Ageism — the attitudes and practices that ignore,
patronize, insult or trivialize old women — affects
women of all colors, ethnicities, classes, sexualities, abilities.
It is a form of sexism — very old, very powerless, very
frail old men are seen as if
they were women, just as gay men are sometimes treated with
contempt as if they were women.
Ageism is a central issue for women, because as long as we
are erased in the last third of our lives, we will continue
to have perilous footing during the other two thirds.
IS AN OLD WOMAN WORTH LESS THAN AN OLD MAN?
The median income in the U.S. for men over 65 is $29,171.
The median income for women over 65 is $15,615. Globally,
70% of the world’s poor are women, and old women are
the poorest of the poor.
The Older Women’s League (to
visit their site, click > owl-national.org)
addresses the economics of women’s aging, as well as
other issues of social policy. The
Old Women’s Project works to change attitudes.
Economics affects attitudes — a rich old woman, a rich
Hispanic has at least a better chance of not being stigmatized
than a poor one — but attitudes are also essential to
economics. It’s much easier for me to hold you down
economically, to ignore your needs, if I’ve decided
that your group is lazy or stupid or somehow unworthy. It’s
especially easy if I’ve helped you to believe that about
yourself.
IS AN OLD MAN MORE GOOD-LOOKING THAN AN OLD WOMAN?
We all know the answer to that one. In a TV ad for Snickers
candy bars, a young man flirts with an old woman. A message
flashes on the screen: “Snickers Impairs Judgment.”
The ad would not work if the sexes were reversed.
To be an old woman is to be reminded many times a day —
by ads, product labels, workshops, books, magazine articles,
TV — that you are repulsive, that every other woman
will do anything in the world not to look like you, that looking
like you is her personal nightmare.
“There’s such a narrow aesthetic on TV when it
comes to women. With men, it’s all over the place. I
think I am probably better off the older I get.” (Bradley
Whitford, Josh on NBC’s “The West Wing”)
ARE OLD WOMEN MENTALLY INFERIOR TO OLD MEN?
You might think so. While the world is being run by old (white)
men and nobody finds that surprising, there seems agreement
that an old woman’s mind must be dull, predictable,
boring.
Example: A couple of years
ago, Katherine Graham died at 84. She was for many decades
the publisher of the Washington Post — after her husband
died — and had just published a much acclaimed and admired
autobiography. She knew people and had status. On public television
Michael Bechloss — an urbane liberal historian in his
50s — was remembering her: “Everybody’s
saying she died at 84. I did not think of her an an 84-year-old
woman. She wasn’t ossified.” (Ossify: to become
set in a rigidly conventional pattern, as of behavior, habits,
beliefs or the like — American Heritage Dictionary.)
Bechloss would never say: “I did not think of him as
black — he wasn’t only interested in rap music”
or “I did not think of her as a woman — she wasn’t
ditzy and temperamental.” He wouldn’t be invited
back to PBS. If Mike Wallace, also in his 80s, died, it would
never occur to Bechloss to say: “I did not think of
him as an 84-year-old man. He wasn’t ossified.”
Contempt for old women is so pervasive that most of us don’t
even notice it in the world — or in ourselves. It just
feels natural. It might help us to remember when contempt
for people of color, women, lesbians and gays, felt just as
natural.
DO OLD WOMEN, LIKE OLD MEN, EXIST OUTSIDE OF FAMILY ROLES?
Unless an old man is your own grandfather, he’s rarely
defined by others that way. An old woman almost always is
— even when she has no grandchildren. When Ann Landers,
possibly the most widely read columnist in the world, died,
the story on NBC began, “She was a great grandmother
who...” The headline to an LA Times story about the
veterans of China’s first all-women army unit reads,
“Red Army Grandmas Soldier On,” even though not
all the women are grandmothers and the story has nothing to
do with children or grandchildren. The valiant Dann sisters,
who in their 60s and 80s, have battled the U.S. government
over the rights to their Shoshone lands, are described in
the San Diego Union-Tribune as “anything but typical
grannies.” In a feminist newspaper, Sojourner, the governor
of Arizona was described as “a grandmotherly redhead,”
though nobody describes Dick Cheney or Ted Turner as “grandfatherly”
or finds it necessary to assure us that they are “anything
but typical grandpas.”
Doris Roberts is introduced at an Emmy Awards ceremony as
“a grandmother of three.” When will there be an
awards ceremony that introduces Tom Brokaw or Jay Leno as
grandfathers? (click to Why
are Ageist Attitiudes Still Acceptable?)
We are turned into grandmothers at the oddest times, which
allows people to diminish and patronize us. An 86-year-old
woman survives a terrible automobile accident — her
car is submerged for two days in a creek. On NBC’s “Today”
show, Al Roker exclaims, “And do you know what kind
of car she was driving? A Firebird!” and Katie Couric
responds, “Go, Grandma! Go!”
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