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?

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.

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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.