*Originally posted on my Wordpress blog 09.07.2022
I heard Ashton Applewhite, the author of This Chair Rocks, on some podcast a few weeks ago. The lively, enjoyable, and timely conversation prompted me to request the book from the library. It came at a good time for me as I find myself staring rather uncomfortably at an aging face in the mirror. But, then again, one is aging from the time they are born so there’s that….
This book has been heralded as a manifesto against ageism. It’s well researched, engaging, and is an important addition to the current literature on aging. Some of what is presented in the book (maybe even most of it) is not new to me. Ms Applewhite chronicles the history of ageism and the social/media influences that make ageism so powerful and so much a part of the current American culture. She shows how being over 60 (or some other arbitrary age over 50) is the kiss of death when it comes to attraction, productivity, and value - at least as the youth culture promoters would have it. At one point she talks about how the number we are becomes glued to our identity (for that year and then moves on to the next) and, with it, all the negativity of that age.
She makes a good point about how the media always includes a person’s age when featuring that person. No matter why - traffic accident, hero of fire, business promoter - no matter why the name is in the publication, the age is almost always part of the identifying facts. And why is that? It shouldn’t be unless it is directly related to the story. Including the age sets up expectations based mostly on the anti aging propaganda. There was a time when a person’s race or ethnicity was included but not any more. That’s how it should go with age as well.
She nailed it as well when she wrote about how people ask you how old you are. Why do they ask that? Because they want to match you to their expectations for a person of your age (whatever the age is). People have ideas in their head about what it means to be different ages. There’s a standard profile for 20 and one for 50 and one for 75 and one for everything in between. Ms Applewhite clearly demonstrates how we shortchange ourselves and others when we ask another about age because we are taught by the culture to think of people in stereotypes, including age. If you are 60 years old, then this is what that means. If you are 80, then this. And, for the most part, the older you are the less attractive, positive, capable, endearing, lovable this youth centered culture would have you be.
Ms Applewhite does a great job, in my opinion, of charting the values inherent in getting older. She reflects on how, as people in middle age, we make a mistake when we think that successful aging means being just the same as we are at 50. That’s not true. “Successful” aging means also gaining social maturity and and growing in psychological and emotional realms. We can continue to expand as we get older and that only gives us more in life. We can notice less fear when it comes to death and illness, we can develop deeper relationships with fewer people, we can find joy and delight in the ordinary moments, maybe more so than we ever could in middle age when we were fighting career battles and building homes and families. We often have time, in later years, to be exactly who we are and to do our lives exactly the way we want to do them, one day at a time. That doesn’t happen so much when we are 35 or 45. When we’re young we are constantly worrying about what lies ahead and if we are living our best lives. Later, though, our anxiety diminishes. Laura Carstensen , longevity researcher, made this observation: “In some ways - I think of this as the silver living of growing older - we’re relieved of the burden of the future the older we get.” There’s something to be said for that acknowledgment.
The author does address some of those issues around cognitive decline which is not as certain to happen as the media would suggest. She has some specific strategies for staving off cognitive decline which are valuable and not really new but worth the reminder. She addresses physical decline as well. Yes, she does say there is no way around physical decline. It’s going to happen but it could be a slow down as opposed to a falling apart. She talks about how, yes, you have to deal with chronic illness / pain - that’s the price you pay. But dealing with chronic illness/disability is doable. She does fault the current medical professionals for often not taking the complaints of the over 60 crowd seriously. Too often older people are not interesting patients or the physician’s attitude is , “Well, what did you expect? You are, after all, old.”
I loved her chapter on sex and intimacy. It was so real, so down to earth, and so necessary. What Ms Applewhite emphasizes over anything else is that, in all things, and especially in the world of sex and intimacy, we are all different. There is no set description or expectation. I am appalled at how much the contemporary culture derides sex and intimacy in older people. There is this idea that once you reach what? 60 years old tops? You are done with the world of sex and intimacy. As she says, “We don’t ask when people age out of singing, or quite eating ice cream; why on earth would we stop making love?” I am angry that people laugh or say “ewwwww” when it comes to grandparents or people of a “certain age” being sexual. Why wouldn’t they be? They are human beings and human beings long for intimacy. As I read recently in another piece by the late New Yorker writer Roger Angell, “Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love.” That was from his article This Old Man (2/14/2014 edition of The New Yorker) and it is the Truth.
There is a chapter devoted to the end of life and to the choices that can be tied to that. “The appearance of the bull changes when you enter the ring”. In other words, the matador’s point of view is different from the spectator’s . The end of life looks different when you are on the brink than when it is a future abstraction. There is a thoughtful discussion about how olders view their lives as olders and the need for open dialogue about end of life choices. As the author noted, “the profit-driven, often legally mandated interventionist default of the medical - industrial complex is powerful.” Modern medicine is all about fixing things and keeping people alive but that might not be what the older wants. Ms Applewhite offers some useful strategies that open the door to those kind of hard conversations.
Ashton Applewhite concludes the book with strong words about the need to focus on ageism in the same way that we have taken on racism and sexism . She has a complete list of ways that will help individuals and the culture make this adjustment and I highly recommend looking them over. This is a five star read and it’s time for people to dismantle the outgrown ideas about aging.
“It’s not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys; it’s homophobia. It’s not the color of their skin that makes life harder for people of color; it’s racism. It’s not having vaginas that makes life harder for women; it’s sexism. And it’s ageism far more than the passage of time, that makes growing older far harder than it has to be.”
Some quotes from the book:
“What’s the best answer to ‘How old are you?’ Tell the truth, then ask why it matters. Ask what shifted in the questioner’s mind once they had a number.” p. 52
“Aging is life itself, which is what makes it so damn interesting.” p. 202
“We see old age through the lens of loss. From the outside what people lose as they age is more obvious than what they gain. The losses are real and wrenching. But from the inside , the experience is different. Abandoning preconceptions takes open-,mindedness as well as imagination. Perspectives shift.” p. 220
“Since the only unobjectionable term used to describe older people is “older people,” I’ve shortened the term to “olders” and use it, along with “youngers,” as a noun. It’s clear and value-neutral, and it emphasizes that age is a continuum. There is no old/young divide. We’re always older than some people and younger than others. Since no one on the planet is getting any younger, let’s stop using “aging” as a pejorative—“aging Boomers,” for example, as though it were yet another bit of self-indulgence on the part of that pesky generation, or “aging entertainers,” as though their fans were cryogenically preserved.”
“…we’re brainwashed by a culture that reduces older people to the grotesque caricatures that birthday cards routinely offer up. Institutionalized ageism is responsible for producing those careers and internalized ageism for the fact that they sell.” p. 223
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