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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 (Rubinstein and Medeiros, 2015). The word ‘successful’ in the successful aging paradigm suggests that one might fail aging, and as preposterous as that might sound, social gerontology focuses on resisting disability, immobility, cognitive changes, loss of income, visible signs of aging, and inter/intradependency (Rubinstein and Medeiros, 2015). This focus on individual onus for achieving or maintaining a predetermined aged ideal, as well as the prioritization of economic productivity, situates both social gerontology and the successful aging paradigm firmly in happy cahoots with neoliberalism (Rubinstein and Medeiros, 2015).

Changfoot et al., (2020) describe successful aging as a bio-pedagogical approach that is rife with moral implication 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 differently embodied people in an aging demographic (Changfoot et al., 2020), or the relationship between words like ‘activity’ and ‘lifestyle choice’ and their use as instruments of fatphobia, classism, and ableism within our culture. The successful aging paradigm informs the way the market functions, it impacts healthcare decisions, 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.

In the literature on Queer and Trans aging, we find the spectre of successful aging lurking in articles that forget to include Disabled people in their ‘intersectional analysis’ (because according to the successful aging paradigm, if you are disabled, you have failed aging) (Austin, 2016; Darwin, 2020).

Austin, A. (2016). “There I am”: A Grounded Theory Study of Young Adults Navigating a Transgender or Gender Nonconforming Identity within a Context of Oppression and Invisibility. Sex Roles, 75(5-6), 215–230. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0600-7

Changfoot, N., Rice, C., Chivers., S. (2020). ““Re-imagining Aging: Crip, Queer, and Indigenous Futures”, Re•Vision: The Centre for Art & Social Justice at the University of Guelph

Darwin, H. (2020). Challenging the Cisgender/Transgender Binary: Nonbinary People and the Transgender Label. Gender & Society, 34(3), 357-380. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243220912256

Rubinstein, R. L., & de Medeiros, K. (2015). “Successful aging,” gerontological theory and neoliberalism: A qualitative critique. The gerontologist, 55(1), 34-42.