In Our Prime

by Patricia Cohen

  145 “I was interested in emotion”: Davidson interview with author, 2008.

  145 impact of the telescope: Goldberg, Wisdom Paradox, 238.

  146 “Spinoza prefigured in a remarkable way”: Harcourt Brace interview with author, Interview with Antonio Damasio, 2003, transcript available at http://www.harcourtbooks.com/authorinterviews/bookinterview_damasio.asp (accessed May 20, 2011).

  147 In one study, monks who had spent: Davidson interview with author; Benedict Carey, “Scientists Bridle at Lecture Plan for Dalai Lama,” New York Times, October 19, 2005.

  147 One possibility, Davidson hypothesizes: Lutz, A., H. A. Slagter, J. Dunne, and R. J. Davidson, “Attention Regulation and Monitoring in Meditation,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12, no. 4 (2008): 163–69, NIHMS no. 82882.

  147 Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard psychologist: Stephen Hall, “Is Buddhism Good for Your Health?,” New York Times Magazine, September 15, 2003; http://www.positscience.com/human-brain/brain-plasticity/brain-plasticity-luminaries/Richard-Frackowiak (accessed June 12, 2011).

  148 Neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to change: Richard Davidson, “Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain,” Google Tech Talk, September 23, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tRdDqXgsJ0&feature=related (accessed June 15, 2011).

  148 An experiment published in 2009: Robert Schneider, Sanford Nidich, Jane Morley Kotchen, Theodore Kotchen, Clarence Grim, Maxwell Rainforth, Carolyn Gaylord King, John Salerno, “Reducing Negative Emotions, Promoting Health and Improving Quality of Life; Abstract 1177: Effects of Stress Reduction on Clinical Events in African Americans with Coronary Heart Disease: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” Circulation 120 (2009): S461.

  148 In 2011, a group of scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital reported: “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density,” Behavioral Medicine Report, January 21, 2011, http://www.bmedreport.com/archives/22292 (accessed May 20, 2011); Britta K. Hölzel, James Carmody, Mark Vangel, Christina Congleton, Sita M. Yerramsetti, Tim Gard, Sara W. Lazar, “Mindfulness Practice Leads to Increases in Regional Brain Gray Matter Density,” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 191, no. 1 (January 30, 2011): 36–43, DOI: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2010.08.006) (accessed June 12, 2011).

  149 Myelin itself can deteriorate: Barbara Strauch, The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind (New York: Viking, 2010), 86.

  149 Scientists began questioning assumptions: Sharan Merriam, Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007), 366; “Tests of Ability to Learn Earn Praise of Middle Age,” New York Times, April 22, 1928.

  150 In the 1970s: Stephen Hall, “The Older and Wiser Hypothesis,” New York Times Magazine, May 6, 2007, 58.

  150 Some differences in test results: Daniel Goleman, “The Aging Mind Proves Capable of Long-Term Growth,” New York Times, February 21, 1984.

  151 Most people do not naturally: James Flynn, What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007); “The IQ Conundrum,” Cato Unbound, November 2007 (accessed August 13, 2011).

  151 Paul Baltes, one of the originators of life span theory: Stephen Hall, “The Older and Wiser Hypothesis,” New York Times Magazine, May 6, 2007; Henry Alford on http://incharacter.org/pro-con/is-there-really-such-a-thing-as-wisdom-part-1/ (accessed June 12, 2011).

  152 Sternberg, a former president of the American: Robert Sternberg, A Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Hall, “The Older and Wiser Hypothesis.”

  152 The influential Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner: Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1985), xi.

  152 “While the theme of youth is flexibility”: Merriam, Learning in Adulthood, 347.

  153 His in-laws, both in their 70s: Gene Cohen, The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 2.

  154 About a thousand miles east: Margie Lachman interview with author, May 11, 2011.

  154 A trained interviewer initiated each: Patricia A. Tun and Margie E. Lachman, “Age Differences in Reaction Time and Attention in a National Telephone Sample of Adults: Education, Sex, and Task Complexity Matter,” Developmental Psychology 44, no. 5 (September 2008): 1421–429; description of Lachman and Tun’s study, http://www.midus.wisc.edu/midus2/project3/ (accessed May 21, 2011).

  155 The preliminary results: Strauch, Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain, 14, 20–21.

  156 The discrepancy with MIDUS’s: Lachman interview with author, May 11, 2011.

  157 So far, the professors have found: Tun and Lachman, “Age Differences in Reaction Time and Attention in a National Telephone Sample of Adults.”

  157 Most encouraging was evidence that: M. E. Lachman, S. Agrigoroaei, C. Murphy, and P. Tun, “Frequent Cognitive Activity Compensates for Education Differences in Episodic Memory,” American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 18, no. 1 (January 2010): 4–10.

  157 Using a computer: Margie Lachman, “The Association Between Computer Use and Cognition Across Adulthood: Use It So You Won’t Lose It?” Psychology and Aging 25, no. 3 (2010): 560–68; Lachman interview with author, May 25, 2011.

  158 Lachman found the same phenomenon: M. E. Lachman and S. Agrigoroaei, “Promoting Functional Health in Midlife and Old Age: Long-Term Protective Effects of Control Beliefs, Social Support, and Physical Exercise,” PLoS ONE 5, no. 10 (2010): e13297, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013297 (accessed June 9, 2011); Margie E. Lachman and Kimberly M. Prenda Firth, “The Adaptive Value of Feeling in Control During Midlife,” in Brim et al., How Healthy Are We?, 320–40; Lachman interview with author, April 25, 2011.

  Chapter 10: Consuming Desire

  163 “Middle age doesn’t exist”: Walter Tevis, The Color of Money (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2003).

  164 As GQ noted when it: Mark Kirby, “Lordy, Lordy, This Woman Is Forty,” GQ, January 2009.

  164 By comparison, the media-produced: Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives (New York: Harper Torch, 2004).

  165 “She looks old enough”: Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 14.

  165 The poor Lysol-less woman: Lois Banner and Nancy Etcoff make similar points in their books. Banner, In Full Flower; Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (New York: Anchor Books, 2000).

  166 Pauline Manford in Edith Wharton’s: Wharton, Twilight Sleep, 98.

  166 “We have become so”: Natasha Singer, “Is Looking Your Age Now Taboo?,” New York Times, March 1, 2007; Daphne Merkin, “FACE; Houston, We Have Face-Lift,” New York Times Magazine, February 28, 2010.

  166 In some affluent circles: Real Housewives of Orange County, Bravo, May 2011.

  166 A 2005 Harris survey found: Harris survey, 2005.

  166 One Virginia clinic located: Associated Press, “Job Hunters Get Out the Wrinkles,” June 5, 2009.

  167 “Looking hip is not just about vanity”: Natasha Singer, “Nice Résumé. Have You Considered Botox?,” New York Times, January 24, 2008; Karsten Witte, “Introduction to Siegried Kracauer’s ‘The Mass Ornament,’” New German Critique, no. 5 (Spring 1975): 59–66.

  167 During the health-care debate: Judith Warner, “Bo-Tax Backlash,” New York Times online, December 3, 2009, http://tiny.cc/jcqi7 (accessed May 21, 2011).

  168 Passing can also be seen: Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Brooke Kroeger, Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 134–48, 212.

  168 Recent studies have found: Ewing, “The Shock of Photography,” in 100,000 Years of Beauty, Azoulay, ed., 24.

  169 “No devices to give a deceitful”: Robert Tomes, Bazar Book of Decorum: The Care of the Person, Manners, Etiquette, and Ceremonials (New York: Harper & Bros., 1873), http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/AJF2367.0001.001?view=toc (accessed June 12, 2011).

  169 Recall that Gertrude At
herton: Atherton, Adventures of a Novelist, 62.

  169 “Nice women do color their hair”: http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess_BH0310/ (accessed May 21, 2011).

  169 “Because of her prematurely”: Ad*Access, Duke University Libraries, http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/?keyword=pitied (accessed May 21, 2011).

  169 In 1956, when Clairol came: Malcolm Gladwell, “True Colors: Hair Dye and the Hidden History of Postwar America,” New Yorker, March 22, 1999.

  170 “This is an age of mass production”: Edward Bernays, “Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How,” American Journal of Sociology 33, no. 6 (May 1928): 958–71.

  170 The new class of: Savage, Teenage, 219.

  171 In his book Propaganda: Edward Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Ig Publishing, 1928).

  171 As one trade press: Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 131.

  171 When George Washington Hill: Neal Gabler, “The Lives They Lived: Edward L. Bernays and Henry C. Rogers; The Fathers of P.R.,” New York Times, December 31, 1995, http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/08/16/specials/bernays-father.html (accessed May 21, 2001).

  172 The consultant Paco Underhill describes: Paco Underhill, Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1999, 2008), 126.

  172 In his classic 1979 critique: Lasch, Culture of Narcisissm, 72. The cultural critic Kennedy Fraser makes a similar point. Observing how the Me Decade’s therapeutic self-help infused consumption with even greater significance, she said: “Americans, acting under the combined influence of rampant acquisitiveness and psychoanalytical self-absorption, seem particularly inclined to mesh possessions with their sense of self-esteem, and to view them as social signposts and emotional milestones.” Kennedy Fraser, The Fashionable Mind: Reflections on Fashion, 1970–1982 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), 53.

  172 “Bourgeois Bohemians” flaunted: David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2004).

  173 One Beverly Hills: Natasha Singer, “Who Is the Real Face of Plastic Surgery?,” New York Times, August 16, 2007; Natasha Singer, “Defy Another Day,” New York Times, T: Style Magazine, April 17, 2007.

  173 The overwhelming majority of American: Gullette, Agewise, 106.

  173 Four out of five: Quoted in Susan J. Douglas, Enlightened Sexism (New York: Times Books, 2010), 225–26.

  174 Newer nonsurgical treatments: American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery news release, “Demand for Plastic Surgery Rebounds by Almost 9%,” April 4, 2011, http://www.surgery.org/media/news (accessed May 21, 2011).

  174 High-end sports clubs: Alex Wichtel, “Where Jaded Muscles Exercise Their Options,” New York Times, June 9, 2006.

  174 More troubling is a 2011 study: Pamela Paul, “With Botox, Looking Good and Feeling Less,” New York Times, June 17, 2011.

  174 Since then, purchases: Allergan Inc. website, “Sales Outlook for 2011,” http://agn.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=547064 (accessed May 21, 2011).

  175 “Forty is the sweet spot”: Caroline Van Hove interview with author, 2008.

  175 “The project’s goal,” copywriters wrote: Juvéderm press conference, August 31, 2008.

  176 At an annual meeting of the: Singer, “Defy Another Day.”

  176 At a press conference for the: Juvéderm press conference, August 31, 2008.

  176 “I am a proponent of healthy aging”: Ibid.

  177 “I’m celebrating the ‘big 4-0’ this year”: http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/allergan/41442/ (accessed March 16, 2010).

  177 “In 1985, I saw a tape”: Singer, “Nice Résumé. Have You Considered Botox?”

  178 In the summer of 2011, Indiana: Mark Bennett, “Will Revised Indiana Alcohol ID Law Cause Hoosier Run on Botox?,” Tribune-Star, June 2, 2011.

  178 Margaret Morganroth Gullette, who has written: Gullette, Agewise, 5–6.

  178 A headline in the New York Times: Jennifer 8. Lee, “Big Tobacco’s Spin on Women’s Liberation,” New York Times, October 10, 2008.

  Chapter 11: Middle Age Medicine

  181 As the political philosopher Harvey Wheeler: Harvey Wheeler, “The Rise of the Elders,” Saturday Review, December 5, 1970.

  181 “We believe that there can be an end”: Robert Klatz, http://www.worldhealth.net/.

  182 The official sounding “academy”: Duff Wilson, “Aging—Disease or Business Opportunity?,” New York Times, April 15, 2007; American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine website, “About the A4M,” http://worldhealth.net/about-a4m/ (accessed on September 15, 2011).

  183 The makers of Ion Magnum: “Ion Magnum, High-Speed Muscle Building,” Pacemaker Technology booklet, 2008.

  184 Although the medical establishment rejects: Andrew Pollack, “Forget Botox. Anti-Aging Pills May Be Next,” New York Times, September 21, 2003; L. F. Cherkas et al., “The Effects of Social Status on Biological Aging as Measured by White-Blood-Cell Telomere Length,” Aging Cell 5, no. 5 (October 2006): 361–65.

  184 “Wrinkled, sagging skin is not: Alex Wichtel, “Perriconology,” New York Times, February 6, 2005.

  184 “Under no circumstances is the reader”: Ronald Klatz and Robert Goldman remarks, A4M conference, Chicago, 2004.

  185 Growth hormones gained notice: Wilson, “Aging—Disease or Business Opportunity?”

  185 Cells start dying off while we are: Natalie Angier, Woman: An Intimate Geography (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 3–4; Skloot, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

  186 The academy was not charged: Gina Kolata, “Chasing Youth, Many Gamble on Hormones,” New York Times, November 22, 2002, A1.

  186 “Simply put, the death cult of”: Robert Klatz, Grow Young with HGH: The Amazing Medically Proven Plan to Reverse Aging (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1998).

  187 “Antiaging” today is like “antiwar” in the 1960s: Singer, “Defy Another Day.”

  188 At 68, he arrived: Joseph Maroon and Nicholas DiNubile interviews with author, 2008 and 2009.

  189 “Boomers are the first generation”: Bill Pennington, “Baby Boomers Stay Active, and So Do Their Doctors,” New York Times, April 16, 2006.

  189 “When I first started practicing”: DiNubile interview with author, December 2008.

  190 To DiNubile, the medical establishment still lags: Ibid.

  190 “This is a highly motivated group”: Pennington, “Baby Boomers Stay Active, and So Do Their Doctors.”

  Chapter 12: Middle Age Sex

  193 the American Mercury, the monthly magazine: L. M. Hussey, “The Pother about Glands,” American Mercury Magazine, January 1924, 93.

  193 Yet, in 1936, at age 56: Brock, Charlatan, 207.

  193 Oreton, a drug manufactured by the Schering: Rothman and Rothman, Pursuit of Perfection.

  193 In 1939, the prestigious: Arlene Weintraub, Selling the Fountain of Youth: How the Anti-Aging Industry Made a Disease Out of Getting Old, and Made Billions (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 136–37.

  194 An issue of the science-fiction magazine: Serlin, Replaceable You, 113–37.

  194 In 2002, the Commission of the European Communities: EMAS website, http://www.emas.man.ac.uk/main.asp (accessed May 15, 2011).

  194 In June 2010, the New England Journal of Medicine: Sora Song, “Examining Male Menopause: Myth or Malady?,” Time, June 16, 2010.

  194 In 2011, scientists discovered that fatherly activities: Pam Belluck, “In Study, Fatherhood Leads to Drop in Testosterone,” New York Times, September 12, 2011.

  195 As one critic put it: Weintraub, Selling the Fountain of Youth, 139–40. Innovaro report, “Pipeline and Commercial Insight: Testosterone Replacement Therapy—Topical Formulations Drive Market Growth,” September 2010, http://reports.innovaro.com/reports/pipeline-and-commercial-insight-testosterone-replacement-therapy-topical-formulations-drive-market-growth (accessed June 3, 2011).

  195 Promotors in Las Vegas: Wilson, “Aging—Disease or Business Opportunity?”<
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  195 The National Institute on Aging undertook: National Institute on Aging news release, “NIH-Supported Trial to Study Testosterone Therapy in Older Men,” http://www.nia.nih.gov/NewsAndEvents/PressReleases/PR20091102-Testosterone.htm (accessed May 21, 2011).

  195 Gynecologists and psychoanalysts frequently: Shweder, ed., Welcome to Middle Age!, 52–53; Banner, In Full Flower, 256.

  196 A range of female hormonal therapies: Rothman and Rothman, Pursuit of Perfection, 35–46.

  196 photographs of kicking showgirls: Ibid., 56–57.

  196 Charm, a magazine for working women: Serlin, Replaceable You, 131.

  197 In the 1950s, William Masters: Rothman and Rothman, Pursuit of Perfection, 23, 35–36, 67–69.

  197 Psychotropic drugs were similarly marketed: Sandra Coney, The Menopause Industry: How the Medical Establishment Exploits Women (New York: Hunter House, 1994), 68–69.

  197 “It’s not just about branding the drug”: Katharine Greider, The Big Fix: How the Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers (New York: PublicAffairs, 2003), 118.

  198 Simone de Beauvoir observed: Beauvoir, Second Sex, 575.

  198 It is “probably the least glamorous”: Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Declining to Decline: Cultural Combat and the Politics of the Midlife (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).

  198 The gynecologist Sherwin Kaufman: Rothman and Rothman, Pursuit of Perfection, 73–74.

  199 Throughout the sixties and seventies: Weintraub, Selling the Fountain of Youth, 76–80, 83.

  199 Only after his death did documents: Ehrenreich and English, For Her Own Good, 348–50; Gina Kolata, “Hormone Replacement Study a Shock to the Medical System,” New York Times, June 10, 2002.

  199 The elitist bias that infused: Serlin, Replaceable You, 152.

  199 His animosity is reminiscent of: Susan Squier, “Incubabies and Rejuvenates,” in Figuring Age: Women, Bodies, Generation, Kathleen Woodward, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

  199 In 1975, doctors wrote: Rothman and Rothman, Pursuit of Perfection, 73–93; Brandes, Forty, 117–23.