In my late 20s, I became obsessed with aging: the slow decline of my body, my sagging skin, my fading memory, and eventually death. All of it scared me. In preparation for my impending doom, I researched nursing homes, assisted living, and in-home care, and armed myself with information about which would give way first, my knees or my memory.
My fears were not for myself, but for my mother, who was approaching 70 and I didn't know how to deal with it.
My mother herself was in good health. Although I sometimes worried that I might turn 30 without a husband or children, she was in good health. She led an active social life and won many ballroom dancing awards. When I voiced my fears, she would dismiss them with her usual, “Oh, you're not going to be like that.”
In hindsight, the problem wasn't her age, it was my own ageism.
Listening to the uproar over President Biden's performance in the recent debate with President Donald Trump, I'm reminded of that moment. Some Democrats are acting as if Biden's age is breaking news, and regardless of what the Supreme Court has to say about immunity, some would rather keep him off their list of candidates than focus on the litany of lies from a former president who has been convicted of 34 felonies and charged with dozens more.
Again, the problem is not Biden's age, it's our own ageism, which is based on fear, and we are willing to sacrifice democracy for fear.
Simply put, ageism is the idea that what we should or can do is tied to the number we reached on our last birthday. It's a stereotype that's often used to target people over a certain age. However, that age (from 40 to 80) changes over time, making the notion of “too old” a dynamic target in this fickle prejudice.
I remember feeling “old” on my 23rd birthday; I'd missed a semester of college, graduating late and missing what I considered the “normal” age to graduate at 22. As if that mattered. More famously, members of the youth movement of the 1960s warned each other not to trust anyone over 30.
Age discrimination is often based on gender. If you don't believe this, imagine the public reaction if an 81-year-old woman tried to run for president. When I turned 18 as a high school senior in Oklahoma, I discovered I had legal rights that my male classmates wouldn't have for another three years. Thanks to a wise decision made by Oklahoma state legislators decades ago, I could legally buy 3.2 beers. Not knowing that the U.S. Supreme Court's Craig v. Boren decision would soon overturn this law, I asked my teacher about the discrepancy. “Girls mature faster than boys,” she replied matter-of-factly. I shrugged. Maybe it was true.
Just as 30 was once the hippie dividing line between marriageable and acceptable age, 40 was the Maginot Line for employment for both men and women. Job ads, which were legally gendered until 1973, often listed age requirements for applicants: “Male – 23-44 years old, preferably married,” reads a sample sentence from a California newspaper published before the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 began protecting 40-year-olds. Unfortunately, this is still a problem today.
I vividly remember the terror that spread through our house the year I was four and my mother was 42. My father was seriously injured in a road accident and was unable to work for some time. My mother struggled to find secretarial work because she was 42 instead of 39, despite having 20 years of work experience and having won a national award for her management skills. However, thanks to someone who valued qualifications over age, she finally found work.
Democrats owe it to Joe Biden to prioritize qualifications over age, but I hope he never debates Trump again. Debates are about exchanging ideas, not with a lying bully. Why bother?
I wish I had known in my twenties that my mother would continue to dance until she was 85 and live to nearly 90, or that her sister, my favorite aunt, would rebuild her house at 91.
Jane Marcellus is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in academic and literary journals, as well as newspapers such as the Washington Post. She is the author of Business Girls & Two-Job Wives: Emerging Media Stereotypes of Employed Women and co-authored two books about the television show Mad Men.
All views expressed are the author's own.
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