Ageism Unmasked

My first glimpse of ageism happened during a gap year I took after college. My set, the best friends I hung out with, had been in the class below mine. Wanting to remain engaged with them for the last year before we went our separate ways I became a live in companion to a lovely older woman. Her daughter wasted no opportunity to portray her as incompetent. One day when she forgot to shut off the tea kettle her daughter said, "We're lucky she didn't burn down the house" with an exasperated eyeroll. The next weekend I deliberately left the kettle on. The daughter shut it off and said, "Don't worry. I forget things all the time."
SAY WHAT!!!
After my first epiphany I began to see this prejudice everywhere in Hallmark microagressions, demeaning language, the threats of what would happen if women didn't spend outrageous sums of money to pass for young, managers pushing older workers out of jobs…
But when I tried to share what I was learning most people either didn't understand or didn't want to understand. They could see the most superficial things like the over the hill birthday cards. But recognition of ageism as a whole, even into this current decade, is where recognition of sexism was BEFORE Betty Friedan started writing about a problem that had no name.
So imagine how thrilled I was when I started reading Tracey Gendron's Ageisn Unmasked. It's a good thing that Eugene was at work because I has dropping more amens that a fundamentalist at a revival. Tobago was giving me side eye. But I couldn't help myself. FINALLY I saw in print all the things I intuited, only in a much better organized, research based form by someone with a Ph.D. to establish her scholarship credentials.
Gendron not only tells it like it is about one of the last socially acceptable prejudices, although that in itself is MAJOR. She show the harm it does to the physical and emotional health, even longevity, of people who internalize it. She reveals its ugly intersectionality with sexism, racism, classism, homo and transphobia, and especially ableism. And she gives us advice on exorcising it in ourselves and our communities.
But she doesn't settle for the usual last chapter of hopeful tweaks. The woman is calling for no less than revolution: a total revamping of how we view the aging process. Currently we see it as all doom and gloom, a first gradual then accelerating process of unmitigated decline and decay. She sees it as "a slow and steady process of change that ultimately leads to us becoming our unique, individual selves." It's a process of growth as well as decline, gains as well of losses. She describes a whole new life stage she calls elderhood that can be one with purpose, meaning, engagement, and even joy.
So who should read this book? Just anyone who is aging which is basically synonymous with living. It's a must acquire for public libraries.
On a very purrrsonal note, since my stroke last semester I'm on the "wrong" side of age and ability. But fortunately approaching my most recent major life transition, my children becoming independent adults, I didn't just take a job and start nagging my kids to make me a grandmother. I held out for a life that contained engagement, meaning, and purpose apart from my children's reproductive abilities. Volunteering helped me define working with college age students as my best fit. That's why I'm in a masters program in higher education. Because of the stroke it will take an extra year and it currently requires some accommodations. But I'm managing and going for a job in student services. In the future if a paid job becomes too difficult I can still mentor undergrads as a volunteer and pursue other interests like this lovely blog. I'm rocking elderhood.
A great shout out goes out to Tracey Gendron for this landmark achievement in truth telling.