Abstract
Due to discriminatory patriarchal belief systems, American society prizes youthfulness and celebrates an idealistic, yet virtually unattainable image of the human body. Such beliefs profoundly inform conceptualizations of aging in American society. In addition to a double standard of aging pertaining to sexist ideology that exposes elderly women to particular social sanctions, I seek to explore how individuals of non-heteronormative sexualities and gender identities experience a distinct kind of vulnerability stemming from the relationship between their aging bodies and heteronormative power structures. More precisely, this article looks at Stu Maddux’s documentary Gen Silent (2011) to argue for the necessity of a discourse on aging bodies that includes people of non-heteronormative sexualities and gender identities and thus demands a queering of normative assumptions about aging in general.
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