The Toxicity of Thinking the Old Are Too Cute for Words

It's a form of ageism, no matter how benign you think it is.

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I’ve written many times before about getting old and being old and, for the most part, I go at it in that lighthearted way old people tend to do, lest we’re seen as curmudgeons or hypochondriacs or bloody nuisances, and nobody will want to listen to us. (I played that age thing myself once or twice, in a piece I called “Playing That Age Thing to the Hilt”. and then again when I turned eighty.)

The last thing we’re supposed to want to do, now that we’re so old all we can do is think about how old we are, is to talk about it in ways that might cause discomfort among those who aren’t there yet.

We’re supposed to laugh about it, and we’re supposed to be okay when we’re laughed at. We’re quaint, after all, and totally out of it, and everything we do, outside of getting sick and dying, is fodder for speculation or for humor.

We’re supposed to ‘age gracefully’. Only nobody really knows what that means.

I can’t begin to count the number of articles I’ve seen that are written by younger people attempting to explain what it’s like to be old. They work with the elderly or live with the elderly and over time their uncanny powers of observation have given them front row seats, not just to the ways the elderly function, but to how we think.

Fortunes have been made by those savvy enough to speak for the elderly while those chroniclers are still young enough to enjoy the fruits of their labor. If you type in ‘growing old’ at Amazon you’ll get over 10,000 results. If you type ‘getting old’ you’ll find over 50,000 results. And if you type ‘being old’ you’ll get over 100,000 results. It’s a veritable gold mine!

How many of those books do you suppose were written by people who were actually old? I mean old-old? My age—85—or older? There’s no real way of knowing, but I’ll take a wild guess and say ‘not many’. The field is glutted with fifty- and sixty-year-olds who suddenly see their lives as more than half over and after thinking it over for a minute or two, they’ve become authorities for the rest of us old goofuses.

Also, it’s now or never. Before they really get old.

So those of us really old people who can still function and can think clearly enough to resent the hell out of those usurpers, those thieves, those frauds, tend to sit back and fume. Why do we sit back and fume? Because that’s what the books say we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to be seen and not heard—not in any way that might make waves.

We’re supposed to be nice now, and funny. Especially funny. Self-deprecating and, if we can pull it off, cute. Because if we aren’t, someone is going to write about how awful we are and what a burden we’ve become—even when we’re no different in our gripes and our needs than that younger bunch out there.

I’m not going to be cute for anyone. I’m not going to pretend I’m a bumbling idiot, either. And how am I supposed to answer when you say, ‘I want to be you when I grow up’? You are grown up. And I know me. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to be me at any age.

We’re old because we haven’t died yet. That’s the only thing we have in common. Our bodies don’t function the way they used to—that’s true—but show me a 40-year-old who could still keep up with their teen-aged self. We do grow old. We grow older. We grow oldest if we’re lucky. But kindly lay off the need to corral us and give us orders to live our lives the way you think we should.

We’re not following your script.

There’s a writer on another site who has a whole series of posts about ‘My Old Ladies’. Apparently, she has formed a ‘My Old Ladies’ club and she’s on the lookout for the feisty and the cute among the ancients. She ‘collects’ them, she says.

She admits she’s gotten some flak over it so now she’s taken to rounding up really old women who will stand by her need to cutesify them and do testimonials on how much they appreciate her objectification.

I tell you this in case you’re wondering where this latest rant might have come from. That’s it. That’s all it took. That and a thousand other instances where the really old among us are forced to watch portrayals that have nothing to do with reality in order to provide fodder for people who don’t know shit about us.

And, no, I’m not going to provide links.

(If this looks like a rant it must be a rant. But I’ll tell you the truth about rants: They feel good sometimes, if you don’t make a habit of them.)

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For further reading:

I am That Old Woman. And I’m betting you’ve already decided… | by Ramona Grigg | Medium

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You May Be Ageist If…. Most stories about ageism aren’t… | by Ramona Grigg | Crow’s Feet | Medium