NotNormativelyHuman 219
the gateway to experiences and practices which are detrimental for the
people thus interpellated. Just as race is often "identified" simply by a
glance at someone's outward appearance, when it comes to "age," it
often takes just a single glance at "the marks of time"^58 to identify
someone as being "over the hill." Small consolation, then, that Simone
deBeauvoircounsels,especiallywomen,nottoforget"weareoldfrom
the outside," and not in our selves (qtd. in Segal 110). In Philip Roth's
Everyman(returned to below), the eponymous protagonist summarizes
similar insight in his characteristic wry manner: "When you are young,
it'stheoutsideofthebodythatmatters,how youlookexternally.When
yougetolder,it'swhat'sinsidethatmatters,andpeoplestopcaringhow
you look" (85). In other words, something that, based on its origin and
location, is "external" migrates, as it were, inside the person thus
interpellated, and in an ironic twist becomes that person's very own
attribute.
The strongest evidence of the pervasive cultural power of the
epidermization of "age" is the intensity with which individuals and a
whole industry of surface management (most prominently cosmetic
surgery) concern themselves with strategies to avoid looking old.
AlreadyEmersoncondemnedtheU.S.-Americancultofyouthfullooks,
buttonoavail:"theessenceofageisnotpresent,thesesigns,whetherof
Art or Nature, are counterfeit and the essence of age is intellect" (n.
pag.).Hismind-over-matterargumentwasandisapaltryconsolationin
the eyes of many, then and now. Inversely, the project of passing is the
context in which many filmic (Groundhog Day;It's a Wonderful Life)
and other, often commercial images of "best agers" and "successful
aging" operate whose protagonists do emphatically not look old.^59 Not
Emersonian wisdom is at stake here but rather strategies of
circumvention,subterfugeorequivocation.Culturalcritiquehascometo
identify these strategies, at work also in the context of "race," by the
term "passing". The promise of passing is both locatedandfulfilled on
(^58) For an extended elaboration of this complex in autobiographical terms cf. N.
K.Miller.
(^59) Harry Moody of the AARP has offered an interesting reading of some of the
films just mentioned in his "Films as Guidance for Positive Aging."Second
Journey.SecondJourney,Inc.,2017.Web.23Apr.2017.