A perspective on ageism–letting the old man in?

by Mia Bremer

“I just get up every morning and I go out.  And, I don’t let the old man in.”  Country artist, Toby Keith asked Clint Eastwood while on the set of Clint’s latest movie, “The Mule”, what keeps him going at age 88. So inspired was Toby by Clint’s response that he wrote a song about it.  I heard the story and I, too, was inspired.  But when I thought about what the actor was saying, I became more frustrated than inspired. 

When Gloria Steinem was told she looked good for forty years old, she famously stated, “This is what forty looks like.”  She repeated the sentiment at fifty and most recently at her 80^th birthday where she hosted a, “This is what 80 looks like” benefit at the Shalom Center in Philadelphia after which she flew to Botswana to ride an elephant.  Her words were daring and revolutionary in the 1970s when, as a woman, lying about your age was the norm.  I’ve never lied about my age except for a short time in my 20s when I told co-workers I was a few years older than my biological age in order to appear more mature; I worked at a medical company where men in suits and lab coats swarmed the hallways and upstairs offices.  I thought if I was seen as older, I’d be taken seriously.

Gloria wanted us to think about how we view aging. She was saying that we don’t need to apologize for getting older, we need to embrace it with all the changes it brings, both positive and challenging.  In contrast, I think Clint’s words, inspiring as they seem, are just another way of saying “old ain’t so great.” When I first heard it, I filled in the word “old” with the familiar and always negative images of ageism: tired, sick, hunched over, frail, confused, silly, disinterested, weak, forgetful and on and on.  And, if I automatically went to the negative, someone who has spent a career turning the mirror back around to face ageism head on with clients and with myself, then it is still not only insidious in our culture, but the never-ending quest to “not be old” is expected. 

Now that my high-school friends and I are in our early 60s, I am attuned to the old-age jokes that some of these friends post on Facebook like the one that lists acronyms used by the elderly: BYOT – bring your own teeth, LMDO – laughing my dentures out, BFF – best friend fainted, etc.   These posts don’t make me laugh (I don’t have dentures AND if I did, I still wouldn’t find this funny.)   I fear that these friends who post the self-loathing jokes don’t realize that the teller is the butt of the joke and that the normalization of aging as an inevitable mental and physical decline is just not true. (See my 92-year-old friend, Jo, who shoots nine holes of golf weekly without a cart and heads the resident finance committee at the senior campus where he lives).

So, why are my old pals posting this hurtful and dangerous stuff that normalizes ageist thinking for the generations that follow us?  And why does it take a beat for me to see it sometimes, even with my eagle-eyed vigilance against it?  Because we are conditioned by television, movies, social media and the friends who bring insult cards to 40^th birthday parties and wear black armbands to the 50^th.  Because we saw our parents do the same thing.  Because it’s easier to laugh at the things we fear than look in the mirror and see who we are, not who we used to be.

I’m certainly not going to deny the challenges of aging. They are real, and they are hard sometimes.  But I also remember something my boss at that medical company once said to me that stuck: “Parts is parts.”   I repeat this often when teaching exercise classes or doing personal training with older clients.  So, what if one part doesn’t work great?  You got lots more parts. Let’s make those strong and flexible and then live the best life we can with the parts that do work.  Let’s change the list of what “old” looks like so that it’s something we strive to become, not something we look we avoid.

I’m sorry Clint, but your inspiring quote, and Toby Keith’s song, sends the same tired, old outdated message.  Instead of not letting the old man in, what if we decided the old man, or old lady, embodied positive attributes that we seek, not avoid; vitality, wisdom, calm, intellect, thoughtfulness, energy and a bigger capacity to listen and love?  Who wouldn’t want to let that person in?  Who wouldn’t want to be that person?  I’m going to embrace the old lady that I am.  I’ve worked too hard becoming her to keep her out.  Sorry, Clint.