Why are women still so underrepresented in positions of power? In the United States, for example, why do women still make up only a meager 10 percent of people running Fortune 500 companies? Take heart, there’s always a reason. (Content warning: this article,…
Search Results for: ageism
Becoming Less Ageist Can Reverse Cognitive Decline
A growing body of fascinating research shows that attitudes towards aging have an actual, measurable, physical effect on how our minds and bodies function. People with more positive feelings about aging—fact- rather than fear-based, that is—walk faster, heal quicker, live…
What AI Can Do for Older Adults
Among other things, it can keep them safer and connect them better to those they loveWhen Alyssa Weakley’s 82-year-old grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2019, the family scrambled to respond. Her grandmother lived in southern California; Weakley and other family members were in northern California and Washington State. As problems arose, they took turns…
Enough with the Headlines about Age!
Age and age discrimination have never gotten more media coverage, especially in the wake of President Biden’s announcement that he’s running for reelection. If there’s anyone who should be delighted, it’s me. I’m in the age and ageism business after…
The Beauty of Our Own Impermanence
Since my heart surgery last year, I’ve lost weight, I exercise daily and I am energetic and forward-looking. A few weeks ago, working out with a trainer, I did full squats on a balance ball, something I never even knew…
Smartphone Saga
My cellphone failed recently, and the experience taught me a few uncomfortable things about myself. For one thing, apparently I’m a technophobe. It’s a long story. About a month ago, I was sitting in my car with my friend, Jeanne,…
Is it Ageist to Offer Actors the Right to Hide Their Age?
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) has been waging a years-long legal battle with the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to stop the site from disclosing the ages of screen actors. Last June, GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, signed on to support…
For the Umpteenth Time: ‘Too Old to Be President’
Wondering how to respond when people equate a political candidate’s age with their fitness for office? You’ll find plenty of answers in “Biden is now America’s first octogenarian president,” which appeared in Salon. The writer reached out to experts like physician Louise…
Celebrating Aging
Older adults are beginning to invent their own rites of passageAfter her mother passed away, Jeanette Leardi invited female friends to her home for a special gathering. It wasn’t exactly a memorial service; many attendees never knew her mother. Instead, it was a healing ritual for Leardi. The group lit…
Changing the Way You Think about Aging Can Improve Your Life
It’s good for everything from your memory to your healthPeople’s beliefs about aging have a profound impact on their health, influencing everything from their memory and sensory perceptions to how well they walk, how fully they recover from disabling illness and how long they live.
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day: It’s a Thing. It Shouldn’t Have to Be
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, which was launched in 2006, falls on June 15. That happens to be my mother’s birthday, which I find darkly amusing and which probably has something to do with my ambivalence around the event. It’s…
Can’t See the Stars During the Daytime
I just finished reading a really good book, entitled Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live (2022), by Becca Levy, PhD. I recommend it. It is about Levy’s groundbreaking research at…
Memory Hacks
When I was young, I could memorize epic poems with ease and recite the Gettysburg Address years after I learned it in school. I seldom forgot the names of books I’d read, the films I’d seen or who starred in…
The Old Woman with the Knife: A Novel
It seems ageism in the workplace is rampant, even for contract killers like Horn Claw. At 65, Horn Claw knows she’s not as spry as she once was
Percolating Conversations
One of the ongoing workshops that I facilitate is an all-men’s group. For the last several years, once a month, eight of us get together. Camaraderie, angst, disagreement and humor circulate around the general topic of aging. It is a…
The Paradoxes of Aging
I recently came across a passage about contemporary aging so concise and insightful that I had to post it. It’s from a review by eminent gerontologist Thomas Cole of Aging and the Art of Living (2012) by Jan Baars. We…
Aging behind Bars
The United States has the largest prison population in the world. What’s that got to do with aging? you may ask. Well, people 50 and older are the fastest-growing segment of the US prison population, increasing 25 percent from 2009 to…
‘They Treat Me Like I’m Old and Stupid’
Older people protest ageist incidents in medical careJoanne Whitney, PharmD, 84, a retired associate clinical professor of pharmacy at the University of California-San Francisco, often feels devalued when interacting with health care providers.
So What If I’m Old
Every so often, I have a flash of insight about my own internalized ageism. When it happens, I am both disappointed and pleased. To set the stage: I am driving to a doctor’s appointment at a major downtown medical center.…
Ageless, Clueless … I goofed
During my book tour, I often closed readings with a passage about aspiring to agelessness, declaring it a form of age denial. A woman at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR, said, “Saying you’re ageless seems like saying you’re color-blind,” and…
Me and We
A few weeks ago, my granddaughter and I took a summertime walk to the local market. On the way home, the afternoon sun was at our backs. In front of me, I saw the shadow of an eight-year-old girl and…
Learning from the Women’s Movement’s Mistakes
Here’s an excerpt from Ageist? Sexist? Who, Me? How to Start a Consciousness-Raising Group Around the Intersection of Ageism and Sexism (out later this spring from the Old School Clearinghouse). It’s about how women with privilege have left other women behind in the…
Can Artists Help Us Combat Hate and White Supremacy?
In 2016, PBS’s Next Avenue named writer/editor Paul Kleyman an Influencer in Aging, recognizing his long career. After 20 years as editor of the American Society on Aging’s newspaper, Kleyman became director of the Ethnic Elders Newsbeat at New America…
The Year of Letting Our Hair Go Gray
Six year ago, on an escalator coming out of a weekday movie matinee, I had a wild idea. Despite the fact that the entire audience was older, I spotted only one gray-haired woman. Covering the gray, I realized, is a…
Kaiser Health News: The Story Behind the Grant
KHN doubles its output during the Covid pandemic—with some help from Silver CenturyThe year was 2016. By most accounts, print journalism was dying. The rise of free digital content, the decline of trust in journalism and a drop in advertising revenue had led to what the Atlantic called a “print apocalypse.” Layoffs…
The Possibilities Even Where Our Darkest Fears Reside
My new talk, “Still Kicking—Confronting Ageism and Ableism in the Pandemic’s Wake,” debuted earlier this week at n4a, the national conference of Area Agencies on Aging—to rave reviews, yay! Here’s a look at some of the ground it covers: Remember…
Why Biden Won: The Missing Reason
The 2020 presidential election took place at arguably the most anxious time in the nation’s history, at least as threatening as the Civil War, the flu epidemic of 1918–1919, or the distant world wars.
Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age
Mary Pipher is a cultural anthropologist and clinical psychologist whose academic focus has been developmental psychology and trauma.
Age Justice Requires Disability Justice—and Vice Versa
A terrific special section of the New York Times [in July 2020] was devoted to the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. There is no mention of age or ageism. It would be convenient to…
Discrimination Is Intersectional. Activism Can Be Too
… What 2020 brought home for me was that being anti-ageist means supporting every movement for equal rights. It’s a big ask, but we cannot dismantle ageism without dismantling ableism, and racism, and sexism and all the rest, because these systems reinforce…
How Old Would You Want to Be in Heaven?
Many religious faiths propose different versions of heaven as a location: there are walled gardens with streams, flowers, pleasing scents, pretty angels, rapturous music or delicious, accessible food.
Journalists in Aging Fellows Program: The Story behind the Grant
How fellowships for journalists are improving the way the media cover agingIn the late 2000s, boomers—almost 80 million strong in America—were beginning to retire. And the media was beginning to notice. A Google News search for “baby boomers” shows 290 articles published in 2009. Compare that to 45 in 2004. The…
Age Justice Requires Disability Justice—and Vice Versa
A terrific special section of the New York Times [in July] was devoted to the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. There is no mention of age or ageism. It would be convenient to attribute…
Breonna Taylor Did Not Get to Grow Old
Breonna Taylor, a Black EMT, was murdered in her bed at 26 years old. Michael Brown was 18. Tamir Rice was 12. Why am I writing about these young victims of police brutality in a [blog] about ageism? Because systemic…
The Benefit I Earned
I was thinking the other day about how thrilled I was, shortly after I turned 65, when I signed up for Social Security. It was a watershed moment, and my husband took me out for lunch to celebrate. I was…
Being Old Is Not a Death Sentence, Even Now
Contrary to popular opinion, no one living in a nursing home needs to die of COVID-19.
We’re All Old People in Training, Whether We Know It Yet or Not, Part 2
In a world increasingly segregated by race and class as well as by age, reaching over those divisions to acknowledge the one path we’ll all travel is a radical act.
Is Aging a Disease?
Some say it is, but others disagree. Funding hangs in the balanceThe first depiction of humanity’s obsession with curing death is The Epic of Gilgamesh—which, dating back to at least 1800 BC, is also one of the first recorded works of literature, period.
Hearing Aids Get Smarter
My friend, Jeanne, has new hearing aids, and I’m green with envy. Compared to her aids, mine seem about as cutting edge as a horse and buggy in the dawning era of the car. Here’s what hers will do: When…
The ‘Generational Wars’ Contrived to Disguise the Failure of the American Dream
In a nation grappling with growing inequality, stagnating social mobility, crushing personal debt and crumbling job security, efforts to set America’s generations against one another persist.
Tips for Long-Distance Caregivers - This is part 2 of a series about caregiving from a distance. Read part 1 here. Fern, 92, called her daughter in a panic. She couldn’t turn off her television because she couldn’t find the remote. Due to Fern’s hearing…
My Own Ageism and Ableism - These days, I see my possible future self everywhere. Most of the time, it’s the possibilities I’m dreading that jump out at me first. At the gym, there are always some people moving very deliberately and with much more effort…