Posts Tagged ‘aging stereotypes’
What Matters and What Doesn’t As We Age: Reflections on Turning 81
Aging is a precious gift. Those of us who age did not die young. A year ago as I approached my 80th birthday, I promised myself that I would write an article titled “What Matters and What Doesn’t As We Age: Reflections on Turning 80.” I wanted to reflect on what does and doesn’t matter about our changing appearance, bodies, sexuality, capabilities, relationships, hopes, fears, and how we want to live our lives while we can still make these decisions.
I took notes and thought about it a lot, but I didn’t get it done, maybe because I was too busy living: traveling to Australia, giving presentations and media interviews, taking on new writing projects, and abruptly facing new health challenges. Now that I’m about to turn 81, with another year lived and pondered, it’s time for “What Matters and What Doesn’t As We Age: Reflections on Turning 81.”
Some Things I’m Experiencing:
I always pictured 80 as a last gasp before dying. Struggling to hang onto the threads of daily needs and functions, with little or no quality of life. I acknowledge that I’m the recipient of great privilege to say that my brain still works well — not as well as when I was younger and sharper, but well.
My memory never was great, and it’s worse now. I struggle for the right word more often. I have to create routines and tricks to keep track of my phone, my glasses, my coffee mug. Several times a day I stride purposely into a room only to realize I don’t remember what I came here to do. (Fortunately, the elusive intention comes back quickly — so far!) When leaving the house, I have to check that my shoes match!
I’m still writing professionally and giving speeches and interviews internationally. I’m at the top of my career. Retire? Ha! And yet I’ve peeled back my activities to do those that matter most to me, saying “no” more often than “yes” to new projects and invitations.
Health is one thing after another at my age. Some things resolve after a day. Some require medical interventions. Some I need to live with. I don’t care to get into the details, but let’s say I deal with medical issues every day. As Larry Kassman, retired emergency physician and my dear, wise brother, told me, “Our bodies aren’t made to last forever.”
Some Background that Matters
I nearly didn’t make it to age 36, when an automobile accident almost killed me. I suffered many critical injuries, including a smashed face that had to be reconstructed from photographs, a jaw broken in 6 places, a neck fracture, and – the part that couldn’t be fixed — a shattered heel and ankle.
“You’ll walk again,” doctors told me, “but maybe not normally or painlessly.”
“I don’t care about walking normally — I want to dance!” I replied.
A year later, I was teaching aerobic dance. Later I switched to teaching line dancing — which I still do, with great joy!
I’m privileged and grateful that my body works as well as it does. I know firsthand what it looks like and feels like to lose the ability to walk, to eat solid food, to be physically independent. I’m grateful that I’m functioning now, and I know that could change at any moment.
What Does Matter
- Staying connected to the people we love and who love us.
- Keeping love and sexual pleasure alive with intention.
- Keeping our brain active by reading and learning something new every day.
- Doing the activities we care about and letting go of those we don’t.
- Helping others with our knowledge, skills and kindness.
- Staying physically active to the extent we’re able.
- Sharing what we’re learning about aging so it’s less mysterious to others — and to ourselves!
What Doesn’t Matter
Looking older. Wrinkles. Goodness yes, every part of me has wrinkles. Even my wrinkles have wrinkles! I am fascinated by my forearm wrinkles when I hold up my arm to let gravity put on a show. If I turn my wrist slowly, I get a display of changing patterns and textures. Sorry I can’t include a video.
The skin of my thighs, still strong and muscular from more than half a century of dedicated daily exercise, is nonetheless so wrinkled that it seems to fold in on itself. But so what! These thighs still let me walk three miles a day and dance for two hours.
Here’s how I see my aging appearance: When I was young, my genes determined how I looked. Now my age and experience determine how I look. I am happy with that.
Framing My Goals
What will I do today to give myself a sense of accomplishment?
What will I do today to give myself joy and calm?
What will I do today to support my health and wellbeing?
My Advice (if you want advice) from turning 76 in 2019, still useful:
- Move as much as possible — your health depends on it.
- Adopt the “if not now, when?” mindset and live your bucket list now.
- If your relationship situation needs changing, change it.
- Put plans in place now that you might need later: financial, healthcare, will, advance directive.
- Take care of things now that you don’t want your loved ones to have to figure out when you’re unable.
- Spend time with friends — we don’t know how long they’ll be with us.
- Tell the people you love that you love them.
- Learn from the past, celebrate the present, be unafraid of the future.
My Messages to Myself and to You:
- Keep moving, keep learning, keep helping others.
- Some things we can control; others we can’t. Let’s put our efforts into what we can control, change, make better.
- We may be challenged as we age, but we don’t have to be diminished.
- Every year, every day, every step we take is a gift.
- Instead of the fruitless search to regain our youth, let’s celebrate our age and dance forward into the years ahead.
Your Turn:
What matters and what doesn’t as you age? I’d love to hear from you. Please comment, and include your age.
The “Ick Factor”: 2006 vs 2023 Sexuality and Ageism
graphic by Queer Majority
“It’s important to realize that the Ick Factor doesn’t just hurt seniors who might read Yahoo comments or overhear a joke or criticism. It hurts anyone of any age who believes that sex is just for the young. I’m here from the Land of Old to tell you that if you disparage older-age sexuality and close your mind to aging with zest and spice, this attitude hurts you. We’re not old, expendable excuses for human beings: we’re you in a few decades.”
Graphic by Queer Majority
I’m super proud of “Senior Sex: Yes, Old People Get It On, Too,” which I wrote for Queer Majority. I hope you’ll read and share it. I talk about the Ick Factor, the attitude of much of our society that the idea of older people enjoying sex is ludicrous, disgusting, icky. I’ve been fighting that attitude since I started doing this work in 2005. Every time I think that people have grown to accept older age sexuality — after all, if we’re lucky, we’ll all get old! — I’m blindsided by proof that the Ick Factor is alive and thriving. In this case, it was encountering horrible comments on a lovely, age-positive, sex-positive Yahoo News article. I hope you’ll be as appalled as I was when you read them.
I’d like to tell you about an earlier example of the Ick Factor.
Joan on ABC Nightline
It started splendidly on Dec. 1, 2006, when I was interviewed by ABC Nightline for a segment on senior sex and dating. The segment went beautifully. After it aired, my website traffic tripled; my blog traffic quadrupled. I was exhilarated! Hurray, senior sex is discussed on network TV and people want to know more!
Then on Dec. 5, 2006, two satellite radio shock jocks – I’d rather not give them the publicity of naming them – got wind of the topic and read ABC’s synopsis of the show aloud, punctuating their reading with “eeewwwww” and lewd comments. When they learned that I had a blog about, in their words, “old people having sex,” they were totally disgusted. They tracked down what they called the “old lady sex blog,” reading my blog posts aloud for 11 minutes, making even lewder and viler comments as they read. They made fun of a male reader who wrote me his personal story of trying to have sex with a new woman after divorce, prostate cancer, and Viagra, for example, saying about him, “Emasculated nothing!…”Stinks in bed!…C’mon old puddin’ prostate!”
More samples of their comments:
- “Disgusting whore of a granny!”
- “You want to have a sex life? Check yourself into a home and lie face down as the orderly makes his rounds in the morning.”
- “Wear a condom, I don’t want to get Alzheimer’s!”
- “Break her hip!”
Meanwhile, their fans, who ran a message board about the show, also located my blog and started visiting it and posting comments. I foolishly had not set up a moderation requirement at that time, and people were free to comment at will. I opened my computer that day to find 40+ ageist, racist, sexist, and otherwise just plain vile comments. For example, they wrote what they’d like to do to Granny – in what position and with what force – before pushing her down the stairs. I spent the afternoon finding and deleting the horror show.
What does this kind of behavior indicate about our society? Why is it that ageist stereotypes are just fine, old people are acceptable targets, and all of us past middle age are supposed to retire our sex drive and need for intimacy and just settle into… what? … just being “old”?
Many thanks to Queer Majority for helping me turn this attitude around and fight the Ick Factor in 2023. Will you join us? I invite your comments (moderated, just so you know).
Go ahead and call me a “little old lady”!
In January 2007, in the early years of this blog, I wrote a post titled, “Don’t call me a ‘little old lady'”!” Thirteen years later, my feelings have completely changed. Here’s what I wrote then:
I’m always surprised by how acceptable it is in our society to call older people disparaging names.
I was reading a newspaper article today about Barack Obama’s popularity in Illinois, which quoted Emil Jones Jr, president of the Illinois Senate, as saying, “Sitting across the table from me was a little old lady, said she was 86 years old,” who hoped she’d live long enough to vote for Obama for President.
I was startled by reading this mature woman described as “a little old lady,” and I didn’t like it. OK, I’m little (4′ 10″), 63 years old, and female — but “little old lady” belittles my maturity and experience and sounds like it would be uttered while patting me on the head. Didn’t the 86-year-old elder deserve a more dignified description? If she had been male, would she have been described by Mr. Jones as “an old geezer”?
…I know there’s no consensus about what to call older people without offending us! I like the term “senior,” although I know some dislike it. I like “elder” because it connotes wisdom and sounds respectful, even reverent — but I don’t feel old enough to deserve being called an elder. “Mature” is a nice adjective, though “mature adult” sounds stilted.
Here’s how I feel now: If a little old lady can make her living writing and speaking about senior sex — which I do — and keep her body strong by teaching line dancing, practicing Pilates, and walking miles a day — all of which I do — then go ahead and call me a “little old lady.”
I feel I can own, even enjoy, being called “little old lady” at this time of my life. I’m little (4’10”) and old (76), and my life is thrilling, so what’s the problem? I’ve also grown into the term “elder” (though not “elderly,” please).
When Gloria Steinem turned 40 and a reporter told her she didn’t look 40, she said, “This is what 40 looks like!” We continue to redefine what aging looks like, feels like, and acts like. Join me!
“Little old lady” at age 75
Q to you: How do you feel about being called “senior,” “old,” and so on? I invite you to comment. You’ll see 18 comments from the first post — let’s add to those. I know we won’t all agree, so please disagree politely.
Talk to Me about Senior Invisibility
I’m collecting examples of age prejudice for an upcoming talk. Comment here or email me with the subject header “Invisible.” I won’t use your name if I quote you. Please include your age.
Here are some examples from readers of my Naked at Our Age Facebook page (which I hope you’ll “like” if you haven’t already) to get you thinking:
I’m 64. A few years ago, I saw a male physician who began almost every sentence to me with “A woman of your age….” as if I was geriatric in every sense of the word and he needed to explain how I no longer had the physical abilities of a “young and healthy” woman. He was lecturing me on how I needed to change my expectations for my body and make allowances for those changes. The irony was his age, at least 50 himself.
I was using the free wi-fi at the Senior Center. Anything that has “sex” in it is blocked.
I’m 53, and I often feel invisible in social groups. I was in a mixed-age group once online where younger men were telling sex jokes. An older woman joined in, not flirting with them, just telling her own stories. When she mentioned being in her early sixties they flipped out, complained about feeling sick, and so forth. Honestly a lot of men my own age aren’t much better. Sometimes I look in the mirror to see if I’ve grown a second head with the way that they act. I just don’t feel comfortable flirting and being sexual the way I used to because of the negativity I keep seeing towards women over 50.
Try being a gentleman and over 70. If I compliment (all PC and non sexist) a woman under 50, I get the “dirty old man” look! Can’t a compliment just be that? My wife often will compliment another gal on her fashion, and it’s accepted with a smile. I wouldn’t dare try that!
I want to be invisible, in fact miles away, when someone at a family gathering starts talking about:
- their hemorrhoids
- his Viagra use
- how he pees in the middle of the night
- how, when he was a kid, he used a piece of liver to jack off
- asking pretty young women to sit close to him
- All of these fall under too much information (TMI). I don’t need word pictures of things I don’t want to see.
Your turn!