By Susanna P. Barton, MS Gero
At 87, actress and activist Jane Fonda says she doesn’t feel “like an old person,” doubling down that she actually feels “younger in all the ways that matter” as she ages into her 90s.
Fonda isn’t the only high profile older adult garnering attention for rocking life’s second half. Across culture and media, public figures from Angela Bassett to Grace and Frankie co-star Lily Tomlin receive generous praise for approaching aging with passion.
Chronological age, which is the number of years lived, too often tells us very little about how people feel, act and function in later life.
In the late 1980s and 1990s, gerontologists John Rowe and Robert Kahn popularized a distinctive model of successful aging that would come to shape research and public discourse for decades. Their model emphasized three components of Successful Aging:
- Avoidance of disease and disability
- High cognitive and physical functioning
- Sustained engagement in social and
- productive activities
This thinking runs counter to outdated of aging is actually decline or that getting old inevitably meant frailty and loss. Their model helped shift the cultural frame toward possibility, robustness, capability and agency in later life.
The World Health Organization’s Decade of Healthy Ageing initiative emphasizes this broad, and highly diverse view of aging well, advocating for environments that foster physical, mental and social well-being across all inputs and abilities. Media that showcases inspiring stories like Fonda’s continued activism or Bassett’s vibrant outlook can help us broaden our collective understanding of successful aging: getting older is full of incredible possibilities. We can have the freedom to age on our own terms because there are so many different ways to find success in aging.
Rowe and Kahn’s model helped open the door to rethinking aging, challenging history’s assumption that decline is inevitable. But as gerontologists increasingly unpack with more research, aging is incredibly diverse and rich beyond measure. Successful aging is more like a spectrum of experiences and inputs versus a checklist or formula.
