The
Old Women’s Project works to eradicate attitudes
towards old women that are patronizing, trivializing, contemptuous.
Why are these attitudes so prevalent, so unexamined in society?
Why do we find them even — let’s admit it —
among otherwise progressive people?
It’s true that corporations promote a consumer youth
culture, that the “health” and beauty industries
feed — and feed on — women’s anxiety that
men may discard us when we no longer look young. But there’s
something else.
In the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement gave us the tools
to address not only racism but also the demeaning attitudes
and structures of sexism, ableism, homophobia. We have barely
begun the work of eliminating any of these from society, but
we can at least recognize the most blatant evidences of them.
And yet: when we come up against degrading attitudes towards
old women, we don’t even know them when we see them.
(click to Real-Life
Examples of Ageist Comments)
Ageism is a women’s issue (click
to Why Is Ageism
an Old Women’s
Issue?) and so it was ignored by earlier
movements for social justice, movements historically shaped
by men’s concerns. After all, those progressive movements
never took on rape or childcare or domestic violence or pay
inequity for women.
In the ‘60s and ‘70s, a powerful movement of
women made women’s issues visible. But the activists
were mainly very young women, and they barely knew that old
women existed. It did not enter their heads to include old
women in their demands or in their challenges to traditional
attitudes.
What was the result?
Attitudes towards old women have been
frozen in time. The assumptions, stereotypes about us are
almost exactly the same as attitudes were towards younger
women in the 1950s. It’s revealing to read the
two paragraphs that follow and see that we can substitute
the phrase “old women” for “younger women
in the 50s” and the word “are” for “were:”
Younger (white, of course) women in the ‘50s were treated
with false respect and exaggerated solicitousness. They were
called “ladies.” Men offered them a seat on the
bus, opened car doors whether they appeared to need it or
not. At the same time, they were invisible at any gatherings
of importance, and nobody remarked on their absence. Their
opinions were not valued. They were always defined first by
their roles in family — John’s daughter, Jim’s
wife, Henry and Alice’s mother. (click
to Why Is Ageism
an Old Women’s
Issue? and read DO OLD WOMEN, LIKE OLD MEN, EXIST
OUTSIDE OF FAMILY ROLES?) They were seen as endearingly
childlike, and therefore good with children. They were naturally
dependent and submissive. They were not too sharp, a little
ditzy, certainly less rational — and sometimes that
was seen as “cute” and lovable. They were unreliable.
They were more emotional, more excitable in minor crises.
They were innocent about the world. They were not really sexual.
Of course, when convenient, they were idealized as naturally
loving and giving and self-sacrificing.
These attitudes were reflected in how younger women were
treated. Their opinions were ignored or patronized. Certain
token women were complimented for being different from other
women — “You think just like a man!” said with
wonder, was high praise (see also: “You aren’t
at all like my grandmother!” “I’d never
guess you were 70!” “Oh, you’re not old
— you’re still young at heart!”) Others were patronized:
“Oh, don’t bother your pretty head.” (see
also: “Watch your step, young lady!”) They were
bad sports if they didn’t laugh at jokes that degraded
them (example: “If rape is inevitable, lie back and
enjoy it”). Strict segregation by gender was seen as
entirely natural.
Ageism — these same attitudes and behaviors towards old women
— is still see as perfectly natural.
One striking difference: Although at any age women’s
bodies are never OK the way they are — wrong color, wrong
weight, breasts too small this year, too large next year —
old women are assaulted on a many-times-a-day basis with the
message that our physical beings are truly repulsive, the
very definition of who no woman would ever want to be.
WHY DON’T MORE OF US RESIST THE INSULTS,
THE INVISIBILITY?
In the 1950s, most women of all ages internalized these attitudes
about ourselves, assumed they were “natural,”
just as many people assumed that attitudes and behaviors towards
people of color or lesbians and gays were just “natural.”
Old women today have not always been old, and we have internalized
many of the stereotypes about ourselves. When we were young,
we were often contemptuous and patronizing of old women, if
we thought of them at all, and we saw segregation from them
as entirely natural. It’s a remarkable transition to
find ourselves, as we grow old, not only confronting the ageism
of others but becoming the person we ourselves used to hold
in contempt.
That transition may be so painful that we may deal with it
by holding onto our earlier attitudes towards old women, even
as we exempt ourselves and our friends as special, different,
smarter, still “young in spirit.” This is a dangerous
temptation for us as we grow old. Other people will collaborate:
“Oh, I can’t believe you’re 63/80/95!”
“When I’m with you, I never think of age!”
“You’re not at all like my grandmother!”
“You are just so cool!” These “compliments”,
which separate us from other old women, are actually ways
for the speaker to deal with his or her intense discomfort
about our age and their feeling that we must need this kind
of reassurance. It’s considered almost impolite if an
old woman tells you her age, not to immediately say, “Oh,
I’d never guess you were 63/80/95!”
So we’d better not take ageist compliments too personally
— and instead know they are ways people deal, at best with
their ignorance about who old women are, at worst with their
embarrassment about who we really are.
If we truly know our own value, we won’t allow other
old women to be denigrated by those comparisons. |