Según pasan los años: La vejez como un momento de la vida by Susana E. Sommer (review)

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

So begins Susana E. Sommer’s Según pasan los años: La vejez como un momento de la vida (As time goes by: Old age as a time in life), in which she tackles, in an original way, the subject of aging. Sommer shows us that, although it is not always easy, aging does not have to be terrifying, and she tries to suggest how to cope with this aspect of life.

In the introduction, Sommer provides an overview of the issues she will discuss. A biologist, she devotes a chapter to various biological theories about aging, the evolutionary explanations that account for it, and numerous works that link the consequences of eating habits and lifestyles to aging. The book is divided into ten chapters, the focuses of which range from biology to cultural issues to ethics. It ends with an appendix of empirical information and statistics indices and an up-to-date bibliography.

The premise underlying the book is that this final stage of life should be no less enjoyable than what came before. Sommer asks if it “is possible to age with flair, grace and humor” and considers how to face decline and incapacity. She makes us aware that health and retirement are not the only issues that affect the elderly, and that the main political challenge is to strengthen rights, social integration, and welfare for the aging.

In the second chapter, Sommer discusses books, films, and plays that consider maturity and old age. By way of Cicero to Simone de Beauvoir to Oscar Wilde and from older actors and actresses who play characters that reflect their actual ages (e.g., Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Al Pacino, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, and others), Sommer highlights the possibility that aging allows us to pursue careers that span from our younger through our older years. That many of these books, films, and plays are about older people—their joys, problems, and also humor—has led her to speculate that this phenomenon is related to an ever growing audience interested in these issues and allows audiences to dwell on the beauty, values, and experience related to this time of life.

In chapter 6, the author compares the female and male aging processes and delves into empirical differences. Not only do male and female bodies respond differently to aging, male and female psychology does too. Women tend to live longer than men, and the ratio of women to men is generally high among the elderly. Some of the explanations for this are health related; others attribute it to the fact that women are less likely to engage in risky behavior than men, and also that physical labor traditionally is more frequently performed by men.

In chapter 5, which is devoted to the biological changes and the differences in aging between men and women, Sommer suggests that since women age more slowly than men, one can suspect that age related diseases must be delayed in women. In fact, most age related diseases are delayed in women compared with men. For example, coronary atherosclerosis is postponed in women, and cancer and most other diseases of aging occur earlier in the life of men than they do in women. Women rarely die from age related diseases before menopause, in fact. The later onset of diseases in women compared with men suggests that women age more slowly than men do. Also, skin, bones, and muscles and such senses as smell, hearing, sight, and taste and the genetic mechanisms underlying them modify through the years, as do other differences involved in the aging of men and women. Sommer also mentions several studies that relate the exceptional longevity of less fertile men and women, as well as the fact that men tend to...