Age, gender, narratives, and masquerades

Journal of Aging Studies 18 (2004) 45 – 58

Age, gender, narratives, and masquerades Simon Biggs * Centre for Social Gerontology, School of Social Relations, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, UK

Abstract A shared feature of contemporary feminism and critical gerontology has been an attempted rapprochement between inequality in terms of social structure and the experience of identity under oppressive social conditions. For gerontology, this has meant the structural and personal implications of ageing in an ageist society. Narrative and masquerade have both been used as metaphors to examine strategies deployed in the management of an ageing, gendered self. They allow, it is argued, a critical space to arise between hidden aspects of identity and appearances, but the way that these concepts have been handled varies significantly between social theorists. Both narrative and masquerade may hold the danger of becoming inward-looking, and thus solipsistic, ceasing to be part of an interactive, dialogical process and end up as fixed, yet ungrounded psychic positions. The implications for a critical approach that reaches beyond the academy are considerable, and the paper ends with a discussion of the possibilities for solidarity across narrative boundaries presented by adult ageing. D 2003 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords: Adult aging; Critical gerontology; Feminism; Gender; Identity; Intergenerational relationships; Masquerade; Narrative; Old age; Older people; Older women; Social strategies; Self; Social theory

1. Introduction One of the features of contemporary critical gerontology has been an attempted rapprochement between those who have typically thought of age inequality in terms of social structure and those who have examined the experience of ageing in an ageist society. Not only does this place gerontological debate squarely in an area key to feminist theory and practice, it raises the possibility of a unifying metaphor through the use of narrative and the performance of identity. The critical study of age and gender identity holds out the promise of including elements of social structure and the discourses arising from it, seen through the humanising lens of personal experience. The personal is infused with power

* Tel.: +44-1782-584125. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Biggs). 0890-4065/$ - see front matter D 2003 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.jaging.2003.09.005

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relationships, so much is clear; but this is not necessarily always admitted in the study of age as it intersects with gender. Under such circumstances, one must question the degree to which the idea that we ‘‘story’’ or ‘‘perform’’ our way through structure and experience helps us to understand relations between generations and between genders. This paper will critically examine the use of narrativity and the possibilities it presents for a radical rethinking of age/gender identity. This will be compared to the related view that identity management for ageing women and men involves the deployment of a masquerade. Masquerade draws on the idea that identity is performative: put on, so to speak, in a particular context and for a specific audience, even if that audience exists in the inner world of the self. It also reflects a psychodynamic understanding of identity as something that is inevitably layered, having depth as well as appearance. Both narrative and masquerade, I argue, hold the danger of becoming inward-looking, and thus solipsistic. They may cease to be part of an interactive, dialogical process and end up as fixed, yet ungrounded psychic positions for scholars and individual older people alike. The implications for a critical gerontology are profound and may influence the trajectory of the discipline itself as well as its objects of study.

2. Integrating social structure and personal experience Theories of age and identity are undergoing considerable change, much of which is driven by issues shared with feminist thought. These concerns include the relationship between forms of oppression and a critical consideration of difference (Calasanti, 2003). They also extend to the formative stage of gerontology itself, as a multidisciplinary subdiscipline that often inhabits the margins of discourse (Katz, 2003) and as an area of study that, like feminism before it, arose from radical advocacy and is becoming increasingly embedded in the academy (Ray, 2003a). A closer relationship between critical gerontology and feminism has much to offer, especially in the areas of the marginalisation of experience, the tension between personal and structural identity and the strategies people use to continue to live and develop in circumstances not of their own choosing. Historically, critical gerontology has rarely strayed beyond its heartland, using political economy and an interpretation of the social constructionist approach that concentrates on the influence of ‘‘macro’’ social institutions such as work and the family. Each is an area key to feminism. Feminism, however, has evidenced a willingness to tangle with the subtleties and complexities of everyday experience, and specifically the close association between personal experience and social inequality. Writers such as Ray (2003a, 2003b) have pointed out that critical gerontology and feminism have many points of intersection, although the former is perhaps less developed, both theoretically and in terms of radical trajectories and the pitfalls that lie along the way. Common issues include the position to be taken toward the embodied self and the power of appearance. Both attempt to examine the possibilities for politicising interpersonal power imbalances that are more often than not only tacitly acknowledged. Both encounter, though in different ways, the thorny issue of limitation and the degree to which we should protect ourselves from hostile psychosocial environments. Two trends have been apparent within critical gerontology, and it is the critical edge of this subdiscipline that is my concern throughout this paper. The first consists of work that has emphasised the negative effects of social structures on adult ageing, that can be seen within the political economy approach. Just like gender, age is used to legitimise social and economic inequity and is therefore the subject of radical critique. This has been developed by Estes (1979, 1993), Estes et al. (2001) and

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Minkler & Estes (1998) in the United Sates and Phillipson (1982, 1998), Townsend (1981), and Walker (1996) in the UK. These authors have interrogated the social construction of old age and its embeddedness in social structure and at least amongst the U.S. authors, attempted to integrate feminism and political economy approaches (Estes et al., 2001). The second emphasises the possibilities for selfdevelopment in later life and draws on work in the fields of psychotherapy, the social sciences, and the humanities. Here age, like gender, is experienced as a limiting category that forces self-expression down restrictive and unwelcome paths. With regard to age, these themes can be recognised in the work of Guttman (1987), Jung (1932/1967), Neugarten (1968), in Tornstam’s (1996) exploration of gerotranscendence as a form of personal integration, and in Gergen and Gergen’s (2001) celebration of creativity in later life. Feminist gerontologists such as Bernard (2001), Laws (1995), and Tulle (2000) have expanded our understanding of the relationship between age and gender by drawing on postmodern theory, autobiography, and critical theories of embodiment, respectively. In each case, adult ageing is seen as holding potential for a positive reappraisal of the self, suggesting that old-age identity forms a complex relationship with other parts of the adult life-course. A key question has therefore arisen: how the many and often contradictory influences on an ageing and gendered identity are themselves ‘‘made sense of’’ both personally and socially. The conceptual trends noted above have a common thread in their critique of negative attitudes towards later life and an encouragement of positive ones and at least one influential publication has called for closer collaboration between these different and sometimes oppositional strands (Cole, Kastenbaum, & Ray, 2000). In this there lies a recognition that theorising age and identity is, among other things, a meeting point for social and personal construals of the self and one that is suffused with issues of power. I will use this opportunity to explore some of these issues as they have arisen in critical gerontology, some of the theoretical alliances that can be made with feminist gerontology, and lessons that can be drawn from both feminist-inspired and other observations on contemporary identity.

3. Dealing with fixity and flux A striking aspect of this rapprochement is that it suggests a world in which positive exhortations to age well and negative undercurrents coexist and require further conceptual explanation. A key element appears to be the twin threats to identity arising from both excessive fixedness in social structures, and excessive uncertainty and flux in personal identity (Biggs, 1999). The gendered and ageing self needs to be protected from relatively fixed social–cultural stereotyping that may deny or restrict possibilities for personal growth and meaningful social inclusion, yet not be overwhelmed by giddying social change (Frosh, 1991). Fixity may take the form of claims that gender and ageing reflect natural processes, with a series of established roles and identities that have to be worked through, thereby progressively restricting gendered and maturational potential to certain predetermined categories. Identity flux refers to the degree to which it is fluid, a subject of choice and desire, and as such seems on first encounter to be an attractive alternative to fixed roles and attributes (Bauman, 1995). However, flux includes a second assault on identity. This arises from the fragmentation of standpoints from which to resist dominant constructions, increasing uncertainty and making personal coherence difficult to maintain. These challenges to identity have been thought of as historically distinct, one following from the other. However, it has also been argued that, social development being uneven, institutions and

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individuals may cling to certain forms of identity management and legitimation (Biggs & Powell, 2003). Different forms of identity, their management, and threats to their integrity may then live on in particular milieux, taking on a life of their own. They coexist, but in different places, or differentially influence particular aspects of the self. In particular circumstances, where identity is in the balance, such as is the case for age and gender, these threats may be experienced simultaneously. In practice, both fixity and flux may be necessary for identities that ageing women and men can comfortably inhabit. The balance achieved between them is key to identity’s freedom to manoeuvre, and it is in this context that both narrative and masquerade have gained prominence in interrogating both gender and adult ageing.

4. Baudrillard, Butler, and ageing identities Narrative and masquerade are becoming central as conceptual tools for understanding identity and as everyday strategies used in the contemporary management of self. Whilst social masking and active story-making are common to all people, they may appear at their most pronounced when a group or individual becomes socially excluded from a dominant sources of value and esteem. They are also closely identified, in terms of critical theory, with the postmodern turn toward fluid identities. Theorists such as Jean Baudrillard and Judith Butler have been in the vanguard of this reinterpretation and their influence on understanding age and gender identities is worth closer examination. Baudrillard (1976/1993, 1983/1999) has significantly influenced the climate within which contemporary ideas about identity have been debated, including theories of age (Featherstone & Hepworth, 1983; Gilleard & Higgs, 2000; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000). His key contribution to understanding contemporary identity is the claim that signs, images, and signifiers are now free of any attachment to the concrete situations and objects from which they originally arose. This has had a major impact on thinking about identity when, as in the case of both gender and age, signifiers are embodied, and appear difficult to reshape. An implication for signifiers of age would be that identifying statements, such as ‘‘youthful,’’ ‘‘old,’’ or ‘‘mature’’ may no longer refer back to particular positions or attributes that are part of a fixed life course pattern. They can be swapped around as desired, or as circumstance dictates. Admittedly, when applied directly to age, such extreme fluidity of identity appears unlikely. However, it follows that a variety of identities and personal images can be adopted to complete a particular appearance that older women and men wish to convey. Baudrillard (1993) has outlined a loosely historical process of disconnection between objects and representations. First, representations are indistinguishable from a preexisting reality. Then, representations become masks that disguise that basic reality. Next, masking takes place to hide an absence of any core reality, an inner emptiness, leading to a final ‘‘epoch’’ in which signs cease to bear any relationship to an underlying reality whatsoever. The implications for adult ageing would be that, first, signs of ageing are the same as physical ageing; then they are disguised by other identities signifying ‘‘not-age.’’ Next, ageing—itself an artifice—covers up an absence of meaning, and finally becomes just one of many identities, none of which are any more meaningful than any other. In fact, Baudrillard (1993) does briefly touch on the issue of adult ageing: ‘‘Old age has merely become a marginal and ultimately asocial slice of life—a ghetto, a reprieve and the slide into death. Old age is literally being eliminated. In proportion as the living live longer, as they ‘win’ over death, they

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cease to be symbolically acknowledged’’ (p. 163). This statement appears to place old age not in the realm of hyperfluidity, but somewhere between Baudrillard’s second and third phases. Elders hide their ageing selves as much as possible and may even lose their sense of original identity in so far as this becomes an experience of absence. One implication would be that the third age has become empty, dependent upon representations from other parts of the life course. In so far as old age is considered at all, it would appear to provoke disguise of a social void. And perhaps, the pursuit of ‘‘agelessness’’ (Andrews, 1999; Kaufman, 1986) would be an apt example of the process Baudrillard describes. One can take on any identity, except ageing. Old age itself is construed as an absence and is presented as if it is De Beauvoir’s (1970) foreign species, something existing elsewhere, and strangely out of time. Beyond the masque of youth exists an awareness of personal emptiness because there are, within the Baudrillarian universe, no personal truths, reasons, or meanings. As such, there is a family resemblance here to the theorising of gender as an encounter with ‘‘otherness’’ and the emptiness that mainstream cultural stereotyping leaves in the center of women’s experience of self (Benjamin, 1998). Taking the example of ‘‘femininised’’ identity, one can foster the identity of being a young woman more easily than being an old woman, both of which are arguably premised on an absence. However, old age encompasses a double absence, that of being ‘‘not male’’ and of being ‘‘not young.’’ From being only too visible, one becomes invisible, as the attention of a masculinised and youth-obsessed society ebbs away. Baudrillard leaves us with a privileging of surface perception and the manipulation of appearance over meaning. His world rarely extends further than an experience of the immediate present. The discussion above illustrates a tension between fluidity and the preservation of identity. In similar vein, Butler (1990, 1996) has addressed this question, traditionally thought of as fixed in terms of gender and sexuality, as a performance. Here, identities acquire stability through matrices of expected behaviour that define the space in which they can be enacted, for example, a binary distinction between masculine and feminine, to the exclusion of other possibilities. Following Lacan (1994), she argues that in such spaces one’s ‘‘inner’’ sense of self is often filled by what it is not, an opposite that is externally defined. The performative element of identity, however, injects elements of creativity and transgressive freedom into that same space. She portrays performance as a means by which personal identity can be celebrated in an act of reflexive self-creation, even though it is contained within an otherwise hostile environment. Whilst Butler’s perspective has been criticised as unambitious and overly linguistic as a program for feminist action (Nussbaum, 1999), it does shed light on the complex issues of how to take an oppositional stance, which itself is deeply implicated in the very power relations being opposed (Disch, 1999). If there is an element of inevitability in this approach, it lies in the assumption that the problems that identity poses between personal expression and social construction can never be fully shaken. This view closely parallels Calasanti’s (2003) observation that just because age categories are subjective and constructed does not make them and their consequences less real. A similar distinction could be argued to exist between youth and old age as has been proposed for masculinity and femininity. Older identities might easily become stuck in the contradiction that Butler describes, in the sense that we are the same people who will age or who have been young, and yet we are encouraged to think of this continuum as a binary opposition. We are left with little option but to identify with and simultaneously resist the ageing process. Adult ageing rarely provokes a rejection of the cult of youth but often colludes with it. We thus both oppose the power of age as it is socially defined, whilst also being implicated in the definitions of age that we oppose.

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The work of Baudrillard and Butler, then, may inform the debate on adult ageing through the perception that identity is becoming increasingly fluid and that ageing can be viewed as a performance, in ways similar to the view taken of gendered identities. However, the implication that such fluidity increases choice has been championed to a far greater degree than the point that there is an underlying shallowness to this experience of self. What is even more problematic for champions of immediate and performed identities is a timescale that encompasses a whole life course. Both Baudrillard and Butler arguably privilege fluidity in contemporary space but as a by-product introduce fixity in time. Performances appear to take place in a sort of unending present and paradoxically, may be a way of trapping identity in the here and now. Multiplicity becomes a means of disattending to change as time passes, and in particular, the changes, rigidities, and fixities that ageing might bring. Ageing then becomes the ultimate ‘‘other’’ for the postmodern fantasy of an unending present. One has to ask how far this form of theorising simply introduces a world of surfaces, and a not very convincing one at that. It is, perhaps, in flight from the immanence of age and an inchoate fear of finitude that cannot be out-performed. Age is avoided through a concentration on the ‘‘here and now’’ and an absence of anything beyond managed appearances. There are obvious parallels here when feminised identities and age meet, as in Furman’s (1997) study of beauty shop culture, and Matthews’ (1979) earlier exploration of the importance of appearance in the social worlds of older women. However, in contrast to the theorists, the older women in these studies engage in a deception that is knowingly undertaken.

5. Narratives for an ageing self The impact of multiplicity and performance as factors in contemporary identity management can also be traced in a growing interest in narrative approaches. Narrativity has been examined as a research method, a description of ageing (Holstein & Gubruim, 2000; Kenyon & Randall, 2002) and as a form of therapy (McAdams, 1993; McLeod, 1997). The popularity of narrativity is, I believe very similar to that of performativity because both open a critical distance between who we are and what we might be able to become. Both allow a stance to be taken toward existing roles and identity statements. But narrativity has the extra angle of having a relationship to time. Here, I draw upon one of the more influential works on narrative in gerontology Holstein and Gubrium’s (2000) The Self We Live By to introduce elements typical of the narrative approach. Holstein and Gubrium present narrative as a solution to the problem posed by Gergen (1991) in his book, The Saturated Self. According to Gergen, postmodernity is so full of multiple meaning and interpretation that the self is in danger of becoming overwhelmed. Rather than an inner emptiness, any interior space is instantly filled with so many possible alternatives that a sense of distinct identity may be lost altogether. None of these disconnected images hold any intrinsic or authentic meaning and are still therefore essentially hollow. However, rather than becoming completely submerged in an overwhelming present, narrativity includes a relationship to the past. More often than not, the past is used as source material from which to build a serviceable identity in the present. Thus, when discussing narrative therapy, Spence (1992) states that the validity of a new narrative over an older one depends upon the immediate satisfaction with the story that emerges. Historical truth should give way to ‘‘narrative truth’’ under contemporary conditions, and individuals are expected to ‘‘re-author parts of the life-story’’ in accordance with whether an account

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is coherent and allows the client a satisfying existence (McLeod, 1997). Meador (1998) has argued that a narrative understanding of the postmodern self must ‘‘not deny the developmental realities of the lifecourse,’’ however. Elements of actual personal history should form the basis of self-narrative. Holstein and Gubrium (2000) propose a ‘‘new ending’’ for the problem of self-identity by suggesting that narratives of self exist in the space between two forms of practice. Discursive practice draws on insights from ethnomethodology, seeing selfhood as a work in progress in the immediate present. It is ongoing, situated, and reflexive. Discourses-in-practice reflect preexisting domains present in society that shape personal identities by supplying the raw material from which they are made. Stories of the self arise from an interplay of these two poles of attraction. Thus, narrative is cognisant of the need for ageidentity in the service of current circumstances, yet includes the prefiguring influence of sociohistorical context. Such a view is reflected in Hepworth’s (2000) excursion into stories of ageing. He sees symbols and images that already exist within society are seen as ‘‘central in the creation of the individual human self.’’ ‘‘Each individual,’’ Hepworth (2000, p. 50) claims, ‘‘constructs his or her own vision of age identity from the expectations of others.’’ The perspective that emerges from these stories to live by is one of history in the service of present need, while in each case narratives are contingent primarily upon external perspectives. There is movement beyond the extreme contingency of performance alone. However, there is little attempt to include inner subjectivities, memory and experience other than as props to be used for present purposes. Narrative appears to solve the problem of identity management through personal fluidity in the here-andnow, whilst using the images and scripts that already exist in society as raw material. Time, personal history, and experience are included within this framework, but in a way that is simultaneously dependent upon preexisting structuration and capriciously in the service of the present. Again there are potential learning points for interaction between feminism and critical gerontology here, especially with regard to the valuing of personal experience as core oppositional ‘‘data’’ to unreflective common sense. In addition, posing the problem of how to protect an authentic sense of meaning whilst nevertheless prefiguring alternatives to existing age/gender stereotypes is potentially fruitful.

6. Coming to the Masquerade A problem with the perspectives addressed so far is that identity exists solely at one level of experience. A number of writers have suggested that the process of ageing—including the triple influence of bodily challenges, personal integration, and social prejudice—is inevitably layered. Featherstone and Hepworth (1983) have long suggested that individuals who look after their bodies and adopt a positive attitude toward life can prolong their capacity to enjoy the full benefits of consumer culture. In their view, ageing has become a life-course plateau, allowing a continual reinvention from midlife into deep old age. This is most forcefully expressed as a ‘‘blurring’’ of what appeared previously to be relatively clearly marked stages of the life course. As part of this process, older adulthood is liberated from a forced withdrawal from society, such that ‘‘older citizens are encouraged not just to dress ‘young’ and look youthful, but to exercise, have sex, take holidays, socialise in ways indistinguishable from those of their children’s generation. There are no rules now, only choices’’ (Blaikie, 1999, p. 104). Under such conditions, the trick of identity management becomes to discover techniques whereby a multiplicity of options for identity can be negotiated in the absence of binding cultural guidelines.

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However, according to Hepworth (1991), ageing identities based on mutability and performance eventually have to accommodate a core contradiction. ‘‘At the heart of the difficulty of explaining what its like to be old lies the awareness of an experiential difference between the physical processes of ageing, as reflected in outward appearance and the inner, or subjective ‘real self’ which paradoxically remains young’’ (p. 93). This ‘‘mask of ageing’’ position, as it has become known, holds that the ageing body becomes a cage from which a younger self-identity cannot escape (Featherstone & Hepworth, 1989). Thus, as ageing gathers pace, the body loses its flexibility and thereby fails as a surface that can accommodate that wide variety of consumer identities. It becomes, in other words, increasingly difficult to ‘‘recycle’’ the body through cosmetics, surgery, props, and prostheses and an endgame emerges in which older women and men are at war with themselves, engaged in a battle between the desire for selfexpression and the ageing body. Ageing, as a mask, thus becomes a nightmare, reversing the libertarian possibilities of the consumer dream. The mask emerges as a contradiction between the fixedness of the body and the fluidity of social images. In a rather different interpretation of the masque, Woodward (1991, 1995) and Biggs (1993, 1999a) draw on a psychodynamic understanding of the relationship between depth and surface. Here, masquerade consists of language games, body language and forms of personal adornment that contribute to the performance of self. Masquerade is seen to be of particular interest because it is, in this sense, an arbitrator between the inner and outer logics of adult ageing. The use of masquerade in psychodynamic theory can be traced to Riviere’s (1929) paper on ‘‘womanliness,’’ where femininity is seen as a performance developed by women. It facilitates survival within a patriarchal environment and serves as a means of participating in a world defined by others. This strategy, however, is adopted at the considerable cost of denying personal identity in favor of one that is externally legitimized. ‘‘Femininity’’ is therefore performed to deflect the possible reprisals that participation might provoke in men and the resultant anxiety that would be felt. The collection of narrative material from existing scripts is therefore tacitly problematized. This interpretation translates relatively easily into the language of ageism as it addresses the task of having to become an acceptable ageing person through participation in a world defined by the values of youth or failing that perpetual midlife. Performing an ‘‘ageless’’ identity deflects possible reprisals from the not-yet-old that may take the form of envy (of, perhaps, the leisure or eccentricity allowed older people) or disgust (e.g., at their bodily ageing). Woodward (1991) is particularly interested in youthfulness as a masquerade in old age and the paradox that masking both conceals and reveals the marks of age. Thus, ‘‘Masquerade has to do with concealing something and presenting the very conditions of that concealment. A mathematics of difference is posited between the two terms–an inside and an outside, with the outside disguising what is within.. . . A mask may express rather than hide a truth. The mask itself may be one of multiple truths’’ (Woodward, 1991, p. 148). It would appear from this reading that whilst a masque conceals signs of ageing, the very act of hiding alerts the performer and audience that something is being hidden. It therefore tells us something truthful about an act of deception. The fact that we almost always go along with the performance of agelessness, or active or productive ageing, fools no one. Its power lies in that very social convention which varies depending upon the intended audience, and this is what makes Woodward’s (1991) description of masking both subtle and complex.

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In work on the ‘‘mature imagination,’’ masquerade, and ageing (Biggs, 1997, 1999b) the distinction between hidden and surface elements of identity is not perceived to be an inevitable part of the ageing process. Rather, it becomes a tactical manoeuvre used to negotiate contradictions between social ageism and increased personal integration. Masking becomes a bridge between inner psychological and external social logic. Following Jungian (1932) psychology, the experience of a long life and the existential questions that ageing brings with it are conceived as provoking an expanded and more grounded sense of self. In part, this arises as projections made necessary by the restraints put on social roles in earlier phases of the adult life course, are returned to personal consciousness. However, as this new and evolving process of a maturing imagination continues to exist within a predominantly ageist society, masquerade is used to cloak socially unacceptable aspects of ageing which are now nevertheless recognised as part of who we are. Under such circumstances, masquerade protects this mature self from external attack, and becomes a somewhat Machiavellian vehicle for self-expression in its own right. A necessary inner space is created in which a stable identity can be built. This helps to ground an ageing identity and provides a position from which to assess and connect with the social world. In the face of an uncertain environment, it is argued that key elements of personal experience become interiorized, bringing vitality to the inner world of self (Biggs, 2003). For each of these writers, masquerade becomes part of a coping strategy to maintain identity and a means of keeping one’s options open. It is a device through which an active agent looks out at and negotiates with the world, leaving the viewer to unravel fact from fiction. Masquerade thereby allows some control of the distance between oneself and other people. It results from an irony of later life: the simultaneous experience of a withdrawal of psychological inhibition and an increase in social coercion. In terms of process and personal strategies, this excursion around the mask metaphor alerts us to a number of features of identity management with respect to age and gender, or indeed any form of ‘‘genuine’’ identity that is subject to idealisation, denigration and marginalisation by coercive social forces. First, both the mask of ageing and masquerade have at their core a distinction between surface appearance and hidden depth. Whilst the contents of the corresponding external and internal logics of identity differ, the processes for managing an identity remain strikingly similar, in so far as a hidden inner self is difficult to express directly. Second, both draw attention to tensions around connection and separateness, particularly with respect to the relationship between internal and external worlds. It recognizes that we all need contact with other people, even if that contact is sometimes disconfirming and causes us to withdraw. We need to express, but also to protect ourselves in everyday encounters with others. Masque performs an essential function by bridging the two, but traffic across the bridge would appear to vary depending on context and priority. Third, consideration is given to the degree of likelihood that one’s internal world can be expressed in any one external space. Where there is a high degree of harmony between the external, social worlds that impinge on the surfaces of identity, and the internal, depth elements of the personal, then more fulfilling self-expression might take place. Where the likelihood is high, the possibilities of more genuine selfexpression and a more liberating context exists; where it is low there will be an increase in deception and concealment. Furman’s (1997) record of encounters between older women in Julie’s International Salon illustrates many of these issues. The beauty shop is a safe, protected space within which women can show concern and affection for each other, whilst also engaging in the essential indulgences of vanity. It illustrates both

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a preoccupation with appearance that should not be confused with a desire to stay ‘‘young’’ and an inevitable tension between external performance and inner concern. These interpretations go beyond narrative in so far as ageing issues are necessarily the subject of power imbalances. It is these imbalances that contribute to a layering of experience, and highlight questions of depth, appearance, and deception. This layering of experience allows the preservation of personal experience and memory even if a surface narrative, in thrall of external expectation, only draws on what is currently expedient. What you see is not what you get. In terms of an understanding of ageing identity, one must travel beyond narrative and performance to consider the relative depth of experience being expressed. And who wants to be thought of as lacking depth?

7. Masque, narrative, and age/gender identities Within the descriptions of masquerade found in Woodward and Biggs above, multiplicity is ‘‘held’’ at the level of masquerade, which opens up a search for grounded identities in deeper levels of the psyche. This model also places considerable stress on opening a dialogue between inner and outer logic. For narrative approaches, the central dialogue is between the material socially available for narrative construction and satisfaction in the here and now. Emphasis is placed on the choice of the most appropriate narrative that fits current circumstances. Narratives thereby allow protection in so far as a degree of closure around the question of personal identity can take place. Both describe strategic positions rather than an existential truth about ageing or gender identity. At the same time, masquerade’s distinction between inner and outer logic allows a conceptual tension between what can and cannot be expressed, one that is not present to the same degree in narrativity. The conceptual frame of masquerade therefore more ably encounters issues of resistance and the expression of authenticity: what we really feel and want as compared to what we are told is the right way to age well as women and as men. It also provides a mechanism for dealing with those parts of the self that have to be suppressed or protected from the assaults of an ageist and sexist environment. Narrativity helps us choose between the unsettling variety of identities available under contemporary conditions, but it is less able to deal with events that cannot easily be ‘‘re-authored’’ such as age and gender. Masquerade ‘‘solves’’ this problem by submerging a relatively fixed core self thus making it at once removed from threats present in the immediate environment. It therefore allows a coming to terms with the contradiction between increased personal integration and an uncertain world in which to express them, which is more difficult if everything is supposed to happen at the same narrative level. This difference between masquerade and narrativity as strategies for resisting age and gender stereotyping becomes most acute when we come back to consider the problem of simultaneous yet contradictory demands on identity. How can one ‘‘look good’’ and ‘‘be true’’ to a mature self in a society dominated by the equation of youth to beauty to legitimacy, for example? How can one achieve personally desired outcomes in contexts that legitimize a very restricted ‘‘false-self,’’ such as the compliant and grateful older patient? Or how can one nurture outrage at assaults on our ageing maleness and womanliness, whilst surviving in an alienating and paralysing social nexus? How can one keep one’s powder dry? The theorization of a layered identity is essential to these processes of prefiguration and resistance, at least at a personal level. This is because it allows a protective inner space within which to nurture trangressive elements of the self until they can be directly expressed, perhaps with peers or with others with similar experiences. The ways that men and women manage their identities will inevitably

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differ, even in old age, but the point here is that the processes and the need to balance self-protection with self-expression are held in common. If narrative and masquerade can both be seen as strategies used by ageing women and men to outwit the age/gender nexus, both also hold the danger of becoming solipsistic. This is because both attempt to protect identity by creating psychological spaces cut off, to some degree, from other forms of feedback. Problems arise if the narrative ‘‘to live by’’ or the ‘‘inner logic’’ become too inward-looking and cease to maintain contact with their external social worlds. Then, they cease to be ‘‘dialogical’’ based on communicative exchange (Bakhtin, 1929/1986; Hermans & Hermans-Jansan, 2001). One’s sense of self can become increasingly fixed and self-referential. Fewer and fewer voices are heard, either arising from external reality or as inner reflections of the dialogical process itself, which functions to add flexibility to the internal language of the self or the self-story. Meaning created in these protected spaces is no longer connected to dialogue with other social beings and the opposing viewpoints that are part of such a connection. Thus, whilst our identities are inevitably an amalgam of the personal past and present relationships, and it is upon this that radical action would depend, it is possible that both narrative and masquerade contribute to an avoidance of engagement with social issues and their solutions. The way in which the self ‘‘make sense’’ of itself and how it holds together as a believable narrative fixes identity at a certain point and in a particular configuration. This can form a basis for action. But it can become equally an occasion for denial of the same, unless some form of connectedness to the social and to personal and collective memory is maintained.

8. Some Implications of a critical amalgam of feminism and gerontology In the question of identity, as age and gender intersect, some issues are shared and some differences emerge. Each can, perhaps, reflect the other to itself as well as point up areas ripe for mutual inspiration. While age and gender are experienced by an individual as intimately and possibly inextricably connected, they are, more often than not, treated separately by academics and policymakers. In self-experience, older women and men are left with little option but to identify with and simultaneously resist the ageing process. An interesting question to ask, a sort of test for the dominant and legitimising social identity is, when an observer (young/old/man/woman) sees an older woman at the end of the street, what do they see first: a woman, an old woman or someone who is just plain old? I am not going to argue for the primacy of one identity over another, however, as the history of antioppressive practice is strewn with examples of such pointless rivalry already (Bytheway, 1995). Rather, the point here is to see what we can learn from cognate experiences, avoid building roadblocks and search for solidarities. Woodward (2003) has persuasively argued that we need more anger in critical gerontology, and that concepts such as ‘‘wisdom’’ have pacified what it means to grow old. Freiden’s (1993), and for that matter Greer’s (1991), calls for a feminist renaissance addressing later life issues, have unfortunately hardly stirred the dust on the gerontolgical canon. However, gender is a passionate issue, and its relation to age will become more so if Katz and Marshall (2003) are correct in identifying (hetero)sexuality— which is so often conflated in the popular imagination with gender identity—is the latest means by which new markets are being established amongst old consumers. The dust issue also reflects on the historic difficulty that contemporary feminism has had in encountering age-related issues (Macdonald & Rich, 1984) and which persists in intergenerational

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tensions within the feminist academy (Ray, 2003b). It may also be reflected in the denial of ageing and somewhat narcissistic engagement with performativity found in Butler’s work, examined above. Ray (2003b) warns us that the history of feminist criticism charts a move away from its radical and multidisciplinary roots toward a form of inward-looking and self-serving disciplinarity. It is perhaps ironic that one of the most frequent claims made for gerontology is its interdisciplinarity, although whether this is much more than separate disciplines passing each other on the way to their own symposia is sometimes all too problematic. Radical approaches and interdiciplinary have not as yet proved good partners for gerontologists. This difference may bear some relation to the fact that most feminists are women, but few gerontologists are old. And when we look at this problem, it is also striking that few feminists are old! Or at they least are unwilling to admit it or show a professional interest in a subject as off-putting as ageing. The insecurity of mainstream gerontology tends to suppress not only radical roots but also truly gender-based issues. It is relatively hard to see gerontology talking for itself, and relatively easy to see it as prey to an ‘‘aging enterprise’’ of professional and commercial interests (Estes, 1979). However, I would argue that it is precisely in such trangressive issues as the critical analysis allowed by ageing of the cult of femininity, or the expression of a positive, sexualised, gendered identity in later life, that a truly creative approach to both disciplines exists. The problem identified at the outset, that critical gerontology appears to separately recognize the negative social construction of adult ageing and the potential for personal growth in later life, is an area where lessons can most clearly be learned from feminism. Whence, after all, had making the personal political first arisen? Historically, feminist thinking has paid much greater attention to the relationship between these two poles than has gerontology, with a sharper awareness of unequal power and its corrosive effects on relationships. And it is here that masquerade and narrativity come into their own. They bridge these two concepts and in doing so reintroduce questions of power into intergenerational as well as gendered relationships, such as how much one should reveal under such circumstances and whose story is being lived out. These observations have implications for the practice of gerontology itself. How often do we examine the power implications of younger adults interviewing older adults, the degree to which researchers access appearances rather than deeper levels of generational meaning and how institutional decision making is generationally inflected? Substitute men and women for young and old, and power issues immediately emerge: so why not for age? Research, policymaking, and professional practice are all intergenerationally charged environments, although this is often only tacitly understood. The degree to which researchers, policymakers, and helping professionals can establish a rapport with more authentic expressions of the ageing experience will depend on the development of methods of inquiry sensitized to the complexity of the mature imagination and, it has to be said, the degree of intergenerational trust that can be created. A consideration of adult ageing reintroduces the temporal to the issue of gender and identity. We exist in time as well as in the here-and-now and any convincing story of age, gender, and identity must come to terms with both. Sometimes, reading feminist theory, one could be forgiven for thinking that gender exists in a continuous present. These issues become most acute once age is aligned with the embodied self, not only in terms of appearance, reproductive, and productive capacities, but also, I have argued, in the relationship between the inner self and the self that is socially performed. It raises the intensely political question of the value of history, experience, and its manipulation which are now made unavoidable questions for contemporary ageing and gender. We are reminded that preexisting narratives may not be in our interests, that the act of deception itself carries its own truth and that multiplicity is not simply a matter of having a variety of performances at one’s disposal.

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Finally, the simultaneity of age and gender remind us that different truths about the self may coexist at different levels of the psyche, with different degrees of visibility. The world is an uneven and risky place. Distinguishing between the inner and outer, the hidden and the surface, allows the consideration of critical, protected spaces in which to grow and develop. We are reminded that different narratives to grow old by coexist at different levels of the psyche and in varying institutional spaces in society. Our theorizing and our interpretation of empirical findings must, then, take into account that ageing identities are inevitably layered. Some older adults may have had the opportunity over a long life to achieve a greater integration and clarity of self-expression. They may require suitably facilitative environments in which to express it. It is probably impossible to analyse or even intuit the many ways that age and gender intersect and the contradictions they throw up for identity management and radical action, not to mention class, race, ethnicity, and other forms of inequality and oppression. But to try is a fascinating and hopefully an ultimately liberating project.

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