Media coverage of anything aging-related has long been characterized by alarmist hand-wringing. Coverage of the pandemic is no exception, given that some three-quarters of COVID-19-related deaths worldwide are of people over age 65, many occurring in nursing homes, where the…
Search Results for: ageism
There’s No Excuse for Ageism, Part 2
Another rationale for gerontophobia (fear of aging and aversion to old people) is that olders are closer to death, and, well, who wants to go there?
Ageism and Tragedy in a Time of Triage
Triage means exclusion from treatment. In parts of the United States, triage may become grievously necessary, as pandemic peaks overwhelm resources.
There’s No Excuse for Ageism, Part 1
When the last parent died in 2017, I visualized their canoes heading over an immense waterfall. My partner’s and my canoes fell next in line. Gulp. Yet this scenario sure beats the alternative: outliving the younger people we love. Is…
In a Pandemic, Ageism Can Be Lethal
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), older people and people with underlying health conditions are about twice as likely to “develop serious outcomes” from the COVID-19 coronavirus—get really sick and possibly die—as younger and otherwise healthier people. …
A Doctor Speaks Out about Ageism in Medicine
A frank discussion of the biases that undercut older people’s health careSociety gives short shrift to older age. This distinct phase of life doesn’t get the same attention that’s devoted to childhood.
We Can Do Something about Ageism—Here’s the Evidence
We’ve known for a while that ageism—negative beliefs and stereotypes about aging—makes us vulnerable to disease and decline, and also that the opposite is true. People with fact- rather than fear-based attitudes towards aging walk faster, heal quicker, live longer…
Rowing North Against Ageism, Sexism and Misogyny
Mary Pipher is a psychologist who specializes in women—adolescents in her first bestseller, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (1994), and now those entering old age in Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age.
What Will It Take to End Ageism? Part 2
A consumer revolution requires a social revolution. We know that as time grows shorter, a sense of purpose becomes an ever-higher priority for olders. As Coughlin observes, “Culture helps determine what older people find meaningful. And that raises a question: can . . . new, socially permissible routes to meaning open up?”
What Will It Take to End Ageism? Part 1
Most Americans aren’t optimistic about getting older and think the source of the problem is aging itself. So do most policy wonks: they frame population aging as a set of choices about how to care for an avalanche of “frail…
Is Ageism Ever Funny?
How should I react when comedians on TV, or organizations I respect, make appallingly ageist jokes? I’m 83, so the joke’s on me. Should I object? I’ve been a fan of Saturday Night Live practically since the program first aired,…
Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People
If you’re not sure what ageism is, or you doubt that it does much harm, read this book.
Less Ageism = Less Dementia. It’s That Clear
What affliction do Americans fear most? Alzheimer’s disease. I’m one of them, but facts comfort me. Abundant new data shows that our fears are way out of proportion to the threat—and that those fears themselves put us at risk.
Bucking Ageism in Philanthropy
Five Organizations That Make Older People’s Lives EasierThere are a lot of problems in the United States. Take the fact that our country is aging. By 2035, Americans 65 and older will outnumber kids for the first time in our history…
The New Yorker’s Ageist Take on Ageism
I’m a lifelong New Yorker addict, so when I heard they were running a piece on ageism, I got excited. That was a mistake. Tad Friend’s article in the November 20th issue, “Why Ageism Never Gets Old,” is glib and…
The Workplace Needs #MeTooAgainstAgeism
The #MeToo movement is mainly about work situations, and so it should be. Being treated like a skirt—or a headless skirt, depending upon the level of vileness—by a male boss or peer can ruin a workplace…even a life.
Margaret Morganroth Gullette: Revolutionist against Ageism
A scholar takes on ageist violence in all its guisesAgeism did not end with the 20th century. But there were hopes. Feminism had brought changes for women, rights movements had brought changes for black people and disabled people, and the—well, there was no widespread, organized movement for older people.
Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America
Americans fear growing older but what we really should worry about is ageism—how entrenched, negative misconceptions about aging affect us from youth through our oldest years.
The Violence of Ageism
As the entire world now knows, Dr. David Dao is the passenger who was dragged off a United Airlines flight on April 9th (2017) by Chicago police, who broke his nose, gave him a concussion and smashed two of his teeth.
In the Fight against Bigotry, Where Does Ageism Fit In?
I wake these days remembering that something awful has happened. Reality assembles itself, and I feel worse. The multicultural, egalitarian, globalized society I hope to inhabit is under assault. Bigotry is ascendant. Racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance—pick your prejudice!—are sanctioned,…
Ageism
Action—Global and Local—against Ageism
October [2016] brought me two very different gigs—one on the world stage and one in a Brooklyn community center. The first was at the United Nations on October 6 to celebrate the 26th International Day of Older Persons. It was…
Six More Questions about My New Manifesto Against Ageism
Since the publication of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism (2016), I’ve been asked a lot of questions. Are you curious about why I’ve become an Old Person in Training?
Six Questions about My New Manifesto Against Ageism
Since the publication of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism (2016), I’ve been asked a lot of questions. Are you curious about why I find aging so damn interesting?
I’ll Have What She’s Having—Minus the Internalized Ageism
“There is also something profoundly liberating about aging,” Dominique Browning wrote in the New York Times.
Ageism – 1
How we think about getting older can drastically affect our emotional and physical health. Find out why.
Want Older People to Be Healthy? End Ageism
There’s a lot of disagreement around how to frame the last century’s unprecedented increase in human lifespan. Is it a crisis or an opportunity? Will a “grey tsunami” of incapacitated freeloaders sweep us off our feet, or will we tap…
Ageism – 2
Harmful stereotypes and discrimination are rampant in our society. Do you recognize ageism when you see or hear it?
Guess Who’s Confronting Ageism Now?
Ageism in Silicon Valley has been all over the news lately. “The Brutal Ageism of Tech,” a March 2014 feature story in the New Republic, noted that some male techies, still in their 20s, are contemplating Botox and hair transplants, while middle-aged engineers, a swelling cohort of “highly trained, objectively talented, surpassingly ambitious workers,” are being sidelined “for reasons no one can rationally explain.”
Why Ageism Matters
In 2007 I started interviewing people over 80 who were in the workforce. At the same time, I was reading and writing about longevity. To my surprise, the more I learned, the greater the discrepancy that emerged between my grim notion of late life and the lived reality.
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…
Older People Are Having Second Thoughts about Where to Live - Where do we want to live in the years ahead? Older adults are asking this question anew in light of the ongoing toll of the coronavirus pandemic—disrupted lives, social isolation, mounting deaths.
Guilt: The Dark Shadow of Responsibility - A couple of years ago, at a meeting of an Alzheimer’s caregivers’ support group I lead, one topic dominated. Doris, who is caring for her mother, began: “My mother trails me around the house all day long! So, every afternoon…