"The Pressure to Age Well"
My interview on Melissa Ceria's "The Loss Encounters" podcast.
Readers,
Remember that Friday Open Thread on “aging contests” that I posted in mid-March, the one in which I asked whether you felt pressure to be perceived as “aging well”?
That Friday Open Thread had been spurred by a question I’d been asked as a guest on The Loss Encounters with Melissa Ceria, an excellent podcast. Today the episode went live, so I’m sharing it with you. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts, or right here:
When she interviewed me,
asked whether I believed that in this performance-driven culture, there was pressure on us to “age well” in any way. I said I wasn’t sure, so I tossed the question out to all of you.In over 300 responses (!!!) you let me know that, yes, many of you do feel pressured to “age well” in a variety of ways, some of them contradicting one another. For example, some of you feel compelled to keep looking young, while others of you feel compelled to lean into looking and acting older, and to pretend you don’t at all mind the effects of aging.
Here’s the Friday Open Thread I mentioned:
On "Aging Contests"
I really enjoyed talking all things aging and Oldster Magazine on Melissa’s podcast. (We also discovered that in the mid-90s we had the same job, a year apart from one another!)
Among the other topics we discussed: What an incredible community has cropped up around Oldster, and how engaged so many of you are with the magazine—commenting thoughtfully and respectfully, and connecting with one another in mini-conversations, many of which are intergenerational. I find it very heartening.
I’m so grateful to all of you for being a part of this. Thank you for your engagement, and support!
-Sari
Alas, I don't really "do" podcasts (my brain is just not wired to listen to unscripted audio, no matter how compelling or charming the speakers!) but I have been ruminating on this very topic. My partner and I just had a visit with an aging uncle who lives near a place where we were vacationing, and it's made both of us reflect on how our family members have aged... and how some of them, including this uncle, have aged in ways that have limited their happiness, diminished their physical and emotional comfort, and reined in their mobility and ability to engage with the wider world. It's so, so, so easy and awful to fall into a mode of thinking that tells me: I have to prevent becoming like that. That tells me: these family members are more limited than others at their advanced ages because they, oh, never exercised or neglected whatever aspects of their health, didn't "age-proof" their bodies and their social circles, etc.
It's such a weird needle to thread, doing things to take care of my health and wellbeing specifically to increase my chances of being mobile and comfortable and happy for longer, and also not giving into an aversion regarding actual people who didn't do those things and are now facing what they themselves will often identify as a diminished existence (the uncle we just visited certainly expressed that). I know very well that doing everything "right" doesn't guarantee anything at all, and I don't think it's, y'know, morally wrong or whatever if people don't do that stuff. It just feels like a dick move to look at their lives and think: I have to give myself a good chance of not ending up like that.
I am almost certainly overthinking this because the visit with our uncle is so fresh in my mind! But gosh. Navigating this stuff is already weird and hard, and I'm only 44!
i admit to skimming this…there is so much to read of late, that said, i wonder why we do not assist and enable others to age as an act of nature, needlessly defied. aging is a reality, we all do it…why the need to make one who is aging or already ‘elderly’ feel lacking? or inadequate. those who have aged, well or not, have a wisdom that is tappable were anyone curious enough to do so. the wisdom of age should be the goal…not to look like you are still 30 when you are 75. that is very telling. if one is meant to feel inadequate for one’s wrinkles then that is very much a surface thing…shallow as shallow can be. i am an elder, i earned all of my fucking wrinkles just being me in a world that wishes to subjugate all of my gender. my take on it.