Successful Aging on Instagram?

Gender, Age, and the “Rise of the Granfluencer”

Authors

  • Mita Banerjee

Keywords:

Baddie Winkle, older women as “supermodels”, successful aging, social media, age and attractiveness, Margaret Morgenroth Gulette, Susan Sontag, double standard of aging

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomenon of the granfluencer at the intersection between age and gender. At first sight, the granfluencer seems to work against the notion that old age is inevitably accompanied by decay and a lack of productiveness. Yet, as “grandparents” become influencers, it seems that productiveness can be described only in terms of a neoliberal market economy. Taking the social media persona of Baddie Winkle as a case in point, I suggest that Winkle can be seen as both confirming and subverting assumptions of age at one and the same time. Drawing on the work of Margaret Morganroth Gullette as well as Susan Sontag’s “The Double Standard of Aging,” this article reads Winkle as a potential example of “Successful Aging” and asks whether there are ways of growing old beyond the dictates of neoliberalism. At the same time, Winkle can be seen to disprove assumptions of the alleged unattractiveness of older women by openly flaunting her sexuality. This may earn her clicks, and at the same time makes us see age (and gender) in an entirely new light.

Author Biography

Mita Banerjee

Mita Banerjee is Professor and Chair of American Studies at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the University of Mainz, Germany. She specializes in comparative ethnic American literature, with a particular emphasis on issues of immigration, health justice and citizenship. She has also been particularly interested in potential dialogues between the life sciences and the humanities with regard to the construction of knowledge. She is the author of seven monographs, includingColor Me White: Naturalism/Naturalization in American Literature (Winter, 2013), Medical Humanities in American Studies (Winter, 2018) and Centenarians’ Autobiographies (De Gruyter, 2023). She is a member of the Collaborative Research Unit “Human Differentiation” (SFB 1482) and the Research Group “Critical Online Reasoning in Higher Education” (FOR 5404); from 2015-2023, she was co-speaker of the Research Training Group “Life Sciences, Life Writing: Boundary Experiences of Human Life between Biomedical Explanation and Lived Experience” (GRK 2015/2).

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Published

2024-09-25

Issue

Vol. 22 No. 2 (2023): Gender, Age, and the New Media

Section

Articles