Author and activist Ashton Applewhite has been recognized by the New York Times, National Public Radio and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism. She blogs at This Chair Rocks, speaks widely, and is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, “a book we have been waiting for… that blows up myths seven to a page like fireworks” (Los Angeles Review of Books). In 2016, Next Avenue, a website that’s part of the PBS system, named Applewhite its Influencer of the Year, for sparking a revolution against ageism.
19, Going on 90 April 24, 2017 - Here’s a note that came to me recently from a reader of my Q&A blog, Yo, Is This Ageist? She wrote that:
Let’s Put Films to the Applewhite Test March 24, 2017 - Invented by the sharp American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, a movie passes the Bechdel test if at least two women talk to each other about something other than a man. Low bar, right? Yet surprisingly few movies pass it. I propose the…
In the Fight against Bigotry, Where Does Ageism Fit In? February 15, 2017 - 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,…
Action—Global and Local—against Ageism December 19, 2016 - 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…
Think Old People Will Tank the Economy? That’s Just Plain Wrong October 19, 2016 - Many economists agree that, as the number of boomers leaving the workforce swells, younger workers will shoulder ever-greater burdens. Social Security will be bankrupted by all those lazy old people! Medicare exhausted! These dire predictions of economic turmoil are biased,…
Age Takes Center Stage around the Brexit Vote—Not in a Good Way September 14, 2016 - On June 23, 2016, a referendum (a vote in which everyone of voting age can take part) was held to decide whether the United Kingdom should leave or remain in the European Union. Leave won by 52 percent to 48…
Six More Questions about My New Manifesto Against Ageism August 12, 2016 - 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 July 18, 2016 - 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?
Droneliness June 22, 2016 - Concerned about an onslaught of enfeebled old people? Don’t worry, robots will take care of them! American techno-optimism knows no bounds, and so-called “age-independence” technologies are proliferating like crazy. But in a profoundly ageist culture, the implications can be disturbing.…
What’s Behind the Growing Geriatrician Shortage? April 15, 2016 - I was delighted to see an editorial in the New York Times about a crisis in the making, the growing shortage of geriatricians.
I’ll Have What She’s Having—Minus the Internalized Ageism March 21, 2016 - “There is also something profoundly liberating about aging," Dominique Browning wrote in the New York Times.
The ‘Grandpa in a Nightclub’ Problem February 15, 2016 - A while ago, Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab ran a piece about the New York Times’ digital branding efforts. It quoted a series of tweets by Max Pfennighaus..
Having the Talk—Not the One about Sex, the One about Dying January 20, 2016 - A close friend’s grandfather is dying, though no one knows how close to death he is—perhaps months away. Even his doctor seems clueless, although perhaps he’s just not saying. In any case, he’s not asking. And even if everything were…
How Do I Get Old Faster? November 23, 2015 - That’s a question that Laura Carstensen, PhD, regularly fields after explaining why older people are happier than younger ones—the basis of the ubiquitous Happiness U-curve. I didn’t really believe the curve existed until I understood why. Carstensen, a psychologist and the founding…
What’s Missing from Marc Freedman’s Plan to Make the Most of Longer Lives? November 8, 2015 - Growing old isn’t new. What’s new is how many people routinely do it. The institutions around us were created when lives were shorter, and the culture hasn’t had time to catch up. The way we respond to this demographic shift…
Want Older People to Be Healthy? End Ageism October 19, 2015 - 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…
So I Dyed My Hair White September 28, 2015 - I’m the incredibly square and lazy woman who has never colored her hair. I inherited my mother’s no-gray-hair gene, and except on my right temple, my hair is brown. For an anti-ageism activist, though, that’s kind of a liability, because…
Beating the Age Barrier in Online Dating August 20, 2015 - A 2013 wedding announcement in the New York Times recorded the happy pairing of a couple who met through America’s Test Kitchen. He had founded the TV show and hired her 10 years earlier. He was 62; she was 37.
Is a Generation of Powerful Women Turning Age into an Advantage? Not Exactly July 7, 2015 - "Could the current cohort of eminent women in their 60s herald an era when aging, for women, ceases to be an enemy, and even becomes a friend?” asks Liza Mundy in the recent issue of the Atlantic.
Why Would You Even Ask? May 11, 2015 - “How Old is Too Old To Have Sex?” was the title of a HuffPost Live panel discussion that I took part in last year. As I pointed out during the exchange, the question itself is profoundly ageist.
