedical gerontology (or biogerontology) is the special sub-field of gerontology concerned with the biological aging process, its evolutionary origins, and potential means to intervene in the process. Biogerontologists typically establish aging as characterized by the following five features, and according to Lemoine, a subject must embody one of these features to fall into the category of, or be diagnosed as "aging." These five features are: typical phenotypical changes, increasing probability of death, structural damage, depletion, and functional damage.

Biogerontologists argue that aging fits the criteria of disease, and should be treated as such, and so the aim of biogerontology is to prevent age-related disease, decline, and damage, by intervening in aging processes or even eliminate aging. Biomedical gerontologists seek to treat and understand factors such as metabolism, genetics, epigenetics, and environmental influences that impact the aging process. For example, a meta analysis of 36 studies concluded that there is an association between age and DNA damage in humans, a finding consistent with the DNA damage theory of aging.

Social gerontology
Social gerontology is a multi-disciplinary sub-field that specializes in studying or working with older adults. Social gerontologists may have degrees or training in gerontology, social work, nursing, psychology, sociology, demography, public health, or other social science disciplines. Rather than define aging based on biomedical functions (specifically physical decline or illness), social gerontologists conceive of aging as socially constructed.

Social gerontology, while vastly different from the biomedical approach to gerontology, shares with it the narrative of decline and loss convert this into a citation ->(Rubinstein and Medeiros, 2015). The successful aging paradigm, which is central to the discipline of social gerontology, places the onus of health, happiness, productivity, and satisfaction onto the individual, and requires the aging subject to resist the changes that naturally come with growing older. Social gerontology focuses on resisting disability, immobility, cognitive changes, loss of income, visible signs of aging, and on maintaining independence. When a person is able to age without disease, and has been able to reduce the likelihood of disease-related disability, has maintained a high degree of cognitive function and physical ability, and is still actively participating in their social circles, both biogerontologists and social gerontologists deem them to have aged 'successfully.' This focus on individual onus for achieving or maintaining a predetermined aged ideal, as well as the prioritization of economic productivity and independence, situates both social gerontology and the successful aging framework within a neoliberal paradigm.

Critiques of the successful aging paradigm

Scholars like Changfoot et al., (2020) describe successful aging as a bio-pedagogical approach that requires one to be without illness or disability to age successfully. It puts the onus on the individual to ensure this outcome through activity and lifestyle choice, and it neglects to create space for, or acknowledge, the presence of diversely embodied people in an aging demographic, or the relationship between words like ‘activity’ and ‘lifestyle choice’ and their use as instruments of fatphobia, classism, and ableism within our culture. For example, successful aging, as it is conceptualized within the fields of biomedical and social gerontology, is made possible when individuals have access to good healthcare, a close and supportive social network, financial resources, fresh and healthy food, and other resources which are not distributed equally across populations. There are also many scholars and critics that highlight the universal or generalizable standard for aging well inherent to the concept of successful aging, noting that economic, cultural, social, and personal factors contribute to a persons definition of what it means to age well. A final critique of successful aging is that is does not account for the experiences and realties of communities who have been minoritized or systematically exploited, and whose access to resources has been limited or restricted by governments, private actors, or social groups. These critics point out that the existence of 'successful aging' creates a success/fail binary which inevitably categorizes those who experience disability, disease, cognitive difference or decline, isolation, economic precarity, and mental illness, as having failed.

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Queer Gerontology

Critical Trans Gerontology

The successful aging paradigm informs the way the market functions, it impacts healthcare decisions, and influences codes surrounding sex and gender, and even gatekeeps access to certain structures (Changfoot et al., 2020). Successful aging, the demands it makes of us, and the ways that it manifests in all spheres of our lives from our self-concept (as we fret over grey hairs), to our consumer choices (as we purchase expensive eye cream), to the ever extending trajectory of our professional careers (as we retire later from pension-less jobs and feel the weight of neoliberal guilt settle on our shoulders), is distinctly neoliberal and is just as deeply embedded in our culture.

Social theories of aging
Several theories of aging are developed to observe the aging process of older adults in society as well as how these processes are interpreted by men and women as they age.