This paper presents a critique of both the concept of age equality and of the limited scope it offers as a means for challenging old-age prejudice. The equality constructs that feature in anti-ageism initiatives and in current discourses on intergenerational equity have proved susceptible to political and ideological manipulation, which has led to the illegitimate dissociation of ageism from older age and promoted damaging notions of age equivalence. The consequence has been that old-age prejudice has been de-prioritised, and older people have been de-legitimised socially and as a welfare constituency. The corrective is best sought outside the confines of age equality frameworks, although legal remedies may play a useful role if human dignity is incorporated as an equality criterion. This paper also assesses other approaches to tackling old-age prejudice that avoid the constraints of equality constructs and engage more firmly with its roots. The notion of the ‘third age’ with new social roles merits reconsideration as an affordable alternative to current policies of work obligation and pension retrenchment. Radical interventions in the labour market in favour of older people may also be needed. Age activism and advocacy will increasingly influence policy on prejudice and well-being in older age, but changed emphases are needed, as from defensive strategies and the ideologies of generational interdependence and solidarity, towards the promotion of organisational, financial and social autonomy in older age.

This paper elucidates and champions a spatiality perspective in social gerontology, by arguing that relationships between older people and the spaces and places they inhabit illuminate deeply-ingrained societal attitudes and values. The trilogy of society, image and place is explored through an interpretive reading of images and scripts in ‘successful ageing’ and ‘anti-ageing’ created and promoted by the booming ‘retirement industry’ in the United States. Six tropes are revealed in an interpretation of prevalent images of ‘Sunbelt Retirement Land’: geographic cornucopia, ageless selves, near perfection, the right stuff, down home living, and nomads of desire. This reading serves as a springboard in elaborating Cole's (1992) notion of bipolar ageism, as we vacillate between negative stereotypes of old age and positive elixirs, such as anti-ageing and agelessness, that are cloaked denials of decline, disease and death. The paper concludes with a series of troubling questions about the perpetuation and depth of ageism in society and culture.

Every present day is determined by the images that are synchronic with it: each ‘now’ is the now of a particular recognizability. (Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 1999: 462–63)

In recent years, many researchers in the study of ageing have adopted a terminology of ‘agelessness’. They argue that old age is nothing more than a social construct and that until it is eliminated as a conceptual category, ageism will continue to flourish. This article challenges this view, stating that the current tendency towards ‘agelessness’ is itself a form of ageism, depriving the old of one of their most hard-earned resources: their age. Specific theories of ageing (successful ageing, mask of ageing, continuity theory) are assessed in this light, and original data are presented as evidence of old age as a unique phase of the lifecycle replete with continued developmental possibilities.