Crafting “Youthful” Desire, “Doing” Masculinity: Narratives of Middle-Aged to Older Men in Grindr Grid and Offline Spaces in Mumbai, India

This study utilizes queer gerontology as a framework to raise questions and rethink theoretical tools by weaving personal biographies and intimate histories of queer men in Mumbai, India. In particular, drawing on narratives and self-presentation aesthetics of 30 middle-aged to older men in the online dating app, Grindr, as well as face-to-face interviews, this study harnesses the somatic turn in gerontology to show how the (neoliberal) triad of self-care, stylistic consumption and an invocation of “metrosexual” masculinity become critical signifiers of the never-aging cultural enterprise of the Third Age (Laslett 1989). In the process it shows how the putative marginality of the homosexual aged body both destabilizes and strengthens the rationality of normative heterosexuality through its enduring emphasis on (sexual) functionality and moral duty. The men’s narratives allow us to question the limits of “western” cultural anxieties of “coming out” in a context where homosociality offers reticent acceptance without threatening the heteronormative matrix. All in all, this study with its focus on men’s bodies as erotic capital allows us to reimagine aging where desire remains socially and culturally meaningful for most men across their lives, thereby de-centering the heteronormative and asexual gaze of mainstream gerontology in India.