Jill Filipovic is the author of The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness.

Thursday’s presidential debate will pit the two oldest-ever candidates for president against each other. Despite being nearly the same age, Donald Trump has tried to paint Joe Biden as elderly and doddering, and voters also seem to worry more about Biden’s age than Trump’s. And though Trump’s “angry grandpa” persona makes for entertaining television, it doesn’t necessarily instill confidence.

Ever since FDR hid his wheelchair from the public, presidents and presidential candidates have understood that TV is a visual medium, and aesthetics matter. But perhaps no two presidential candidates have gone to such lengths to broadcast youth and vitality to the American public, even as they enter their ninth decades.

Part of this is simple vanity. But it’s also our social, cultural, and political reality. Male politicians are lucky in many ways—like how they can be outwardly slovenly and still taken seriously, while also being allowed to age in public and see their gravitas grow.

While men get several extra decades that aren’t generally afforded to women, this election suggests that even their time comes, too. There comes a time when “distinguished elder statesman” declines simply into “old man.”

Which is why both Biden and Trump are raging against their own mortality.

President Joe Biden

Biden, to his credit, doesn’t exactly project youth, but he does look damn good for 81. His suits fit well, and though he moves and talks a........

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