New Book on the Anti-Aging Industry: Selling the Fountain of Youth

I'm very excited to get my hands on a copy of Selling the Fountain of Youth and see what Arlene Weintraub has to contribute to the subject of the anti-aging industry. I'm not so concerned about the idea of pursuing beauty from a healthful perspective. I don't think it's wrong to want to maintain health and a healthy appearance throughout life, but a line does get crossed where people seem to confuse "health" with "youth." If we don't have the experience of watching the generations in front of us age naturally, how can we embrace our own aging process?

Youth Knows No Pain: A Look at the Anti-Aging Beauty Industry

This documentary, Youth Knows No Pain, examines our fear of aging from the perspective of the 60 billion dollar a year anti-aging beauty industry.

Promo

I haven't had the chance to see the documentary in full, but am eagerly awaiting the chance! One of the facts revealed in the film was how much money the filmmaker spent on just dying the gray out of her hair, which seems financially untenable! I have a friend with early gray hair who is considering foregoing her $200 / month hair coloring costs and letting it all go grey. On the one hand, I celebrate this idea of embracing her true beauty (she's one who is fortunate to have a gorgeous grey!). The trick is that, unlike a woman in her 20's with grey hair who will be perceived as and treated as a uniquely young woman with silver hair, my friend is in her mid-thirties and will instantly age "up" into her 40's. The concern I have about this is that, after reading numerous studies about how our self-perception shifts with the way others treat us, the biases that are directed at older women, and the physiological outcomes of our internalized ageism, her self-concept may be altered in a way that could impact her healthful aging process. I know it seems like a stretch, an exaggeration of the potential physical harms of ageism, but who knows where these micro-inequities start and what true impact they have?

Electric Chairs - A Short Film

This is a charming short film from a series on Hulu called "The Art of Seduction." The film is entitled "Electric Chairs," and it turns an eye on elder romance and connection.

The 91 Year Old Yoga Teacher and Dancer

We should all be so lucky!
http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2010/04/12/n_cmr_92_year_old_yoga.cnnmoney/

Documentary on Ageism and Employment

I am in awe at Patricia Sahertian's moxy. Her ability to see a problem and tackle it, head on, is so inspiring. After being impacted by ageism in the workplace, she decided to make a movie about it. The resulting documentary, Cut Back: facing ageism, has been posted in its entirety on YouTube. Talk about doing a mitzvah!

Here's the first installment of this excellent documentary:

Ageism and Unemployment

It appears that the problem of being old and unemployed is starting to get its due. There may once have been a time when it was possible to retire tidily and in a timely fashion and never experience age discrimination in the workforce. In addition, the commonality of corporate pensions would have taken the pinch out of a forced retirement --- it wasn't a layoff with a few months' severance, but an income stream for life. Therefore, the phenomenon of ageism and employment appeared to be more of an exception than the rule and would have carried a tremendous stigma ("He really wasn't functioning on the same level anymore," "She just couldn't take the hint and retire..."). Considering that most of the rule-makers and policy setters in our country come from this ilk - the college educated, white-collar job-set, the relative invisibility of age discrimination in the corporate world insured that there was a lack of appreciation for the problem in general... until now. Because of the economic downturn and the timing as it relates to the anticipated retirement of aging boomers... the problem is much more evident.

I'm not sure if it's just that my awareness is now heightened, or that, because of the conditions of the moment (lots of people approaching retirement age with wiped out retirement savings and high numbers of joblessness), but the issue seems to be coming up a lot more in the media. 

Just today, I noted it in this article on local homeless services:

"These people are desperate," O'Mara said. "They've paid taxes all their lives; they've never not been able to work. They don't qualify for much of the aid that's available because they have too many assets. But what do all these assets matter when you're 50 years old and you can't find a job?"

Old People in Fairy Tales

Gray Heroes by Jane Yolen

I have always loved Jane Yolen's work. I find it especially appreciable now that I'm studying gerontology. Of course she would have edited a work specializing in multi-cultural stories about elder heroes.

It's unimaginable to me that this would be out of print, but apparently it is (that's a sarcastic tone I'm using there - I've studied enough on ageism to understand that many beautiful works relating to older people are undervalued).

I'm definitely putting this on my wish list for my birthday. I can see how it would be invaluable to examine the representation of old people in fairy tales, as fairy tales represent so many archetypes, which inform our subconscious cultural attitudes (such as ageism).

What do you think?

Exciting Book! "The Making of an Elder Culture"

This new book by Theodore Roszak looks intriguingly on target for a lot of the things I believe Marsha's been talking about in our social policy class. I can't wait until inter-term to have the time to read it!

The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America's Most Audacious Generation

The Making of an Elder Culture reminds the boomers of the creative role they once played in our society and of the moral and intellectual resources they have to draw upon for radical transformation in their later years. Seeing the experience of aging as a revolution in consciousness, it predicts an “elder insurgency” where boomers return to take up what they left undone in their youth. Freed from competitive individualism, military-industrial bravado, and the careerist rat race, who better to forge a compassionate economy? Who better positioned not only to demand Social Security and Medicare for themselves, but to champion “Entitlements for Everyone”? Fusing the green, the gray, and the just, Eldertown can be an achievable, truly sustainable future.

Ellen Langer = Brilliant.

I first stumbled across Ellen Langer in the article I quoted about Ageism and Health Outcomes. in an effort to hunt down the root of her quote, I came across this review of Langer's latest book, "Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility," in The Situationist.

Here are some of the main points from The Situationist article I like:

...we are all victims of our own stereotypes about aging and health. We mindlessly accept negative cultural cues about disease and old age, and these cues shape our self-concepts and our behavior. If we can shake loose from the negative clichés that dominate our thinking about health, we can “mindfully” open ourselves to possibilities for more productive lives even into old age.

---

Most people try to dress appropriately for their age, so clothing in effect becomes a cue for ingrained attitudes about age. But what if this cue disappeared? Langer decided to study people who routinely wear uniforms as part of their work life, and compare them with people who dress in street clothes. She found that people who wear uniforms missed fewer days owing to illness or injury, had fewer doctors’ visits and hospitalizations, and had fewer chronic diseases—even though they all had the same socioeconomic status. That’s because they were not constantly reminded of their own aging by their fashion choices. The health differences were even more exaggerated when Langer looked at affluent people: presumably the means to buy even more clothes provides a steady stream of new aging cues, which wealthy people internalize as unhealthy attitudes and expectations.

We are surrounded every day by subtle signals that aging is an undesirable period of decline. These signals make it difficult to age gracefully. Similar signals also lock all of us—regardless of age—into pigeonholes for disease. We are too quick to accept diagnostic categories like cancer and depression, and let them define us. . . . [W]ith a little mindfulness, we can try to embrace uncertainty and understand that the way we feel today may or may not connect to the way we will feel tomorrow.

This Proves My Point on Ageism

This proves my point, right now, about ageism.

A search for "Ageism" on Google pulls up a shocking low return of 652,000 references.

As a point of comparison - "Sexism" on Google presently garners 4,230,000 results, and "Racism" on Google gets a whopping 23,000,000 returns.

No matter what your race or gender, all people are born with the potential, if they're lucky enough, to be aged. Yet, the discourse around ageism is minute compared to that of other biases and cultural prejudices.

In our Social Policy class, a few of us are working on a project about Language, Ageism and Policy. Essentially, we're researching ways that raising awareness about the usage of negative or positive labels regarding the older population can have a cultural impact. The fact that there's such minuscule discussion about the topic of Ageism as a whole confirms that this is a "hidden" problem, though it's hidden in plain sight.

My point is - let's get talking about "talking about" aging and stereotypes!

Now, how can we utilize Social Policy to get that going?

Schools Should Include Housing & Community Services for Elders

William Thomas (thank you Nancy for the introduction to his work!) is the proponent for the term "Elder," and many, many notions that flow from that concept.

I thought this was brilliant as it relates to Francie's theme of promoting inter-generational melding:

For thousands of years, relationships between young and old have made life better for both groups. In Eldertopia, all school construction and remodeling projects would include housing and community services for elders.

From "What is Old Age For?"

Grandperson?

I kind of like the ring of it.

From this article on language, children and ageism.

Ageist Language

Had to clip this from the Encyclopedia of Aging and the Elderly because I wanted to keep track of the references at the bottom:

ageist language - Ageist language is the term for words and phrases commonly used to refer disparagingly to older people. While there are some terms that are intended to honor the old (e.g., senior citizen, golden ager, old-timer, mature citizen), others are derogatory. They include some that apply to older women-bag, hag, harridan, crone, biddy, and even witch. For men the terms are fewer and perhaps not quite as unpleasant- codger, coot, geezer, mossback, etc. Other terms attribute disagreeable habits and personality traits to older individuals: crank, fogy, fossil, fuddy-duddy, grump, miser, reprobate, DOM (dirty old man), and cantankerous. Yet others single out the physical weaknesses of the older generation-- doddering, tottering, rickety, decrepit, frail, shriveled, long-in-the-tooth, moribund. Older people are sometimes characterized as mentally incompetent, as when a well-intended younger person will comment that an older person is "still sharp as a tack," as if to suggest that the old in general are mentally dull. Terms that disparage the mental state of the old include rambling, dotty, driveling, gaga, second childhood.
Even the names of nursing homes and retirement communities may inadvertently contribute to the ageist lexicon by calling facilities by such soppy titles as Tender Care, Crystal Pines, Leisure World, Forest Villa, Happy Time Rest Home, instead of employing more straightforward language.
Two publications designed to prevent ageist portrayal of older people now exist: Truth About Aging: Guideline for Accurate Communication and Media Guidelines for Sexuality and Aging. Continual vigilance will be necessary if ageism is to be reduced significantly, if not eradicated from our language and literature. One positive step has already begun in this regard. The newly established national intergeneration organization, Understanding Aging, Incorporated, has recently established an award for authors who portray the elderly in a realistic and nonstereotype fashion.

Nuessel, F. "Old Age Needs a New Name," in Aging, Goldstein, E. C., ed. Vol. 2, Art. 70. Boca Raton, Fl.: Social Issues Resource Series, Inc., 1981.
Spencer, M. E. "Truth About Aging: Guidelines for Accurate Communications." Washington, DC: AARP, 1984.
Wisnieski, C. J. "Media Guideline for Sexuality and Aging," in Television and the Aging Audience. San Diego: University of Southern California Press, 1980.

The International Longevity Center

Nancy sent me this great article on ageism, though I agree with her comment that it's a little too hoo-rah, swinging to the opposite end of the spectrum on what's expected in aging.

The article led me to the International Longevity Center site because the ILC's founder, Dr. Robert N. Butler,coined the term "ageism" in 1968.

I thought Karen's group would be particularly interested in the work that the ILC is doing related to aging and corporate America. I also like the consistent messaging of the "Age Boom" and "Longevity Revolution" on the site. Very positive. It turns the notion from "aging" to "living longer."

The National Academy for Teaching and Learning About Aging

While researching a class project ageism and how it's played out in our language, I came across the NATLA site. The broad subject of our project for the social policy class is to combat ageist attitudes in language usage via a social policy program. NATLA fits neatly with that, in that it's entirely about teaching to counteract ageism.

What Do You Call Older People?

The study by the AARP referenced in this article is an example of a Research and Development project on ageism.

This site is just a treasure trove of good info. This is a list of the key understandings that the National Academy for Teaching and Learning about Aging is trying to get into school curricula.