Casual Ageism. How wrinkles define us all

Ageism is a huge 'industry' that wastes a pile of resources. We are all conditioned to be ageist and that's what piles on the resources

As animals, we are born with 'survival of the fittest' instincts, but ageism is leveraged and built on way beyond that innate instinct by central marketing. Most people talk about ageism as a workplace prejudice thing. The 50 (plus) person who (doesn't) get the job in the first place or who gets tipped out of the job first with the down size or restructure, while everyone pretends none of this ever happens. But that's not the real pretence. The truth is that workplaces are just one example, symptomatic of endemic, omnipresent, habitual, western society, garden variety, ageism. It's a weed growing everywhere - we just barely recognise ageism for what it is. We all engage in it, at all ages, because we are socially conditioned that way, whether we know it or not. 

We are all ageist

I once overheard a teenager say to a group of parents, "The problem with you older people is that you are all casual racists". At the time, I couldn't work out why I was so annoyed with his comment, but it slowly dawned on me that my annoyance wasn't about him missing the racist point, but the generalisation, "problem with all you older people". From that moment for me, there began a personal recognition of just how ridiculously common casual ageism is is in western society. From that first recognition, like the red car you suddenly see everywhere, ageism commentary is a steady visual in the traffic of life and it never stops coming - threatening to overwhelm you.  

The sheer scale of age prejudice races past any other social 'ism' by volume and it's endurance is supported by a rapidly ageing population. Ageism is enduring because, well really, until the day you actually die, there's always someone older than you and the truth is that we are all ageist.

While we may have Darwinian evolutionary survival instincts, we are taught from an early age that ageing isn't something we aspire to be. More wrinkly, more frail, more batty, more bald, more forgetful, more incontinent. More old. All those states are 'problems' to be staved off for as long as possible with a cream, a tablet, a pad or preferably, preventative surgery. 

The age-old beauty myth 

The beauty industry has a lot to answer for, but most of all, it has created the ageism stereotype and defined an entire social construct. If you look behind just about every aspirational beauty message, there's a product or a cosmetic procedure waiting to improve your self worth by making you look younger. But how did we get to be so obsessed with looking younger? Maybe it is as simple as the fact that everyone gets old and dies and and that makes it the perfect marketing target.

Some where along the way, it has all gotten so out of control that it has became more attractive to look like a plastic Barbie:

instead of a real human (oh my, I bet she doesn't even shave):

Either of these options, even the un-plastic one, is of course way more appealing than this:

We are marketed the youth myth from childhood from the minute we can conceive a response - sold the need to fight the visible signs of ageing, especially wrinkles. From botox to pretty much any facial moisturiser you have heard of, fighting wrinkles is your life's work. The need to disguise the fact that you are older.

Beauty marketing is a chicken egg thing. Whether marketing made age unfashionable or age was an easy target for marketing, ageism is the marketing weapon of choice for the beauty, health & food industries. And that is the problem. Intrinsic beliefs about age spill over into everything and so it follows that by the time you are around 50 for most women and 60 for most men, you become 'invisible' - in the street, in a queue, in a gym class and in the workplace.

Workplace ageism isn't really governed by the law

The employment and unemployment issues related to anyone over 50 in the workplace or trying to get into the workplace are well documented and the legal implications of discrimination don't do much more than give a framework for how to get around the law. Anyway, the law can't manage the deeply ingrained age (or any other) stereotypes. Like “the expectation that older people should actively step aside, ceding agency, to facilitate the younger generation’s economic and leadership opportunities” and shouldn't be striving for recognition at the cost of younger people. Older people in the workplace are generally expected to see out their tenure until retirement, quietly going about whatever reduced workload they have been assigned, due to their advancing age, without making waves. 

Here's a great example. A man in his 70s, who works for a well known public entity, recently received an invitation to nominate for the company's Diversity and Inclusion Working Group.

Along with the usual self congratulatory commentary on how excellent and forward thinking the company was, the priority Diversity Groups listed for 'nomination' were Cultural, Aboriginal, Disability, Gender and LGBTQI.

When Mr 70 responded to the email, enquiring about for a 6th Diversity Group for Older Workers and noting the need to educate the workplace on what it means to be older at work, he was ignored. No response. Nothing. Zero. As you would expect, the email had  originated from HR, a workplace department typically involved in offensive defence and the first to politely squish any pending workplace relations uprising. But they didn't respond, so you can only imagine that they didn't believe the problem even existed. 

What would happen if marketing celebrated age?

To really understand just how ingrained ageism is, imagine a world where getting older was admired, aspired to and celebrated. Advertising would be very different. Being asked if you were a grandmother would be something to be celebrated, not send you to the cosmetic surgeon. A whole pile of silly and unnecessary products would disappear. Just like that. Ageism isn't sustainable - attitudinal or for the use of resources.  

If you want to test your own position on ageism within the different contexts of your life, think about the people you respect, listen to and admire. Not the people in your immediate family and friends, but the people who you pass on the street, see at the gym, in service situations. Who do you pay attention to? Who do you ignore? The tough one - who do you not even notice? 

Ageism is simply unsustainable. With the pace of change, we need wisdom and less waste, of any kind

Anti ageism campaigner, Ashton Applegate summed it up in her TED talk:

“AGEISM IS A TOTALLY ILLOGICAL PREJUDICE THAT PITS US AGAINST OUR FUTURE SELVES. AGEING IS NOT A PROBLEM TO BE FIXED OR A DISEASE TO BE CURED. IT IS A NATURAL, POWERFUL, LIFELONG PROCESS THAT UNITES US ALL.” 

In the end, ageism is not only a waste of all the resources that go into making so many silly products that do absolutely nothing, but it is also a waste of the resources of all those years of experience, that brain power, that mastery. All that should be distinguished by wrinkles and grey hair is diminished by it. 

Older people aren't just someone occupying a piece of workplace or household real estate that could belong to someone younger. They aren't a pin up for endless marketing opportunities to highlight the comparative the smoothness of a model's skin. They are a brain's trust of knowledge, experiences and support to help solve today's problems, and the heartland to help foster community, care and companionship in a world that surely needs them.

Rising authors

Much has been written about ageism, beyond the usual career limiting workplace debate - books, opinion pieces and studies. Scholar, Margaret Morganroth Gullette, is an internationally known cultural critic of age, and is the author of "Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People".  Recently, Ashton Applegate published This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. 

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