Add Another Candle To The Cake
It happens faster than we think. We have been warned, and yet we’re always surprised when we get there. I don’t often think about my age but when I say it out loud, something in my gut screams “Holy shit!” You see, contrary to popular belief, people don’t actually feel old or young inside. They simply feel like themselves, whatever that may feel like.
Ageism is everywhere. Not just in Hollywood movies where a male actor can have a love interest who is twenty and sometimes thirty years his junior. Talk about suspending disbelief! Guys are shocked to find that this doesn’t hold up in the light of day in the real world. Don’t forget either, how rare the movie or TV show is that tells the story of anyone over the age of fifty. Ageism is usually more subtle than what we get from Hollywood. Take the cute post above for example.
On the surface, it appears innocent. Having fun in life is good advice right? My problem with it is that it equates old with a lack of fun. You get old because you stop having fun? No, you get older because you lived another year. Old is simply a definition of the years of life one has accumulated. That is if one is privileged enough to have accumulated them. If old were really a measure of how much fun one has, I was at my oldest while my kids were little. Some people would be old in their teenage years. High School can be so socially hard for some people that this would be old age according to the post.
One day at work a woman asked me if I knew where Carol was. I smiled and said “I’m Carol.” She looked at me and said in shock “You’re Carol?” For a split second I didn’t know how to respond, so I showed her my name tag. She said that they told her to look for an older woman and I don’t look old at all. I give this example not only because I love reliving it but because it’s not an example of ageism. I am considerably older than my coworkers were so it is definitely a legitimate way to describe me.
Another work incident was classic ageism. An older coworker needed help with something on the computer. The young person helping her said “Yeah, my mother doesn’t know anything about technology either.” She just assumed that the person she was helping, by virtue of her age, knew nothing, as opposed to not knowing that particular thing.
My ageism pet peeve is when fashion magazines write articles about what women should wear at different ages. One such article might be titled “What Women Over Fifty Should Wear.” Oh honey, I fought hard to get here. So many didn’t make it. So I’m going to wear overalls just like I did in high school. I’m going to wear tank tops even if my upper arms are not as tight as they once were. They’re just arms for god’s sake! And I will dance with abandon in public. I will curse like a sailor if that means sailors curse a lot. I will play my music loud, well, because my generation had the best music. I will not care what millennials think of me. No time to waste on other people’s judgement. You see that’s the thing about aging. It’s knowing that there is a time limit so why let other people’s ideas limit you?
And below is a little perspective for you on the numbers game.
