Nothing has changed in the intervening years. In under two minutes on the oprah.com website, I collected the following headlines and phrases:
For years, those two physicians have been regulars on Oprah's television show promoting youth as the gold standard of life, and Oprah herself is the poster girl for ageism; her advocacy of all things anti-aging translates directly into disrespect for elders.
Oprah's is a powerful voice for whatever she decides to publicize. Her television program, The Oprah Winfrey Show, is one of the most popular on television, regularly appearing in the No. 4 position of highest-rated syndicated shows. For better or worse, when Oprah speaks, millions listen. For elders, it is worse.
Geriatrician Bill Thomas, on the other hand, is the best thing to happen to elders in years. He created the Eden Alternative which, since 1991, has labored to improve the culture and environment of long-term care facilities worldwide. The Green House Project he developed is creating group homes for elders that radically change the institutional care of the past by emphasizing the dignity and emotional well-being of residents.
Dr. Thomas's extraordinary book, What Are Old People For? has been one of my top two reference bibles for this blog since it was published in 2004. (Oprah should recommend it to her book club.) And somehow in his busy schedule, he finds time to blog almost every day on elder issues at Changing Aging.
Now, Dr. Thomas has created an open-letter video to Oprah Winfrey titled Hello Oprah in which he makes a personal appeal to the talk-show host to give elders equal camera time with youth. Take a look: [2:45 minutes]
It is true, what Dr. Thomas says, that television producers think elder topics are a ratings killer and – having been a television producer myself for many years – I know they are slow to keep up with trends outside the boundaries of their target audience.
So the producers apparently haven't noticed that the population is rapidly aging, that the number of young people are decreasing in proportion to the number of elders. And that younger people spend more time with their computers, iPhones and MySpace than with television, while elders in large numbers stick with TV.
Oprah's television audience is primarily female and older than 55. According to Quantcast, her online readership at oprah.com is mainly older women too. Yet what Oprah's television show offers this audience is a demeaning, prejudicial view of aging, urging them repeatedly to do everything possible to deny their age.
Oprah's influence is vast. Her recommendations sell millions of books and her endorsement of candidate Barack Obama last year was as big an event as the candidacy itself. Imagine, then, if Oprah – who at 55 is on the cusp of elderhood herself - paid less attention to looking young forever and adopted a positive attitude toward aging and elders. The impact would be huge and go a long way toward changing the attitude of the culture at large. Oprah Winfrey is that powerful.
But first we need to persuade Oprah and every one of you reading this post can help Dr. Thomas get her attention. Here's how:
If enough of us do these things and keep up the pressure, Oprah's producers will notice. This is our chance to help make a difference on a big scale in how elders are perceived. And we can have no better advocate than Dr. Bill Thomas.
]]>You may think, because old women are past child-bearing age, that this is not an elder issue. You would be wrong because:
]]>You may think, because old women are past child-bearing age, that this is not an elder issue. You would be wrong because:
1. Women who are elders now fought hard 40 years ago for Roe v. Wade
2. We lived in the days before Roe v. Wade and know the horror
I’m not here today to discuss the moral question of abortion. Whatever one’s belief in that regard and whatever the law, some women will seek to end some pregnancies. They always have. In ancient Rome, they left unwanted newborns on dung heaps to die of exposure. Today, women who cannot afford or do not have access to medical abortions, leave infants on doorsteps throughout the world. Now, if abortion is further restricted in the U.S., the coat hanger solution will return.
I remember it well in my teens and twenties. Not to be too graphic about it, imagine sticking a wire coat hanger up your vagina and poking around with it through excruciating pain and bloodletting risking failure and a mangled embryo or fetus, infection and hemorrhage. Some died.
Most communities in those days had one or more local abortionists whose names were furtively passed around when a woman was seeking to end a pregnancy. These were the kitchen table abortions, performed by people untrained in medicine or surgery, resulting in the same mangled fetuses, infections and hemorrhaging. Some died.
The third option was to find a brave physician who, because he (there were not a lot of women doctors in any medical field in those days) believed in women’s right to choose, performed secret abortions at high fees and subject to prosecution and jail if discovered. Because this kind of abortion was not performed in a hospital, when there were complications, some women died.
Let me tell you a story:
When I was 18 years old in 1959, I became pregnant. I worked as an office clerk taking home about $250 per month which covered my expenses, if I was careful, and no more. The father made it abundantly clear that he wanted no part of a child nor, any longer, me.
Another factor young women today cannot appreciate when high schools commonly have day-care centers, is the stigma that was attached to becoming an unwed mother in the 1950s. So powerful was the shame attached to it that many pregnant girls and women were sent by their families to visit “Aunt Mary†which was, in reality, a home for unwed mothers in another state where they stayed for the duration of their pregnancy hoping that no one back home would learn the truth.
In actuality, everyone did know what was up and when the girl returned, she was ostracized by everyone, including her previous girlfriends, and her name was passed around among the young men in the community as a girl who was “easy.â€
For a number of reasons, a home for unwed mothers was not available to me. That left abortion. I knew I didn’t have the guts to attempt the coat hanger solution and I didn’t want to die on a stranger’s kitchen table, so I approached a friend whose husband was a doctor.
A few days later, her husband met me on a corner in the business section of the city and had me write down the telephone number of a man in Seattle he said was a physician who performed secret abortions in an office unassociated with his practice.
A week later, I arrived at the Seattle office at the appointed hour. It was dark, dingy and not very clean. The linoleum floor was cracked. The paint was peeling. There was dust in the corners. As I lay naked from the waist down on a cold, metal table, the doctor, using surgical instruments of dubious sterility, poked and scraped inside me. There was no anesthetic. I screamed. The nurse (well, she was dressed in white and wore a cap) slapped my face and told me to shut up.
I screamed again. She slapped again. She told me the doctor would not complete the abortion unless I was quiet. I screamed no more, but I shed every tear my body was capable of producing and bit through my lip.
In under an hour, wobbly-kneed, I made my way to the airport and returned home.
I was lucky. There was no infection, no hemorrhaging and within a week or two, I had fully recovered. Many women in those days did not.
Do we really want to return to those bad old days? In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg – the only woman on the Supreme Court - called the Court’s decision “alarming†and “irrational.†She also said it
“...cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."
Men and women bring different sensibilities and attitudes to many issues. I have always believed society benefits from including and weighing these gender differences in public debate. But abortion is where I get radical.
Until a man is capable of giving birth and/or every man is forced by law to both financially support and participate in the gestation and raising of every child he fathers, and such law is enforced without exception (a permanent ankle tracking device for those who run comes to mind) no man has a right to discuss abortion, let alone to vote on it.
No one can convince me that pregnancy, birth and the choice to abort or not are anything but women’s domain, exclusively.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.,
]]>Here are his answers:
]]>Here are his answers:
From Cop Car:
Dr. Kane, what is your experience with the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program that is federally mandated to be in place in each state of the US? Although the ombudsman's jurisdiction is only within state-licensed facilities, I should think that the program would be having a distinct impact.
KANE: The ombudsman program was reviewed by the Institute of Medicine a few years ago. Its performance varies across the country. In many areas it is a useful source for advocacy, but it tends to be reactive rather than proactive. It investigates complaints but it does not often pursue an agenda to change the system.
Does the statement, "...40 percent of all adults in this country who live to age sixty-five will enter a nursing home before they die" include those who use a nursing home in the short term - for a few weeks following surgery, for example?
KANE: You are quite correct. That quote does include short-term, post-hospital stays in nursing homes, which are usually covered by Medicare. They account for at least half of all nursing home admissions today, probably more, but they account for far fewer days of nursing home care.
Comment: The statement, “Because family, not the resident, is often the real customer...." reflects unethical behavior. If the resident is not considered to be the "real customer", their best interests are not being served.
KANE: There are at least two implications to this observation. 1] Many nursing homes and other agencies that serve older people see the familiy as a major target. For better or worse, families do play a big role in decision making. Even when older clients are competent to make choices, many rely on (or confer with) their families. 2] Many older people are not cognitively competent to serve as their own agents; in those cases family members may serve as their agents.
From Darlene
From a reader in her 80s who lives (I believe) in San Francisco:
My question for Dr. Kane is: "What are the ramifications financially of moving from one state to another after becoming disabled?" I am low income and cannot pay for more than 3 months care in a nursing home so would need public assistance.
KANE: The residency rules for Medicaid eligibility (and for financial eligibility) vary from state to state. You need to check on those for the state to which you plan to move.
From Mage who blogs at Day Tripper
My husband and I are taking care of an old friend. Four of us have formed a sort of caretaking committee to take care of our friend Duck. (He stutters and Dick became Duck one day.) One of these friends is ill. One travels. Another lives out of state. My husband has his power of attorney and medical power of attorney, so we are the ones who are there with him every day.
There are millions of elders who, like Duck, have only their Social Security and Medical. Single men or women, gay or straight, who find themselves with Alzheimer’s or dementia also find themselves helplessly unknowing. If Duck hadn't had friends to take him to the hospital when he had a thrombosis in his brain, anything could have happened that day.
And again when he fell later at home, we are all so grateful that he remembered how to use the speed dial on his phone. Again hospitalized, and this time placed in long-term nursing care, he can't be put on the street but is unwanted.
He's so like many others - dapper, dressed perfectly, charming, smiling, and - unable to remember anything that happened during his day. We care. We are there every day. We follow every suggestion and because they don't have a bed for him there, we have been on hold waiting for a final decision for two months.
There are so many like me writing blogs everywhere...
If there are any suggestions on how just friends can help an older friend when dementia or Alzheimer’s has taken their lives away, we would appreciate it. What preparations could be made in advance for the single person who has no family or few friends remaining?
Thanks.
KANE: Duck is very lucky to have friends like you. Indeed, you may be onto something very important, small communes. One answer to avoiding big institutions may be to develop small co-ops (at least among those with enough resources), which are willing to be or to hire caregivers as needed. Presumably such arrangement may also require living in close proximity to share the costs of caregiving.
Preparing for dementia is a task no one (married or single, straight or gay) does very well. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to recognize the symptoms early and take appropriate steps, if the person with dementia is not in denial (a common symptom). Obviously getting all your personal and financial papers in order is a first step. Someone you trust needs to know how to access your resources and has to have legal authority to do so. Ultimately that person may also become your agent for making medical and other decisions.
In general, we often say the best protection against long-term care is to have good friends and family, but that means starting early in life.
From Peggy
I have two questions. First, I too am single without children but still quite young. What can I do to prepare for these circumstances? What other suggestions do you have for single, childless people?
KANE: That is a good but difficult question. Creating enough financial resources to support you is important. The second step is creating a social support system; this is obviously much harder. There may be other people you know in your situation who are willing to form some sort of co-op to pool resources to look after each other. In the future you may want to consider continuing care retirement communities.
Second, what do you suggest as to ways we can influence policy? Is this primarily something we should be speaking to our state legislators or federal legislators about?
KANE: You bet. We have got to find ways to let legislators know that long-term care is important and that people care about it.
It Shouldn’t Be This Way: The Failure of Long-Term Care is available at all online booksellers. It is an honestly-told story of the final three years of Dr. Kane’s and his sister’s mother with some of the best practical information you can find. Particularly useful are the “Lessons†– a recap at the end of each chapter of the most important points you need to know.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.,
]]>Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
Lost in the brouhaha last week in the matter of Kathy Sierra, was an announcement that federal and state lawmakers are launching a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1972. What a blast from the past.
]]>Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
Lost in the brouhaha last week in the matter of Kathy Sierra, was an announcement that federal and state lawmakers are launching a new drive to pass the Equal Rights Amendment proposed in 1972. What a blast from the past.
Those of us who lobbied for passage in those days remember Eagle Forum leader, Phyllis Schlafly, charging that if it were added to the Constitution, women would be drafted into the military and be forced to use unisex rest rooms in public establishments.
So much for that argument: women choose to join the military nowadays and use unisex facilities without blinking an eye. So Ms. Schlafly’s new argument against the amendment is that its passage will force courts to approve same-sex marriage (horrors!) and deny Social Security benefits to housewives and widows.
Legal scholars say it is hard to predict how the amendment, now renamed the “Women’s Equality Amendment,†would be interpreted by the courts, although some say it would make it possible for women to sue for higher pay and other benefits.
Others argue against passage on the grounds of Constitutional redundancy – that women are already protected from discrimination by the 14th Amendment which refers to “all persons.â€
The amendment has 194 co-sponsors in the House and ten in the Senate, and no longer contains a deadline for ratification. Rep. Lindsley Smith (D – Ark) has vowed to bring the Amendment for a vote when the next legislature convenes in 2009, which allows a lot of a time for public discussion.
A two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress are required to send the Amendment to the states for ratification. Three-quarters of the states (38) are required for passage.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.,
]]>It was on Monday that I first learned of the Kathy Sierra issue from a listserv at BlogHer. That evening there were few opinions, just links to Kathy’s post wherein she explains her reasons for canceling a speaking engagement and dropping out of the blogosphere:
“I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs...â€
There have since been what must be a millions of words from bloggers with, I have no doubt, at least an equal amount in the works (including this post). Most I have read are in support of Kathy, rightly deploring the atmosphere of fear, hate and misogyny the threats create. But before the commentary buries the original issue, I’d like to explain my initial reaction to Kathy’s post.
]]>It was on Monday that I first learned of the Kathy Sierra issue from a listserv at BlogHer. That evening there were few opinions, just links to Kathy’s post wherein she explains her reasons for canceling a speaking engagement and dropping out of the blogosphere:
“I've been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that's not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs...â€
There have since been what must be a millions of words from bloggers with, I have no doubt, at least an equal amount in the works (including this post). Most I have read are in support of Kathy, rightly deploring the atmosphere of fear, hate and misogyny the threats create. But before the commentary buries the original issue, I’d like to explain my initial reaction to Kathy’s post.
Dotted throughout her post are these:
[continuing from the clip above] “…blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you've probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke aka Rageboy).â€
“People linked to by A-listers like Doc Searls, a co-author of Chris Locke.â€
“At about the same time, a group of bloggers including Listics’ Frank Paynter, prominent marketing blogger Jeneane Sessum, and Raving Lunacy Allen Herrel (aka Head Lemur) began participating on a (recently pulled) blog called meankids.org.â€
At first, it was words, writes Kathy. Then it was images, one involving a photo of Kathy with a noose next to her head. I happened to have visited meankids.org in time to see the Photoshopped image Kathy describes. It was, I thought – well, “meanâ€. And if not done by a “kidâ€, then by someone whose development was arrested at about age 15. There are plenty of those in the world. I moved on without another thought.
“I don't know which participant actually made the picture,†Kathy continues. “It may have been Joey, or Chris Locke, or perhaps Allen Herrel... the same Herrel (or someone pretending to be Herrel).†[Joey, says Kathy, left a comment below the image: "the only thing Kathy has to offer me is that noose in her neck size."]
Nasty stuff no one wants to read about themselves or anyone else.
But let’s take a closer look at Kathy’s post than many who support her apparently have: I can’t remember when I have read, aside from ignorant political wingnuts, so many aspersions cast, acts implied and innuendo as in Kathy’s post.
As far as can be determined from the few facts she relates, the attacks on Kathy were made anonymously. However, she has tried and convicted Chris Locke, Jeneane Sessum, Allen Herrel, Frank Paynter and, to a lesser extent, Doc Searls without a shred of proof that they were involved. As Chris notes in his rebuttal post,
“I think her response, as it pertains to anything I personally wrote, was unjustified - but highly effective - character assassination. As a result, I'm sure I'll be explaining for years to come that I'm not really an ax murderer and child molester. Nice work.â€
Undoubtedly so of Doc, Jeneane, Allen and Frank too. Many people do not read as carefully as they should and will not catch Kathy’s well-crafted, but false indictments especially when juxtaposed with the gross attacks she relates. In fact, it has been widely noted now that Jeneane was in the hospital during the postings Kathy refers to, but as of this moment, Kathy has not absolved her.
Although I have run across Kathy Sierra’s name here and there, I had never read her blog before this post and have not ventured into her archives now. Perhaps she is an otherwise fair and accurate blogger who lost her sense of balance due to these vicious verbal and pictorial attacks. However, no less vicious are her insinuations against these five people.
[Full Disclosure: Although I do not know Allen Herrel or his blog, I consider Frank, with whom I spent a spectacularly interesting afternoon a couple of years ago, and Jeneane to be blog friends. I had been reading Doc and Chris for years before I started blogging and continue to read all four for their intelligence, wit and unique points of view.]
As it turns out, Frank owns the URL meankids.org and some of the others contributed to the site. It began as satire and was gradually taken over by heinous trolls. That does not make Frank or the others responsible and if you think so, consider the trash comments you have had to remove from your own blogs. It is why some people moderate comments. Others of us take our chances; the delete button is a marvelous invention.
As soon as Frank was made aware of the attacks on Kathy, he killed the site. He also issued an apology on his blog, listics, to the extent of his involvement as site owner. I don’t believe that was necessary, but Frank is one of the all time good guys in the blogosphere.
In the ensuing commentary from many corners of the blogosphere, some have suggested that Kathy over-reacted to the attacks and although none of us can judge others’ levels of psychological trauma, I tend to agree.
Shocking as words and images can be, they are, after all, words. As Chris Pirillo noted in his post,
“This isn’t new, folks - far from it. Kathy is just one out of (certainly) millions of people who suffer at the minds of psychotics. And without trying to minimize this particular situation, I’ve gotta tell you - this sounds like high school to me. Literally. Granted, I’ve had just as many death threats ONLINE - but they didn’t just start last week…â€
Indeed, not last week. Personally, I save my panic for when gunshots are fired, repeatedly over a week or more, at the building where I was in the middle of producing a live, all-night radio talk show, as happened a long time ago. Then, the Hell’s Angels lent support by escorting – front and back – my car when I traveled to and from home.
Or when, during the letter bomb scares of the 1970s, a viewer of the network television show on which I worked wrote to warn me that his next letter would be a bomb intended to kill me. (I had rejected him for an appearance on the program.)
Or, in the days when phone calls could not be easily traced, a man telephoned every day to tell me what I had been wearing on my way home a few minutes earlier, that my red bra had been peaking out of my blouse in the restaurant where I’d had lunch the day before, that I’d been ten minutes late to the work that day, etc.
In the second case, the police bomb squad checked the show’s mail every morning for several weeks. In the third, I took sane precautions when I left home and hung up the phone, on the advice of the police, as soon as I realized it was the stalker. The calls stopped after about two weeks.
More recently, I’ve dispatched nasty blog trolls who have personally attacked me by deleting their comments and never responding. They get bored and leave fairly quickly.
Without dismissing Kathy’s anxiety, this stuff happens every day. Should we stop it when we can? Of course. If laws are broken, as Kathy believes in this case, the police should be contacted as she says she has done.
But never, ever may fear and anger be used to attack innocent others. Kathy owes Chris, Jeneane, Allen, Frank and Doc a bold, ALL CAPS apology blasted to the entire web to counter the damage she has done with her reprehensible insinuations. Her tepid acceptance of Frank’s apology is an not enough.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.,
]]>Today, for a variety of reasons, home care is frequently impossible, or impractical, so you will need some form of professional long-term care. And it will not be easy:
]]>“[Long-term care] is the country’s best-kept embarrassing secret. Almost every adult in this country will either enter a nursing home or have to deal with a parent or other relative who does. Few people, however…are prepared to deal with a system that is seriously flawed.â€
Today, for a variety of reasons, home care is frequently impossible, or impractical, so you will need some form of professional long-term care. And it will not be easy:
“[Long-term care] is the country’s best-kept embarrassing secret. Almost every adult in this country will either enter a nursing home or have to deal with a parent or other relative who does. Few people, however…are prepared to deal with a system that is seriously flawed.â€
Those are the opening words of a book by brother and sister, Robert L. Kane, M.D. and Joan C. West - It Shouldn’t Be This Way: The Failure of Long-Term Care - which tells the story of their quest for appropriate, quality care for their mother over the final three years of her life following a stroke.
I met Dr. Kane recently in St. Paul where I shared a panel with him during a taping of a PBS series titled, Life (Part 2). He holds an endowed chair in long-term care and aging at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. His sister is an educator, currently an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, New York.
Their story is harrowing, particularly in choosing appropriate facilities as their mother’s health declined. Assisted-living has as many definitions (and regulations) as there are states, and there is no mechanism, even in the age of the internet, to properly assess the suitability of facilities, especially as they are operated by chains of for-profit corporations:
“Most assisted living facilities have a sales office. Although the sales people were friendly enough, we knew to approach them with the same caution one employs in a used-car lot. They have a product to sell. No assurances are too great, no claims too exaggerated.
“Because family, not the resident, is often the real customer, many assisted-living facilities invest heavily in the look and feel of the common areas. This is what people see when they come in. Little of it is ever used by the residents, however. For them the salient aspects are rooms where they live, the food, and the staff.â€
Following each chapter, Kane and West provide an excellent checklist of important points to remember, “Lessons,†which in the case of choosing an assisted-living facility include:
When your relative can no longer live at all on his or her own, a nursing home is the next step. They are an entirely different animal from assisted-living facilities with fixed rules and regulations, but can still vary widely in quality. Some of Kane’s and West’s “Lessons†from that chapter:
This and the rest of the knowledge and advice in this book are hard won. Even Ms. West and her brother, a respected gerontologist with a worldwide reputation in his field whose mother had substantial financial resources often felt nearly defeated by the long-term care system in the United States. Their experience can help you navigate the labyrinths.
While recounting their mother’s story, Kane and West cover rehabilitation facilities, assisted living, dementia units, nursing homes, doctors and hospitals and informal (that’s you) care. They are clear-eyed, informative, compassionate and angry about the state of long-term care.
“No organized voice speaks for long-term care consumers and their families. Most nonprofit advocacy groups are organized around a specific disease…The time has come to create a national organization to build a groundswell of concern and attention for long-term care,†they write.
Good long-term care makes a big difference in the lives of those who need it and their families. Good care does not happen by accident. It must be actively pursued and it can, say the authors, be done:
“Universal long-term care is feasible. Other countries have developed universal programs that cover long-term care. Some use public monies; others use a combination of public and private money.â€
I read a lot of books on various aspects of aging. Few are worth the effort due to too many feel-good platitudes and not much new thinking or information. It Shouldn't Be This Way is extraordinarily worthwhile, filled with hard facts, compassion, understanding, instruction and good ideas we will all need one day for as the writers report:
“…40 percent of all adults in this country who live to age sixty-five will enter a nursing home before they die. Even more will use some other form of long-term care. Few people, however…are prepared to deal with a system that is seriously flawed.â€
When one of the most respected gerontologists in the world – someone who can pull rank to speak directly with physicians and directors at long-term care facilities – cannot get through the bureaucratic maze without superhuman effort, what will the rest of us encounter? Dr. Kane’s and Ms. West’s guidelines are an indispensable guide.
[EDITORIAL NOTE: Dr. Kane has graciously agreed to answer any questions readers may have about long-term care. Please leave them in the comments below. The cutoff date is 31 March and I will post a follow-story with Dr. Kane’s answers shortly thereafter. Please keep in mind that he cannot comment on specific health conditions or facilities.]
UPDATE: Questions are now closed.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older .
]]>Inevitably, the number on the bathroom scale would creep up (I like to cook and I’m good at it). The panic point was 125 at which time I redoubled my exercise efforts, filled the refrigerator with gallons of V8 juice and pared off the excess. It’s not fun to lose weight. I know; I’ve done it dozens of times. But it’s not hard either.
Well, it’s not hard until menopause after which, weight loss requires super-human effort. It is exhausting and, I suspect for many in addition to me, a (non)losing battle. So one day about ten years ago, I wondered what would happen if I stopped thinking about my body size and ate anything I wanted.
]]>Inevitably, the number on the bathroom scale would creep up (I like to cook and I’m good at it). The panic point was 125 at which time I redoubled my exercise efforts, filled the refrigerator with gallons of V8 juice and pared off the excess. It’s not fun to lose weight. I know; I’ve done it dozens of times. But it’s not hard either.
Well, it’s not hard until menopause after which, weight loss requires super-human effort. It is exhausting and, I suspect for many in addition to me, a (non)losing battle. So one day about ten years ago, I wondered what would happen if I stopped thinking about my body size and ate anything I wanted.
Anyone could have predicted it. Tubby would not be an unreasonable description of my new shape. My body settled there and although I ditched the bathroom scale when I stopped counting calories, I can tell from how clothes fit that I don’t gain or lose anymore.
And with that, I have arrived at the point of this post: elder fashion – the ultimate oxymoron and the forgotten woman.
Everything above size 12, even 10, comes with too many flounces, too much trim, an excess of pleats and an abundance of cheap, machine embroidery. Colors are indistinct, ranging in the vicinity of peachy pink and greenish blue, while fabrics lean toward oily-feeling polyester. And style? It is obvious that anyone who designs for elder women flunked out of FIT.
Even shops that cater to hefty women ignore those of us in the upper age groups. The grandmother of “plus sizesâ€, Lane Bryant, and the more modern shops too have way too many waistlines and belts - not a smart move now that my waistline matches my hips. The spring and summer tops now on display feature see-through fabrics which, although they follow the nude trend for youth in the past few years, are unseemly for a 65-year-old or, at least, this one.
Old standbys from my working days like Nordstrom, Saks, Bloomingdales, etc. carry some clothing for larger women. But they are upsized from styles originally designed in size 0 for those six-foot, emaciated models, and anyone who thinks fashion design knocked off from those to sizes 12 and above are workable doesn’t understand the principles of proportion.
It took a long while of studying it to figure out the problem of older women’s clothing which is this: designers believe older women who have put on weight natural for their ages are the same as younger “plus-size†women. We are not. Our bodies are shaped differently; the weight is distributed differently and what hangs well on a 30-year-old of the same height and weight as I am does not fit me.
No designers are creating clothes for women my age. There is nothing available for older bodies that is smart, stylish and fits well. I know now what would fit well and look good, but not how to create it; it’s not my line of work.
The baby boomers coming up behind my generation will add about 38 million women to the elder population who need more attractive clothing that fits our bodies. Any fashion designer who wants to make a few million, give me a call. You can have my research for free.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.
]]>Among my various sins this time was including men in an important ageist issue. (“There are always women who need to come to the defense of men.â€) Another transgression, apparently, is not giving elderblogging a feminist spin. The writer says she is feeling discomfort with elderblogging (although she is referencing my blog specifically) because â€it's [sic] primary mode is reflection on the past, being ‘nice’ in traditional ways, and not raising the hard questions.â€
]]>Among my various sins this time was including men in an important ageist issue. (“There are always women who need to come to the defense of men.â€) Another transgression, apparently, is not giving elderblogging a feminist spin. The writer says she is feeling discomfort with elderblogging (although she is referencing my blog specifically) because â€it's [sic] primary mode is reflection on the past, being ‘nice’ in traditional ways, and not raising the hard questions.â€
Aside from the absurdity of excluding men from the issue of age discrimination in the workplace, the word elderblogging (coined by BlogHer's own Elisa Camahort) describes the age of certain bloggers and nothing else. There is no political agenda, feminist or otherwise, except as individual elderbloggers care to apply one – or not.
Although anyone who has known me for any length of time would put “nice†at the bottom of any list of adjectives describing me, despite the fact that reflection on one’s life is a critical task of aging and hard questions are regularly raised on my blog – I’m not here to defend myself.
I’m here instead to remark on the unreasonable requirements some feminists place on other women. (To be clear, I’ve come to think of all women as feminists. I mean, could there possibly be any who still believe women are not entitled to all the rights and privileges of men?)
At the final, general session of the first BlogHer conference in the summer of 2005, I stood up to say that although I had avoided “all girl†clubs most of my life, the 300 smart, accomplished, friendly, witty women attendees had changed my mind. I was feeling unexpectedly warmed, enlightened and engaged by new friends and acquaintances – so much so that saying it in front of everyone in a big room had made me a bit weepy.
Yes, there had been the exception that morning of a highly-visible, well-known executive who looked at me like I was a worm and walked off while I was telling her how much value and pleasure I get from her company’s software. And I took some minor licks a few days later from two bloggers who made mirth of my weepiness. But it wasn’t enough to sour me on my newly-felt sisterhood. Men don’t have a hammerlock on bad behavior, and some women are impolite and unkind to other women.
Which is my point about some feminists. Too frequently, women argue about the minutiae of their personal versions of feminism, branding others as insufficiently committed. Too frequently, women, as my blog reader did in her email, ascribe motives and experiences to other women about whose lives they have no knowledge. And it is an unfortunate trait more common to women than men, in my experience, that disagreements are often fatal to friendship.
My email correspondent is not the first feminist I’ve met through blogging with this point of view. They see every issue through a feminist prism and have judged me deficient for not making elderblogging more feminist. I, on the other hand, while aligned with the feminist cause, am concerned on my blog with aging which is, by natural law, gender neutral.
No wonder so many young women reject the feminist label when old women are carrying on cat fights about who is the better feminist. With apologies to Bill Maher, here are my old New Rules:
Do we really need to say these things this late in the game? Please set me straight if I am wrong, but these rules are so redolent of my grammar and high school days that perhaps they are an issue only with women my age (I’m 65). Maybe younger women have overcome this adolescent cattiness. If so, how disappointing that some of my generation haven’t.
But we sure did kick ass with second wave feminism in the 1960s and ‘70s. All of us. We’ve come a long way, baby, as those cigarette commercials once said, and made it possible for baby boomers, gen-Xers, gen-Yers, and millennials coming up behind us to be the doctors, lawyers and corporate chiefs that were impossible for women to aspire to when I was making career choices.
If you “young ‘uns†can get past our elder bickering, it’s your turn now to finish the job of knocking down the remaining barriers to equality with men. I may not burn my bra this time around, but I’ll help in any other way I can – just not on my blog about aging.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.
]]>]]>“Women in the more temperate Meditteranean countries – France, Spain and Italy – tend to live longer than those in colder northern countries. The trends are also reflected within France itself: Women from southern areas where olive oil and duck fat are more prevalent in diets have longer life spans than those from northern areas, where diets include more butter, beef and pork, according to demographers.â€
“Women in the more temperate Meditteranean countries – France, Spain and Italy – tend to live longer than those in colder northern countries. The trends are also reflected within France itself: Women from southern areas where olive oil and duck fat are more prevalent in diets have longer life spans than those from northern areas, where diets include more butter, beef and pork, according to demographers.â€
Whatever food is claimed as a longevity factor, however, the real secret (as any nutritionist will tell us), is in how much or little we eat. One hundred-year-old Helene Vailard
“…says there is no contradiction in drinking good wine, eating a bit of goose liver and remaining healthy. It’s all a matter of moderation.
“’I didn’t do anything in excess in my life,’ says Vialard…’I don’t have a sweet tooth…I like fruit, I don’t like cream. I don’t like greasy food; I don’t cook with a lot of oil, even if it’s olive oil.’â€
Ms. Vailard’s neighbors in the region report a similar eating style:
“Aliette Picuira, 82, says, 'I eat a bowl of soup every night…At the end of the soup, I put in three big spoons of wine and drink it.'â€
“83-year-old Raymonde Labat prefers champagne with her meals and likes to eat out.
“’I know every restaurant in the region,’ she said. ‘I go to restaurants every weekend, but I only eat a little. I go not so much to eat, but to go out and be with friends.’ She paused and leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I want to give you the secret to longevity: Laugh and have fun and make jokes.’â€
Wine, foie gras and jokes? Even in moderation, it sounds like a plan.
]]>Ms. Friedan was a giant influence in my life. Although I never met her, it is not going too far to say that she changed the direction of my life. When I finished high school, few “girls†went to college and the only jobs reasonably open to us were secretary, waitress, teacher and nurse. Fortunately Betty came along when I was in my twenties to teach me and every other woman that we could aim for something more or different.
]]>Ms. Friedan was a giant influence in my life. Although I never met her, it is not going too far to say that she changed the direction of my life. When I finished high school, few “girls†went to college and the only jobs reasonably open to us were secretary, waitress, teacher and nurse. Fortunately Betty came along when I was in my twenties to teach me and every other woman that we could aim for something more or different. I did and went on to a fascinating career in media which, although I am “officially†retired according to the Social Security Administration, continues in a new manner today.
These days, I write about getting old and one of the first resources I turned to ten years ago when I first began researching aging was The Fountain of Age, written by Betty Friedan who put as much thought, hard work and energy into exploring the problem of ageism (which hardly anyone acknowledged when her book was published in 1993), as she did to the feminist argument in the 1960s.
The book cannot be summarized in a short, blog post. As with The Feminine Mystique, Friedan asked hard questions of the aging establishment and challenged their assumptions at every turn. Here are some excerpts from the Preface in which Ms. Friedan details her journey through the realities, myths and misunderstandings of aging in America she traveled while writing The Fountain of Age:
“Why were many women and men frantically denying, avoiding, refusing to admit their age, enduring deep depression at the prospect, while other crossed the age divide and found beyond it previously denied aspects of themselves?â€
“Now, at the aging conferences, I heard myself asking how people in their thirties and forties could identify the crucial questions and ethical issues for people over sixty-five. ‘Them.’ Wasn’t it like having a bunch of men define the problems of women?â€
“But when I asked [feminist theologians] if there was a seminar on spiritual development in the late stages of life, they studied the catalogue and found ‘Funeral Services’ and ‘Concepts of the Afterlife.’â€
“What were the motives that made all these ‘experts’ want to keep the aging out of the places where the productive activities of society go on? Out of the activities that earn money and status? Well, if you were intent on making a successful professional career or building a lucrative business out of nursing homes, geriatric care, or other ‘help’ for the aging, the more helpless the better.â€
“Was feminine solidarity an adequate answer to the rage we felt about men our age to whom we had become sexually invisible? If we didn’t want to be defined solely as sex objects, that didn’t mean we wanted permanently to eliminate the pleasures of being one.â€
“I was, in any event, feeling better about myself as a woman, more at ease about growing older. In fact, I was taking new delight and comfort in my new an old men friends, without wanting or expecting the friendship to end in bed, much less marriage.â€
“The pursuit of youth was blinding us to the possibilities of age. Could denial of our own aging block further growth, foreclose the emergence of a new life otherwise open to us?â€
“I have discovered that there is a crucial different between society’s image of old people and ‘us’ as we know and feel ourselves to be. There are truly fearful realities reflected – and imposed – by that image. To break through that image, we must first understand why, how and by whom it is perpetuated. We must also glimpse some new possibilities and new directions, both as individuals and as a society, that belie that image.â€
Ms. Friedan found some of the answers she was seeking, which she reports in her book. However, with a few stunningly good and interesting exceptions, not much has changed in our culture’s attitude toward aging and old people since Ms. Friedan’s book was published nearly 15 years ago.
There is a lot of hard work still to be done to raise aging issues to the level of public consciousness that women’s issues have reached in the past forty years. This book is an excellent starting point and contribution to the cause.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.
]]>With careers done or on the wane, with children raised, elders have more time to dig into the background and details of political, cultural and social issues, and for participation than when they were younger. We have more years of experience at the consequences of various political acts. And sometimes, maybe, we have a bit more experience and perspective to contribute to the public discourse.
]]>With careers done or on the wane, with children raised, elders have more time to dig into the background and details of political, cultural and social issues, and for participation than when they were younger. We have more years of experience at the consequences of various political acts. And sometimes, maybe, we have a bit more experience and perspective to contribute to the public discourse.
Over the past weekend, presidential contender, Senator Hillary Clinton had this to say, according to Reuters, to her Iowa audience:
"It's about time, if not past time, we had a woman president…â€
I disagree. I think it’s about time we had a president of any gender who respects the oath of office, upholds the Constitution, runs an open, not secretive, government and sees to the welfare of all the citizenry, not just the wealthy elite.
Hardly anyone in the United States would vote, these days, against a candidate just because she is a woman. Type “woman president†into Google and you get more than 28 million returns. Among them, every news organization has done a poll about whether the U.S. is “ready for a woman president†and all show 90 percent or more of the population willing to vote for a woman.
So the only question should be what it always ought to be: who is the best-qualified person to lead our country for the next four years?
Women are as qualified – or not – as men. Women are also as beholden to corporate money interests as men. One of the hardest issues regarding Senator Clinton’s bid for the Democratic nomination is the rumor flying around the media that she is capable of raising half a billion dollars in campaign donations.
That is an obscene amount of money that can buy an election with ease. We would be better off with the British system – six weeks of campaigning paid for by the government, but real election reform will not happen here as long it is the politicians themselves who must vote on the issue.
Since we are stuck with the system we have, the question (among many others) in regard to Senator Clinton is how can any politician who owes that much allegiance to corporate backers for that much money possibly govern with the common good of the citizens of the country in mind?
Yes, other candidates, even if they raise a little less money, will owe just as much of their souls to corporate backers as Senator Clinton. And that is my point. Before she is a woman, Senator Clinton is a politician and deserves no less scrutiny, before we vote, than a male candidate. And no extra credit for being a woman.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.,
]]>This myth is so deeply entrenched in the culture that employers who discriminate against older workers frequently draq it out as an excuse for choosing youth over experience in hiring.
But it’s just not so. Here are a couple of examples of how such myths turn up in everyday life:
]]>This myth is so deeply entrenched in the culture that employers who discriminate against older workers frequently draq it out as an excuse for choosing youth over experience in hiring.
But it’s just not so. Here are a couple of examples of how such myths turn up in everyday life:
The kid at the store where I regularly purchased my coffee in New York City tried one day to get me to buy a new blend that was on sale. At one point in the discussion, he said, "oh, try something new for a change." I did not.
As much as he was knowledgeable about coffee, what the 20-something kid did not consider and can’t possibly understand yet is that in 50-odd years of drinking coffee, I've tried dozens of blends. I’ve even invented a few. And it took 20 years of a lot of bad coffee to find what I like, so I’m sticking with it.
I’m not being inflexible; I’m being discriminating. I have better things to do with the time I have left on earth than fix something that isn’t broken.
A friend who is closer to my age than the coffee store kid, tried once to convince me to stay at a party after 10:30PM, because he thought I'd be missing out on a lot of fun by leaving.
I wake early and those quiet morning hours (with my perfectly blended coffee, of course) before the world gets moving are precious to me. No phone calls, few emails, no horns blaring in the street – just the birds, the cat and me. It is one of the great, small pleasures in my life and sets the tone for my day.
Besides, I learned long ago that nothing much happens past 10:30 or 11PM at a party other than people - even those I am fond of and me too - get drunker and dumber.
As elders, we have had decades of making poor choices to arrive at what are the best and most satisfying for us. New is not always better and if it is, older folks have had more years than younger ones yet have to make that judgment.
We change when necessary and useful, witness the thousands of elderbloggers, many of whom retired from the workplace before computers entered their businesses and therefore, they had to first teach themselves computers before blogging. It is another myth that elders cannot keep up with technology, but that's a story for another day.
Our consumer economy exhorts us to buy, buy, buy. The most effective sales word marketers can put on a package is “new,†and it is the young who are most frequently sucked in by this usually more expensive and sometimes inferior version. If it’s new, they buy it. Elders know to look behind the glitz and glitter of the advertising for quality and need.
In decisions large and small, old people make fewer mistakes. We do change – after we have weighed the issue and come to a conclusion based on knowledge and experience - and it is a mild form of ageism to believe otherwise of elders.
In thinking this over now, it appears to me that it may be the younger ones who are inflexible stick-in-the-muds, willing to spend time and money chasing after the momentarily trendy. But give them time; they will learn to be discriminating too - the hard way, just as elders have.
]]>Back in the olden days when I was growing up, people wrote letters – thoughts laid down on paper with pen and ink – and mailed them to faraway friends and loved ones. Depending on how far away, letters could take days or sometimes weeks to reach their destination and the arrival of a long-awaited postal message was cause for excitement.
Letters were read and re-read and saved in pretty boxes, sometimes a collection of them tied with ribbon. When I was a child and a young woman, long distance telephone calls were too expensive except for celebrations and emergencies. Instead, we wrote letters, passing on personal news and commenting on whatever might be affecting our lives, our minds, our choices at that moment.
]]>Back in the olden days when I was growing up, people wrote letters – thoughts laid down on paper with pen and ink – and mailed them to faraway friends and loved ones. Depending on how far away, letters could take days or sometimes weeks to reach their destination and the arrival of a long-awaited postal message was cause for excitement.
Letters were read and re-read and saved in pretty boxes, sometimes a collection of them tied with ribbon. When I was a child and a young woman, long distance telephone calls were too expensive except for celebrations and emergencies. Instead, we wrote letters, passing on personal news and commenting on whatever might be affecting our lives, our minds, our choices at that moment.
When I was about ten years old – five or six years after my father returned from fighting in World War II – I woke late one night to the low murmur of voices in the living room. I crept quietly to the top of the stairs where I discovered in the living room below my parents sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. Between them was with a cardboard box filled with letters – V-mail - which I recognized from the war when my father was away for three years.
Mom and Dad were reading letters aloud to one another, talking about what was written, sometimes hugging or kissing. And when they were finished with each letter, they tossed it in the fire.
My great Aunt Edith and I exchanged weekly letters for 25 years. She was my favorite, most trusted older relative and I poured my heart out to her about every good and bad thing that happened to me from age 15.
Visiting her one time when I was about 40, she announced that I was “old enough now for these†as she handed me a box containing every letter I’d written her through all those years – essentially my own biography in my own hand and the most precious gift she ever gave me. (It is so easy to electronically keep everything we write these days that much younger readers may not realize the thrill of such a gift in times prior to personal computers.)
I was reminded of these events while reading Anna Quindlen’s column in Newsweek last week. She was holding forth on the new movie, Freedom Writers and on the lost art of writing:
“…as the letter fell out of favor and education became professionalized, with its goal less the expansion of the mind than the acquisition of a job, writing began to be seen largely as the purview of writers…And in the age of the telephone most communication became evanescent, gone into thin air no matter how important or heartfelt.â€
To her credit, Ms. Quindlen recognizes a renewal of writing that has been brought about through technology although she appears to be unaware that it more often takes better form than the “…many [emails] r 2 cursory 4 u†she quotes.
Online writing, and blogging in particular, is so much more than “txt msg†shorthand. In fact, in blogging if you can’t or won’t spell correctly, if your blog is filled with typos, if your thinking (and therefore your writing) is sloppy and unclear, your blog will be ignored – at least, that appears to be so among elderbloggers who grew up in the days of pen-and-ink writing.
Quindlen beautifully captures the essence of letter-writing in the olden days:
“The details of housekeeping and child rearing, the rigors of war and work, advice to friends and family; none was slated for publication. They were communications that gave shape to life by describing it for others.†[emphasis added]
Gave shape to life...
Although nowadays we publish for all the world to read, I’ve come to believe this is what personal or identity bloggers, particularly elderbloggers, are doing – giving shape to our lives.
Carl Jung described one of the seven tasks of aging as the need to review, reflect upon and sum up one’s life. Most elders have a need to tell their story before they die and Jung himself wrote in his Memoirs, Dreams, Reflections, published shortly before his death:
“I try to see the line which leads through my life into the world, and out of the world again.â€
Although it is an imperative for elders, making sense of ourselves and giving shape to our lives is what writing has always been about at any age. Blogging gives that need a new dimension through the medium itself and the sharing of our thoughts with so many others than personal letters allow.
In championing personal writing, Ms. Quindlen laments that it is a
“…concept that has been lost in modern life: writing can make pain tolerable, confusion clearer and the self stronger.â€
I think bloggers – old and young – intuitively know this, and that we are on the bleeding edge of a renaissance in personal writing. Our blogs (and saved emails too) will become as important to our current and future loved ones as handwritten letters were to people of another era.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.
]]>“We are hardly the same at forty-plus that our mothers and grandmothers were. We want to approach aging with style and grace...â€
“The forty-plus woman no longer looks, acts or realizes she is older. She has the choice to be young at heart, in body and mind. Unlike the generations before her, she has the ability to control many of her aging issues...â€
“We don’t need to think like our grandmothers.â€
These are quoted in an excerpt published at msnbc.com from a book by Christine Schwab with a title - The Grown-up Girl’s Guide to Style - which, along with those disparaging attacks on mothers and grandmothers, should gag any grown-up woman.
]]>“We are hardly the same at forty-plus that our mothers and grandmothers were. We want to approach aging with style and grace...â€
“The forty-plus woman no longer looks, acts or realizes she is older. She has the choice to be young at heart, in body and mind. Unlike the generations before her, she has the ability to control many of her aging issues...â€
“We don’t need to think like our grandmothers.â€
These are quoted in an excerpt published at msnbc.com from a book by Christine Schwab with a title - The Grown-up Girl’s Guide to Style - which, along with those disparaging attacks on mothers and grandmothers, should gag any grown-up woman.
If you are past 40 and still think you are a girl, you may leave the room now. Too many millions of us marched in the 1960s for the right to be acknowledged as women to be infantilized now by some “style expert and fashion consultant†who, although she writes that she “will give you honest answers†and “I still think I am thirty,†doesn’t mention her real age, and reverts to calling us “girlsâ€. (Where’s Helen Reddy when you really need her?)
Ms. Schwab holds up actor Diane Keaton as an older woman to emulate because she “covers her liabilities with gloves and a high neckline.†Is it possible that nearly half a century after Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, I am still being told that any imperfection in my body (my wrinkled neck and spotted hands in this case) must be hidden from public view? How Victorian of the writer. And how disgusting to hear it from a woman.
Ms. Schwab does not appear to recognize her own irony when in one breath she extols Eleanor Roosevelt and Golda Meir for teaching “prior generations that our brains were as important as our looks†and follows up in the next breath with “We don’t need to think like our grandmothers.â€
Most people are capable of recognizing that Mrs. Roosevelt and Mrs. Meir are the grandmothers of many 40-plus women – both ideologically and in literal years – and both of them were too busy with world-changing events to concern themselves with age spots and wrinkles.
This book is offensive both for its ageism and its sexism. It is a puzzle why such self-styled style experts think women need this kind of help? Would they write a book titled, The Grown-up Boy’s Guide to Style? And what makes them think a 50- or 60- or 70- or more-year-old wants to “be young at heart, in body and mind�
I like this OLD heart much more than my younger one. It is informed now by decades of pain and joy, grief and exhilaration, hurt and happiness that I hadn’t yet experienced when I was young. I am so much more capable now of better love and understanding. I am relieved to, aside from health measures, let this old body settle into itself. And my old mind? It is light years ahead of what it was even ten years ago, let alone 30 or 40. I have no desire to hide the remarkable gains I’ve made in heart, body and mind that could not happen but with the passage of time.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be stylish and put forward one’s best foot. But there is a big difference between being 20- and 30-something when attracting a man is still of foremost importance to most women, and being 60 or 70 when, beyond being neat, clean and appropriate, matters other than beauty and glamour (or, rather, “glam-ma†as Ms. Schwab characterizes comedian Goldie Hawn’s grandmother status) drive our interests and behavior.
It is such books as this one that perpetuate ageism, convincing gullible readers and the culture at large that aging is the worst thing that can happen to anyone and you’re not holding up your end of the girlie imperative if you are not pretending to be 20-something unto your grave.
And the worst part is that it is most often women who are doing this to other women.
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.,
]]>Feeling ignored by the male-only show, some women (undoubtedly crabby ones) complained and before long, there was another program, Grumpy Old Women, in which Michele Hanson was asked to participate:
“There was one gap left in the programme,†[wrote Ms. Hanson in the Guardian UK last week]. “Would I like to fill it? Yes please. All I had to do was bang on about everything that annoyed me. Who would pass up such an opportunity to air one's grievances?â€
]]>Feeling ignored by the male-only show, some women (undoubtedly crabby ones) complained and before long, there was another program, Grumpy Old Women, in which Michele Hanson was asked to participate:
“There was one gap left in the programme,†[wrote Ms. Hanson in the Guardian UK last week]. “Would I like to fill it? Yes please. All I had to do was bang on about everything that annoyed me. Who would pass up such an opportunity to air one's grievances?â€
The show producers had a list of suggestions on which to bang on about, but Ms. Hanson took exception to them:
“…when one's gripes are wide-ranging, one tends to ignore lists and digress, especially when the list had, to my mind, a fluffy bias: shopping, supermarkets, cooking, children, housework, clothes, men and sex. I didn't notice the chaps being asked about buying and cooking the Christmas dinner.â€
This is a mild surprise to Crabby Old Lady. That there are too few women pundits and commentators may still be so, but it had slipped her notice that women are expected to leave the serious stuff to men. She thought we had been beyond such stereotypes for a long time, especially among older women.
Obviously, Crabby is mistaken. One case in point: in her first week as speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi was reported in the press to be a grandmother about 250 times – although Dennis Hastert’s condition as a grandfather was mentioned no more than half a dozen times during his entire tenure as speaker.
Ms. Hanson ignored the TV program producers’ list:
“…I banged on about any old thing. How the TV people laughed. How encouraging they were. Marvelous, they said. Very funny.â€
But when the program was broadcast, Ms. Hanson got only a few seconds of air time.
“Only a tiny fraction of my complaints appeared,†she writes. “What humiliation. The details have faded, but it seems to me that the women moaned about girls' stuff and the men moaned about everything they fancied: the state of the world, art, politics, life and death.â€
It appears that not even age grants women an equal say in state of the world, not even when its purpose is comedy. Crabby Old Lady feels a kinship with Ms. Hanson and is grumpy about this, indeed.
[Hat tip to Marian Van Eyk McCain of The Elderwoman Website.]
* Contributing Editor Ronni Bennett also blogs at Time Goes By - What it’s really like to get older.
]]>