I challenge you to flip the script and believe that you are not OLD, instead you are experienced! Ageism is stereotyping and discrimination on the basis of a person’s age. Influenced by social movements that were challenging racism and sexism, Dr. Robert Butler coined the word “ageism” in 1968. It is the last socially sanctioned prejudice. With age comes experience; with youth comes experience. Both are valuable.
We experience ageism any time someone assumes that we’re “too old” for something—a task, a haircut, a relationship—instead of finding out who we are and what we’re capable of. Or “too young;” ageism cuts both ways, although in a youth-oriented society older people bear the brunt of it.
Like racism and sexism, discrimination on the basis of age serves a social and economic purpose: to legitimize and sustain inequalities between groups. It’s not about how we look. It’s about how people in power assign meaning to how we look.
Stereotyping—the assumption that all members of a group are the same—underlies ageism (as it does all “isms”). Stereotyping is always a mistake, but especially when it comes to age, because the older we get, the more different from one another we become.
No one is born prejudiced, but attitudes about age—as well as race and gender—start to form in early childhood. Over a lifetime they harden into a set of truths: “just the way it is.” Unless we challenge ageist stereotypes—Old people are incompetent. Wrinkles are ugly. It’s sad to be old— we feel shame and embarrassment instead of taking pride in the accomplishment of aging. That’s internalized ageism.
Unless we confront the ageism in and around us, we lay the foundation for our own irrelevance and marginalization. The critical starting point is to acknowledge our own prejudices, because change requires awareness.
Working together we can:
- Challenge ageism – in ourselves, social practices, policies, and institutions.
- Create new language and models that embrace the full life journey.
- Create new paradigms in society so that adults can participate fully consistent with their capabilities and ambitions at all stages of life.
- Celebrate the contributions of older adults.
- Create a more compassionate and interdependent society that supports the well-being of people of all ages.
- Inspire and help develop cross-generational communities where people of all ages enjoy the gifts and capacities they have to offer.
Read Applewhite’s book to learn more.
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