Gerontologist and author Tracey Gendron (Photo courtesy Tracey Gendron)
When it comes to aging, Tracey Gendron wants us to go through our lives with our eyes open.
But few people do.
Instead, we define ourselves into generational camps and sometimes engage in stereotypes or discriminatory actions and behaviors based on age differences and ideas about aging that are deeply rooted in our culture. Such behaviors and prejudices are regarded as ageism.
“I want everybody to see themselves as someone that’s aging,” Gendron says. “I want us to break down the barrier of us versus them. Aging is not about older people, aging is about all of us through our entire life.”
Chair of the department of gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University and director of the Virginia Center on Aging, Gendron is also the author of “Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It.”
The 192-page book, set for release on March 1, explores what we often get wrong about aging, including the pervasive, extensive negative messaging that permeates American culture and reinforces our negative perceptions of the elderly and aging. It also offers guidelines for recognizing these negative cultural cues and remaking our outlook and attitudes, plus tips on how to age well personally and alleviate ageism in society.
The prevalence of ageism and ableism, its abilities-oriented counterpart in prejudicial and discriminative behavior, came into focus during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspiring Gendron to write the book.
“Ageism is just so deeply normalized that it’s truly practically invisible,” she says. “So in order to really see it for the first time, I feel like you really do have to take your blinders or our masks off.”
We need to realize that ageism is pervasive and that it’s not simply directed at older people, she says.
That point has been evident in the pandemic. Infection with the novel coronavirus is more likely to result in death for older people. Social media magnified caustic generational barbs such as calling the virus a “Boomer Remover.” Older people in turn blamed millennials for ignoring virus safety protocols, Gendron notes.
“It wasn’t just ageism, and it was generational,” she says. “That was sad.”
The negative stories drove a larger media narrative. Less attention was given to the acts of kindness shown among people, such as younger neighbors going on grocery runs or checking on their older counterparts, she says.
“Ageism is just so deeply normalized that it’s truly practically invisible.” —Tracey Gendron
Gendron also takes issue with the concept of generations. It’s akin to astrology, assigning different traits and behaviors according to when you were born. In her lectures, she illustrates this point by asking students to assign various traits and behaviors to a particular generation. About 80% were incorrectly identified. “It showed the absurdity of it,” she says.
There is an intersection between ageism and ableism: Gendron notes that physical decline and cognitive changes come with aging, and with those changes, you’re likely to encounter both ageism and ableism.
“Ageism locks us into fear of our future selves and prevents us from living fully at all stages of life,” she writes. “Ableism keeps us rooted in unrealistic expectations that are impossible to achieve.”
She cites a scenario of an older couple going to a restaurant. The lighting is dim and the print on the menu is small, so they can’t see or read, and the restaurant is packed and conversations echo, so they can’t hear. This exemplifies situational ageism and ableism, and how such factors are rarely considered in everyday life. “They really go hand in hand,” she says.
Gendron calls for countering ageism by pushing the narrative that aging is something that occurs in us all, all the time, and that you still experience growth in older age. That places the emphasis on active or healthy aging.
The process of aging is holistic, with biological, psychological, social and spiritual components. “Whether we are successful depends in large part on how we individually define success,” Gendron writes. Changing outlooks involves changing or eliminating labels. For example, Gendron eschews the label “retired” because it defines someone by what they did for a living, a limited, constraining and often negative definition of self that fails to account for what you’re doing now, what you’re capable of doing and what you want to do.
She embraces the term “elderhood” for older people, calling this period of life “the culmination of our individual lived experiences and unique identities.” For Gendron, it encapsulates that this stage of life includes losses, challenges and growth, as in every other period of existence. “Roles for elders can be really different and unique,” she says.
The book offers unusual insights into how we got to our current understanding of aging, tracking the evolution of life from an agrarian, family-based experience in which different generations shared space to changes in work that led to the concept of retirement and isolation of older people, the creation of retirement communities, and the focus on eternal youth that permeates pop culture and advertising.
Retirement is a recent construct — 78% of men older than 65 were in the labor force in 1880, 65% in 1900 and less than 20% in 1990.
Older people are also wrongly perceived as being an economic drag. Gendron cites how Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the early days of the pandemic offered himself and other older Texans as sacrifices to keep stores and businesses open and the economy functioning in lieu of pandemic safety measures.
“It is time to retire the outdated ageist mentality that older people are a drag on the economy and that their growing numbers signal the coming of a destructive wave that will lead to economic ruin,” she writes. As Gendron notes, age alone is not a predictor of health, and elders are also major economic contributors.
Life is lived on a continuum, one that is different for each of us; there is no single set age when we become an elder, according to Gendron, just as there is no one birthday when we fully become an adult.
The concept of successful aging continues to evolve. Gerontologists had tried to move perceptions to a concept that positive aging was all about maintaining health, physical abilities and independence, doing everything that you want to do. That was problematic, though, says Gendron, and led to ableism issues.
“We’re mortal beings, so eventually we’re all going to experience some form of decline,” she says.
Instead, we need to “find that path where we’re valuing all ages and all levels of ability and not seeing them as something that can be stigmatized, but something where we value it because people are different. It’s complex.”
By the Book
TITLE: “Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It”
PUBLISHER: Steerforth Press, distributed by Penguin Random House; $19.95 hardcover
AUTHOR: Tracey Gendron, chair, VCU department of gerontology, and director of the Virginia Center on Aging
MEET THE AUTHOR: At 6 p.m. on March 3, Fountain Bookstore will host a conversation with the author online via Crowdcast free; donation suggested, purchase options offered. Visit fountainbookstore.com/gendron030322.
