This article comes courtesy of The Old Women's Project in San Diego, California. You can find more about them here.
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are just a few comments we have encountered recently. They
come more frequently — as does our invisibility — with
every year. We chose these as examples of some of the particular
forms that ageism takes. The fact that we are political activists
makes these examples more telling — in many cases the people
who made their ageist comments are progressive people, who
would usually show more sensitivity.
Most of the people who make these comments
believe they are being “nice” — just as people
believed they were being nice if they told a woman in a college
class, “Wow, you think just like a man!” or told
a person of color, “You know, you’re a credit
to your race.”
The effect of these comments is not nice.
If we haven’t learned how to recognize ageism, they
can erode our self-confidence without our quite knowing why
— there is just a nameless sense that people perceive us as
Other. Even if we are anti-ageist activists, and can name
what is happening to us, the effect can be painful. The first
examples below are what we call the “medical model”
of aging (click to Home
Page). They represent what Golda Meir meant
when she said, “Age is not
a disease!”
MEDICAL MODEL
Example:
You are a political activist in your early 70s, in excellent
health, and you run into a young man in his early 30s whom
you haven’t seen for awhile. You worked together a few
years ago on a social justice issue, and you were on a panel
with him where your topic was ageism. He comes up to you,
and you have a friendly conversation. He tells you about his
current political work and you tell him about yours. As you
are saying goodbye, he takes your arm and says,
“I’m so glad you’re
still up and around!”
He thinks he has said something really
nice. But you are left in a kind of shock. You suddenly realize
that he sees you in some entirely different way than you supposed.
In the foreground for him is what he imagines as your imminent
collapse. It’s not that you don’t want to be reminded
of your mortality, it’s that you realize that’s
the glass through which he saw you during your conversation.
And if he sees you that way — this bright, progressive young
man who’s heard your rap about ageism — that must be
how many other people see you, not for who you are now but
for the terrible abyss they see you about to fall into.
Example:
You are a feminist activist in your 80s, and you have been
asked to give a talk at a large international conference.
You are waiting for the plane with other feminists going to
the same conference. A woman in her 50s comes up to you. “You’re
Mary Jones, aren’t you? I heard you talk in Cleveland
ten years ago. You’re still
so agile! How’s your health?” Here’s
a kind question, friendly question — why do you feel as though
someone punched you? You realize that you are seen, not for
the work that you have done or the work you are doing now,
but for your potential medical condition.
THE SERVICE MODEL
In the Service Model of aging (click
to Home Page),
old women are seen not, like other people, as individuals
first, but in one of two service roles: either as serving
others — the all-giving, all-loving Grandmother, who does
not think of herself at all, only the good of her grandchildren
or future generations or the planet, and who will feed you
cookies — or as needing to be served, the endlessly needy
little old lady who will drain you dry.
Example:
The Old Women’s Project went to a Dyke March, carrying
POWER, our large old woman puppet, and wearing our bright
t-shirts that read “OLD WOMEN ARE YOUR FUTURE.”
It was a large event with very progressive speakers. After
the march, while we were standing waiting for the program
to begin, three of the organizers passed by and stopped long
enough to say, “Let us know
if you ladies need anything.” How thoughtful?
No. In our shorts and t-shirts at a Dyke March we were still
“ladies,” and instead of “Love your puppet!”
or “Tell us about your organization,” the young
women saw our white hair and mentally clicked to the Service
Model.
EMBARRASSMENT FOR YOU
The Old Women’s Project claims the
word “old” because we are tired of people sparing
us the embarrassment of acknowledging who we really are. It’s
the manager of the grocery store saying, “How
are you doing, young lady?” It’s the woman
who gives you a vision test and asks, in a pained voice, as
if she were asking about STDs, “Would
you mind terribly if I asked
you your age?” It’s the desk clerk at Motel
6 who says, “I hate
to ask, but are you a member of AARP?” These
messages, over and over and over, tell you that who you are
is awful, an embarrassment to the world and surely one to
yourself.
Example:
You are in your 70s, and work out at a small YMCA that has
a great many old women as members. You sign up for a session
with a personal trainer and arrange the meeting on the phone.
You mention your age. Next day you are on a cross trainer
when she comes up to you. You say something about how she
was good to be able to pick you out, since there are so many
white-haired women at this Y. She looks at you and at the
other old women working out, and says piously, “I
don’t see any white-haired women here.”
There might have been a time when a woman of her education
would have looked at a group of disabled people and said,
“I
don’t see any disabled people here,” or
a group of Hispanics and said, “I
don’t see any Hispanics here,” but it wouldn’t
happen today. The real message is, I know you people must
be embarrassed to be who you are, but I am such a good person
that I don’t see your disability, your ethnicity, your
age.
Example:
On a recent visit to a friend in a nursing facility, you hear
a nurse exclaiming to a 98-year-old woman,
“Oh, you aren’t
old!"
SURPRISE THAT YOU ARE REAL
Younger people frequently react with amazement
that an old woman is actually a woman just like anybody else.
What a younger woman might say or do without comment becomes
“Oh, you’re so cool!”
or, even worse, “Oh, you’re
so cute!” “Cute,” by the way, said
of an old woman, does not mean “hot.” It means
that she has said or done something that would not be at all
remarkable coming from a normal person, but does not fit the
speaker’s stereotypes about old women.
HOW WE CAN RESPOND TO AGEIST COMMENTS (WITHOUT GOING TO JAIL)
We will save our favorite response for
last. So stay tuned.
People understand even less about ageism
than they do about racism, sexism, ableism, for example. Most ageist
comments that are made to our faces arrive dressed up as compliments.
This doesn’t make the attitudes reflected in their remarks
any less hurtful, and the Old Women’s Project believes
it’s costly for ourselves and for other old women if
we just let ageist remarks pass because the speaker didn’t
know how offensive he or she is being. It’s important
for us to begin to show the patronizing, the insulting assumptions
behind the compliments just as decades of education have taught
us about certain “compliments” around sex, race,
disability. We’re all still learning, but that’s
no excuse. Old women don’t even have the decades of
political education to draw on that would let us quietly remind
people that a remark is offensive — because the person probably
hasn’t a clue that age has anything in common with the
other isms. We
can’t educate them from scratch on the spot. But it’s
unhealthy for us and for other old women just to let ageism
slide by. What to do?
When someone presents us with an ageist
comment, we are sometimes just thrown by it. It helps to have
a few resources at the ready. These suggestions are just a
beginning. If anyone has ideas for other responses to ageist
comments, send them to us at oldwomensproject@aol.com.
If they sound useful, we’ll add them to this web site.
1. The most subtle response, which at
least doesn’t let the remark go by, is to respond to
their “kindness” in kind. Take the Medical Model
examples. You could respond, cordially, “I’m so
glad you’re still up and around, too!” At the
Dyke March, you could say, “And let us know if you need
anything too!” If someone calls you “cool”:
“Well, you know, you’re cool too.” Responses
like these at least lift the comment out of the age box it
came in.
2. Compliments about how young you look
or act or your youthful spirit can always be countered by
a cheerful: “Well, actually, I’m proud of my age,”
or “I feel as though I earned my wrinkles.” (Or
— even more educational — “You know, I’m old and
I like being old,” which will surely lead to: “Oh,
don’t call yourself old! You don’t seem old at
all,” which can lead to: “You know, as long as
we all think it’s embarrassing to be called old, it’s
going to be embarrassing to be old.”) A number of old
women have picked up Gloria Steinem’s response, “This
is what 60/70/90 looks like.”
3. Ageist comments are often not only
inappropriate but actually bizarre (see “I’m so
glad you’re still up and around!”), and the older
we become, the more bizarre. We may be offended, hurt, but
often our first reaction is one of just incredulity. We are
tongue-tied, and want to say, “Huh?”
One of the most effective responses is useful in almost all cases. It is above all handy when
someone says something that takes your breath away by its
inappropriateness. You can look back at them, preferably with
no trace of hostility or sarcasm, and ask with genuine puzzlement,
“What do you mean?”
The beauty of this response to an ageist
remark is that the burden is no longer on you to explain why
what they said is offensive. It does not make you “feisty”
or “crotchety” or “cranky.” It places
the burden squarely on them to look at what they just said
and figure out why they said it. It can make them squirm at
what they just said the way you are squirming at what they
just said. And it’s more educational than any mini-lecture
on ageism you might deliver.
He: “I’m so glad you’re
still up and around!”
She: “What do you mean?” (with
genuine puzzlement)
What is he going to reply? Fortunately,
that’s not your problem, but he probably won’t
say it to any little old ladies ever again.
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| The Old Women's Project San Diego, California Website: www.oldwomensproject.org/index.htm |
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