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The study of aging masculinity benefits from theories of intersecting inequality and attention to context, and also from methodological care. Theory can help to avoid reification of naturalized distinctions by age and by sex; and methodological rigor can avoid imputations of old masculinity to activities that other people do just as much. We revisit published research to outline theory and methods that minimize risk of reification and false distinction. We review theories of intersecting inequalities (age and gender) as well as institutional context; and we focus on methods that require either explicit mention of gender by those studied or direct comparison of old men to others. We offer several examples of how we can distinguish aging masculinities by using these methods, from interview research to the study of popular culture. Comparisons of white, middle-aged men in Finland to men in the U.S., and contrast of the U.S. men to U.S. women, reveal patterns in their constructions of manhood in later life, in realms of health, anti-aging, and caregiving. We point to the importance of both intersectionality and attention to contexts, such as welfare states, which shape aging manhood.

This article explores the ways in which a group of male factory workers uses bodies as bases for hierarchical categorization of men by age in their talk of mundane aspects of their lives. Analysis of interviews about health (4 focus groups and 5 personal interviews) with Finnish working-class men under 40 years old shows that they portray age groups to which they do not belong as careless, even irresponsible toward health and its maintenance. As they categorize youth and old people by age, they leave themselves unmarked by it, providing no vocabulary to describe their own group. Despite their tendency to distance themselves particularly from old people, they also distinguish among older men by familiarity, providing relatively nuanced accounts of their fathers' aging. We discuss the marking of age groups in terms of social inequality and talk of fathers in terms of intergenerational relations. Even family ties among men of diverse ages involve ageism, which familiarity serves both to mitigate and to make less visible. This article documents the maintenance of age inequality in everyday, mundane behavior.

This article focuses on the intersections of age, gender and class in interpretations of the aging and situational identity work of middle-aged working-class men. Empirically the article is based on interview data (4 focus groups and 9 personal interviews with 40+ men) in which Finnish paper-mill workers are interviewed about health. Based on the theoretical implications of intersectionality, the article provides an empirical analysis of how age-based cultural hierarchies and distinctions are used flexibly in the process of self-identification and how categorizations of age and conceptualizations of aging are tightly interwoven with gender and class. The analyses show that the middle-aged interviewees base their interpretations of the aging self on negotiating their position between the age categories of the ‘young’ and ‘old’. Both these groups are labeled with rather negative characteristics regarding the irresponsibility for health among the young and impaired functional ability of the old, which conflicts with the working-class expectations regarding masculine identity. The findings suggest that studying how people ‘do age’ requires consideration of the respects in which aging is an age-specific and gendered process shaped by class-based values, ideals and practices.