'It helps us understand how people categorize themselves and others,' he says. The study's approach captures only 'a static form of something very fluid,' Hajek admits. While almost all men entering midlife denied growing old ('I still think of myself as being in my 30s,' one 47-year-old said), those who successfully settled into middle age found ways to redefine themselves, such as looking down at youth culture’s annoying habits (a phone obsession, for instance), focusing more on accomplishments and less on looks, and embracing epithets like “old queen” and “sugar fossil.' Lucas Hedges plays a young gay man sent to conversion therapy by his religious. The theory is based on a labor-heavy process of reviewing all the men’s responses to his questions and “coding” them into distinct categories, then using those categories to assess broad trends.Īccording to the model, many men developed specific strategies for dealing with their fading youth as they aged. 50 Best LGBTQ Movies of All Time These Are the Top Gay Movies You Need to. Earlier this month in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Hajek published a study that introduced what he calls a “grounded theory of social identity management” for the middle-aged gay men he interviewed-basically a model of their struggle to come to terms with aging.
