like one of the things that jumped out to me in this essay was how his generation was the first to prize youth specifically, and the idea of losing one's youth being a tragedy, and therefore market the idea of youth. and now we are marketing youth to the prepubescent. ratcheting ratcheting
![Excerpt From
The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald, ed Ruth Prigozy
“KIRK CURNUTT
F. Scott Fitzgerald, age consciousness, and the rise of American youth culture
“At Your Age,” a relatively unknown 1929 short story published in the Saturday Evening Post, contains all the trademark elements that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s readers had come to expect by the end of the Jazz Age: there is a handsome, sympathetic hero embarrassed by his conventional, middle-class background; an irrepressible flapper whose flamboyant petulance symbolizes the frivolity of youth; a contemptuous, vain rival who steals the girl away with a flashy car; a doting, dull mother flummoxed by her daughter’s anti-traditionalism; and even talk of petting parties, those scandalous teenage necking extravaganzas that This Side of Paradise first brought to public attention nearly a decade earlier. And yet “At Your Age” departs from the familiar Fitzgerald formula in at least one significant way. Unlike Amory Blaine, Dexter Green, or Jay Gatsby, Tom Squires loses the girl not because he is too poor, but because he is too old. At fifty, Tom is attracted as much to Annie Lorry’s age as to her beauty or social status. She is for him a veritable fountain of youth, revivifying memories of “the warm sureties” of his[…]”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v573htd4w6sjhkgotjnwvs3c/bafkreie2dma7zskch67ezi4mylw7pqjsxuyv3ecbkqr6vrxl4x57fvlcoa)
