GRAND Magazine - Fall 2022 - 10

ageism
This chair rocks: a manifesto against ageism
I
BY ASHTON APPLEWHITE
've never lied about my age-I have no problem saying " I'm sixty-six " loud and clear-but I sure know a lot of people who do.
People who've lied on resumes and on airplanes and on dates. There was an opera singer who fudged upward at the beginning of
her career so she could get cast as Norma, but was holding at thirty-nine. And the woman who loved passing off her granddaughters
as her kids, and who was regularly connected to her bank's fraud department because she couldn't remember what birth date
she was using.
I would never have been able to keep my stories straight either-one reason I told the truth. Another was because the typical
response wasn't so terrible: " You look great for your age! " I inherited my mother's no-gray-hair genes, I've always had plenty of
energy and no plans to slow down, and I certainly never felt like any of the labels out there- " senior, " " cougar, " " woman of a certain
age " -applied to me. But if I was so cool with it, why didn't " You look great for your age " feel like a compliment? The fact was that
the hazy prospect of growing old filled me with something between free-floating anxiety and stomach-churning dread. I didn't
want to think about it until I had to, and when it crossed my mind, I flipped the channel. Why not, as long as I could " pass " for
younger, right?
"
10 GRAND Summer 2022
Was I driven by fear or losing my looks? Of growing frail?
"
That wasn't a very solid strategy. When I worked at the American Museum of Natural History, birthday cards
circulated regularly around the charmless cubicles of the office, where I worked with a guy named Ray for fifteen
years. Ray and I don't have much in common. He handled the accounts; I write. He lived in the suburbs;
I don't own a car. He's conservative; I'm progressive. With his fringe of snow-white hair, if he gained weight
and wore red, he'd make a perfect Santa Claus. He's proud of being cantankerous, he's always muttering
about his aches and pains, and he couldn't wait to retire to Florida. So when I learned that Ray and I were
exactly the same age, I panicked. I thought, " What if everyone finds out? They'll think I'm old too. "
That wasn't just condescending and mean-spirited of me; it was idiotic. My museum coworkers, Ray
included, were an intelligent bunch. They didn't have any trouble telling the two of us apart, and difficulties
were unlikely to crop up. Why, then, was I so flipped out about landing with Ray on the same side of some hypothetical
old/young divide? Why did I imagine that this would erase our individuality, and diminish me so frighteningly?
Was I driven by fear of losing my looks? Of growing frail? Of my own mortality? Wouldn't I be better off
making my peace with the passage of time than waging a battle no one could ever win?

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GRAND Magazine - Fall 2022

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