(Editor’s Note: In the introduction to her new book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, Ashton Applewhite, 2016 Next Avenue Influencer of the Year, describes why she’s fighting against ageism system-wide,why she’s inspired to change the discussion around aging and how she hopes to inspire others to do the same. Below is an excerpt of the introduction.)

Ashton ApplewhiteLike racism and sexism, ageism is not about how we look. It’s about what people in power want our appearance to mean. Ageism occurs when a group, whether politicians or marketers or employment agencies, uses that power to oppress or exploit or silence or simply ignore people who are much younger or significantly older.
We experience ageism any time someone assumes we’re “too old” for something — a task, a relationship, a haircut — instead of finding out who we are and what we’re capable of. Or if someone assumes that we’re “too young.” Ageism cuts both ways, and young people experience a lot of it. That’s what’s going on when people grumble about lazy millennials or complain that “kids are like that.”
Since no one on the planet is getting any younger, let's stop using "aging" as a pejorative.
Now I see ageism everywhere. When old pals cringe at public mention of how long they’ve known each other instead of savoring their shared history. When men and women feel compelled to lie about their age on online dating sites. When people bridle at being kindly offered a seat on the bus. On billboards and television, in hospitals and hotels, over dinner, on the subway. (“At age eighty, who doesn’t need a facelift?” a poster announcing a subway station renovation asks brightly.) In the incessant barrage of messages from every quarter that consigns the no-longer-young to the margins of society. In our mindless absorption of those messages and numb collusion in our own disenfranchisement.
Ageism: The Last Socially Sanctioned Prejudice
I’ve learned that most of what I thought I knew about the aging process was wrong. That staying in the dark serves powerful commercial and political interests that don’t serve mine. And that seeing clearly is healthier and happier. Yet, despite the twentieth century’s unprecedented longevity boom, age bias is only beginning to bleep onto the cultural radar — it’s the last socially sanctioned prejudice.
We know that diversity means including people of different races, genders, abilities and sexual orientation; why is age typically omitted? Racist and sexist comments no longer get a pass, but who even blinks when older people are described as worthless? Or incompetent, or “out of it,” or boring or even repulsive?
Suppose we could see these hurtful stereotypes for what they are — not to mention the external policies and procedures that put the “ism” after “age.”
Suppose we could step off the treadmill of age denial and begin to see how ageism segregates and diminishes our prospects. Catch our breath, then start challenging the discriminatory structures and erroneous beliefs that attempt to shape our aging.
Until then, ageism will pit us against each other; it will rob society of an immense accrual of knowledge and experience and it will poison our futures by framing longer, healthier lives as problems instead of the remarkable achievements and opportunities they represent.
Jettisoning Some Language Around Aging
A good place to start is by jettisoning some language.
“The elderly”? Yuck, partly because I’ve never heard anyone use the word to describe themselves. Also because “elderly” comes paired with “the,” which implies membership in some homogenous group.
“Seniors”? Ugh.
“Elders” works in some cultures but feels alien to me, and I don’t like the way it implies that people deserve respect simply by virtue of their age; children, too, deserve respect.
Since the only unobjectionable term used to describe older people is “older people,” I’ve shortened the term to “olders” and use it, along with “youngers,” as a noun. It’s clear and value-neutral, and it emphasizes that age is a continuum. There is no old/young divide. We’re always older than some people and younger than others.
Since no one on the planet is getting any younger, let’s stop using “aging” as a pejorative — “aging boomers,” for example, as though it were yet another bit of self-indulgence on the part of that pesky generation, or “aging entertainers,” as though their fans were cryogenically preserved.
Although we age in different ways and at different rates, everyone wakes up a day older. Aging is difficult, but few of us opt out, and the passage of time confers very real benefits upon us. By blinding us to those benefits and heightening our fears, ageism makes growing older in America far harder than it has to be.
That’s why I’ve embarked on a crusade to overturn American culture’s dumb and destructive obsession with youth, and challenge the way people at both ends of the age spectrum are devalued and disrespected.
This excerpt from This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Aging (Celadon Books) is reprinted with permission from the author.


Ageism Is Everywhere: It's Time to Stop It

Ashton Applewhite

Why is the coronavirus spreading across the U.S.? Not because a virulent molecule jumped from an animal into a human. Not because of China, or selfish youngers and clueless olders. COVID-19 is spreading because the virus is new and contagious. We have a hospital system crippled by decades of cost-cutting, underfunding and chronic understaffing by underpaid workers.
The hashtag #NotDyingForWallStreet is trending as people recognize the implications of President Trump's calls to end the lockdown soon, which infectious disease experts strongly recommend against.
We are engaged in a massive collective experiment to protect the vulnerable, whoever they turn out to be. It's high stakes, and it's as intersectional as it can get.
Never have ageism and ableism (discrimination in favor of able-bodied people) been so glaringly exposed.
'Underlying Health Plays a Much Bigger Role than Age Does'
We olders are more at risk from COVID-19. That's biology, not bias. Our immune systems are weaker, our lungs less elastic and we're more likely to have underlying conditions — such as heart disease, lung disease and diabetes — that make us more vulnerable to other illnesses and slower to recover.
This doesn't mean that the day someone turns 65, they're at higher risk. It also says very little about what any given individual is up against when it comes to getting sick or getting better. Underlying health plays a much bigger role than age does. And while older people do have more health issues, plenty are in excellent health and plenty of young people are immune-suppressed and/or live with chronic disease.


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The most dangerous manifestation of ageism during the pandemic is the suggestion of an age limit for medical treatment, so it won't be "wasted." A public health emergency can indeed make it necessary to allocate resources by health status. That's triage.
But as I wrote earlier, "Allocating resources by age, under any circumstances, is not triage. It is ageism at its most lethal."
I've since come to understand that when hospitals get completely overwhelmed, as has happened in Italy and is likely in the U.S. very soon, people on the front lines have to make hideous decisions, very fast, about which of the many people in dire condition are likely to benefit most from getting, say, the only available ventilator.
These decisions involve a complex ethical and moral calculus, beautifully delineated in this GeriPal podcast. Age is way quicker to assess than health status, and advanced age is a clear disadvantage under these circumstances.  Boom. Such decisions are tragic, horrible, wrong, and — under these conditions — sometimes necessary. I sure don't envy the heroic people making them in hospitals today.
Pushing Back Against Social Bias
In every other context, it's up to the rest of us to push back against every form of social bias. Are testing and outreach prioritizing men over women, white people over people of color, youngers over older, cis people over trans? Are we including the most exposed — not just olders, but people with disabilities and those who are homeless or incarcerated — in our efforts?
We are engaged in a massive collective experiment to protect the vulnerable, whoever they turn out to be. It's high stakes, and it's as intersectional as it can get. We are truly all in this together.


OPINION: Defeating the Pandemic Means Confronting Ageism and Ableism

Much of the attention paid to President Biden's age, 81, is negative — a topic of endless punditry, commentary, polling questions and ageist comedy bits. Saturday Night Live, for example, portrayed the president as a doddering fool with no short-term memory and a fear of climbing a ladder to hang Halloween decorations. Meanwhile, mentions of ageism are appearing more often in such diverse media outlets as Time, Fortune and The Philadelphia Inquirer. 
President Joe Biden speaks at Abbotts Creek Community Center during a Jan. 18 event in Raleigh, North Carolina. The World Health Organization defines ageism as "the stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel) and discrimination (how we act) towards others or oneself based on age."
"It's fantastic that news stories these days talk about ageism," says activist Ashton Applewhite, author of "This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism and a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging. "Only a year ago this wouldn't have happened. The first step is awareness."
Age Is Real, but Not Everything
Is it ever legitimate to be concerned about age in a candidate for public office? For instance, are polling questions about a candidate's age inherently ageist?
"Age is real," Applewhite responds. "It's part of our identity. But it's ageist to attribute a value to age, whether negative or positive. And it's no more acceptable to dismiss a candidate on the basis of age than it to do so on the basis of their gender or color."
"Humor is a way to deflect anxiety, but these jokes rely on stereotyping, which is harmful. And discrimination isn't funny."
What about making fun of older people? Is that ageist? Yes, Applewhite says. "Humor is a way to deflect anxiety, but these jokes rely on stereotyping, which is harmful. And discrimination isn't funny."
Of course, it is legitimate to be concerned whether any candidate for office is equipped to handle the job. We want our representatives to be sharp, so we should be concerned about cognition, intelligence, memory, decision making and stamina — in candidates of any age. I am a fit woman in my seventies, and I've wondered whether I would have the stamina for such demanding work.
Cognition is a term for the mental processes that take place in the brain, such as thinking, attention, language, learning and perception — interacting skills that allow us to acquire, process and apply knowledge. It also encompasses memory, critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making.
What We Know and Don't Know
We know that aging can slow executive functioning, memory and speed at which we process information. While these abilities vary greatly among older adults, as they do among people of all ages, much less is known about positive cognitive changes that aging brings, and how they balance out these deficits.
In her chapter on the older brain, Applewhite describes how older adults have access to more information, how attention gradually expands, and this wider worldview allows for better judgment. Older brains are more flexible and resilient in managing emotions, and our capacity for integration increases, which is a sign of intelligence at any age.
Older adults can combine real-life information with their significant store of knowledge. This means we can perform better than younger people at mental tasks that require depths of experience or knowledge, and we can read moods and navigate tricky situations more skillfully.
Our greater experience and the ability to sift through, assimilate and prioritize information might be referred to as wisdom.
Yes, Our Brains Change
Older brains use many more connections than younger ones because we've made many connections over our lives. Yes, and that's why it takes longer to find a word, because it's a bigger job than it is for younger folks with less of those memory files and connections.
"A growing body of research shows how attitudes toward aging affect health in general and cognition in particular."
It's also true that we can deter cognitive decline through building cognitive reserves. We do this by challenging our brains, through exercising and mastering new skills requiring complexity and problem solving, as well as by maintaining social networks. Physical activity is clearly important to promote stamina. It would seem that the many tasks required of a president would boost those cognitive reserves.
None of this negates the challenges that aging brings, but these are profoundly enabled and exacerbated by ageist culture and systems: "A growing body of research shows how attitudes toward aging affect health in general and cognition in particular," Applewhite said.
She recommended Yale psychologist Becca Levy's book "Breaking The Age Code: How Our Attitudes Toward Aging Determine How Long and How Well You Live." In it, Levy, also a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging,  asserts that many health problems considered solely a function of aging, such as memory loss, hearing decline and cardiovascular problems, are heavily influenced by negative beliefs about aging particular to American and Western societies.
Culture's Effect on Cognition
Levy's research in Japan illustrated how in cultures that traditionally value older people, and appreciate the perspective they bring, many more live into their 90s and 100s with little physical or mental deterioration. A study of Chinese elders, for instance, revealed their memory to be equal to that of the younger generation.
Most inspiring, Levy shows that when people consciously change their negative ageist beliefs, they not only tend to live longer and more healthily, they can actually reverse cognitive decline and improve their memory function. Another powerful finding: less ageism equals less Alzheimers. Examples in "Breaking the Age Code" can help older adults prepare for, and live into, our "third acts" — the life stage after work or child-rearing.
Contrary to popular belief and expectation, research suggests life improves with age for many people, sometimes referred to as the "Happiness U-curve." We are more content, better able to enjoy the moment and less afraid.
If this is so, why do we approach aging with dread and work so hard to deny its progress? Why the billion-dollar industries designed to both motivate and fulfil people's desire to look younger? Why do commercials treat aging and turning into our parents as if that's a bad thing? Clearly, they work because they trigger fear of being or looking old to sell their products. It's therefore useful — and possibly much cheaper — to know that these fears are culturally induced, not decreed by aging itself.
At the same time, many people expect medical advancements to extend the lifespan of many, thus all the handwringing about our aging population. Which brings us to the great paradox: no matter how apprehensive they may be, nobody wants to die young. "Ageism," as Applewhite points out, "is prejudice against our future selves."
Before we lay that prejudice to rest, we need to consider another issue that Applewhite points out as relevant in this discussion, which is that of ableism. Ageism and ableism are often conflated: In her blog Yo, Is This Ageist?, she points to The New Yorker cover of October 2, 2023, entitled "The Race for Office." The illustration shows Biden; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, also 81; former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, 83; and President Trump, 77; using walkers in a footrace.
Our Myth of Individualism
"If these people actually used mobility aids, would that disqualify them for political office? In an ageist and ableist world, it might," Applewhite writes.
No wonder politicians and regular folks work hard to hide any sign of disability, as if a need for help is a legitimate cause for shame or dismissal.
"Ageism is prejudice against our future selves."
It's not unnatural to worry about how our bodies and minds may change. But this bleeds into our particularly American mythos of rugged individualism, which is harmful as it creates prejudice against asking for help.
In reality we all need help throughout our lives; we are totally interdependent. How does this relate to the presidency? Who that person counts on for help, for the best expertise and who he or she collaborates with is vitally important — and such choices are a function of intelligence and experience.
This is what we need from those who govern us, not that they be young lone rangers, but that they have the intelligence and humility to seek out the best information and support in decision making. This is the model of democratic as opposed to autocratic leadership: decision making may be a little slower but will be infused with greater wisdom.
Let's remember that many of us will reach President Biden's age — if we have not already. Hopefully we are or will be members of communities and families that will care for us as we care for them.
And, hopefully, we will be treated with more respect.


President Biden, Ageism and Cognition

Anneke Campbell

In this election year, 80-year-old and nearly 80-year-old presidential candidates have been scrutinized about their memory lapses, their advanced age and declining mental faculties. But some psychologists and neuroscientists contend that many 80-year-olds have mental strengths that can't be matched by the younger set.
"Older adults consistently and very robustly outperform college students because they have the richness of their semantic network, the links between words, and the strength of connection between words and concepts that improve with experience," Alan Swope, an emeritus professor of psychology at Alliant International University in San Francisco, says "Older individuals can outperform younger people on tests of intelligence that are based on accumulated knowledge and experience."
What other strengths does an 80-year-old possess cognitively?
Swope cites Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist and author, who noted that some aspects of memory actually improve with age. "For instance, our ability to extract patterns, regularities and make accurate predictions improve over time because we've had more experience," Levitin notes.
'Cognitive Super Agers' 
Swope refers to a whole category of octogenarians as "cognitive super agers" who show minimal or no age-related mental decline. "They have thicker brain regions associated with memory, as well as other advantages," he suggests. These advantages are based on "genetic factors, education, medical treatment, beneficial living arrangements and good relationships."
"They have thicker brain regions associated with memory, as well as other advantages."
Demographically, of people aged 80 to 89 in the U.S., about 24% show signs of early dementia, Swope noted, which means 3 of 4 octogenarians are mentally capable, to varying levels.
Then why do we hear and read constantly about people in their 80s suffering from mental and cognitive lapses? Swope attributes these fallacies to old-fashioned "stereotyping and an ageist prejudice. As with other forms of stereotyping, it's an unsupported generalization that makes it impossible to perceive the actual mental abilities of an individual." 
Swope says many octogenarians shine at performing "comprehensive overviews and tasks which require a great storehouse of information."
Research has found that "there is little, if any decline, in older ages, in knowledge and crystallizing intelligence," explains Yochai Shavit, the director of research at the Stanford Center on Longevity, a research center that works with 150 Stanford University faculty on opportunities created by increased longevity. 
Many octogenarians supplant younger people in cognitive testing with regards "to bringing their knowledge, experience and context into specific situations to make wise decisions." 
People in their eighties who have "great knowledge and experience in doing something can serve to fill the gap when [the individuals] aren't able to learn quickly," he noted. Fluid learning, which researchers describe as learning new things, tends to "peak by contrast in early adulthood then decline somewhat with advanced age," Shavit says.
According to Shavit, many octogenarians supplant younger people in cognitive testing with regards "to bringing their knowledge, experience and context into specific situations to make wise decisions." 
Indeed many 80-year-olds outperform people 50 and 60 years-old in certain cognitive tests. For example, Shavit mentions a test where people are asked to name as many animals as they can in 90 seconds.  
"Older adults consistently and very robustly outperform college students because they have the richness of their semantic network, the links between words, and the strength of connection between words and concepts that improve with experience," he notes.
Benefits of Being Older 
Shavit noted that researcher Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, has investigated social emotional selectivity theory, which suggests that as people get older, they focus more on remaining in the current moment, which benefits them in several ways. 
"If you have seen one 80-year-old, you have seen one of them. The longer we live, the more different from one another we become."
The many 80-year-olds who are considered "sharp as a tack," in the vernacular, tend to have education, often higher education, in common, and tend to stay cognitively stimulated, challenged and engaged, such as attorneys or professors who work well into their 80s. It's harder by contrast to stay intellectually stimulated with factory jobs or service jobs, Shavit adds.
Swope refers to Brooklyn-based Ashton Applewhite, who wrote the book "The Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism." Her research reveals that older adults have easier access to more information, their attention span gradually expands, and because of their worldview and experience, they manage their emotions better than many younger people and are therefore more resilient. 
"[Many] older adults are better at controlling emotions and are better at using emotions to inform important decisions," concludes Swope.
Applewhite is most disturbed by people who lump all 80-year-olds together, thinking that all of them are faltering in their mental ability. In Applewhite's view, "If you have seen one 80-year-old, you have seen one of them. The longer we live, the more different from one another we become."
She refers to considering all 80-year-olds together as a "stereotype, which is ill-informed because we age at different rates. The older the person, the less their age tells about them." 
What's Learned by Experience 
Yet 80-year-olds can fumble to remember a name or confuse one person with another, so why does that happen? Applewhite acknowledges that as people age they "lose some short-term processing ability." But she adds this loss is no precursor to dementia or Alzheimer's. And Shavit notes that 20-year-olds forget names and connections, but aren't lambasted for forgetfulness, another example of sheer ageism.
Asked if octogenarians make better judgments in their decision-making based on their accumulated experience, Applewhite replies, "Some are wise; some haven't learned much along the way. It's all about what you've learned from your experience."
But many 80-year-olds can handle issues in ways that 20-year-olds can't. Octogenarians "have a longer view," Applewhite notes. "They've lived through more things, seen more situations," and don't get bent out of shape by encountering something new. 
Returning for a moment to presidential candidates, Shavit says "Talking about their age as an indication of their capacity to make tough decisions as president is mostly devoid of empirical background. There isn't any scientific reason to believe that just because of your age, you would be any less cognitively vibrant than a younger person is."


The Mental Strengths 80-Year-Olds Possess Might Surprise You

Gary M. Stern

Imagine being in the crowd at a bullfight; the feeling of being terrified for the matador in the ring, worried about what you might see and turning away in fear because you don’t want to experience what’s going to happen next. But if you’re the matador, it’s a different view. It might be a challenge, but the bull is right there in front of you. Or as Ashton Applewhite points out, from that place, “the bull looks different.”
Ashton ApplewhiteApplewhite, Next Avenue’s 2016 Influencer of the Year and the author of a new book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, uses this analogy to describe a new perspective on aging “once you enter the ring.”
At a recent event in Minneapolis, co-presented by Next Avenue and Ecumen, a nonprofit specializing in senior housing services, Applewhite talked about how her view of aging has evolved over the past 15 years, and how, in that evolution, she has found a transformative purpose: to change the conversation about ageism.
After several years on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Applewhite says she became a "full-time activist" in 2017. As she notes, in her goal to ditch preconceptions about aging and re-imagine what aging really is and can be, “I’ve become an Old Person in Training.”
'The Fear of Aging Is Cultural’
Ageism is based on stereotypes and discrimination, and functions as a way to marginalize older adults. People “think” they know how an older adult would or should behave, but in reality, according to Applewhite, “If you’ve seen one 80-year-old, you’ve seen one 80-year-old. We grow more different from one another the older we get.”
Fighting against the messages about aging can be hard to do because they are literally all around us, even within something as simple as America's favorite pastime.
As Applewhite writes in her book: Reluctant to acknowledge a hero's physical decline, fans collude in the pretense that stars who slow, like Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter, who retired at forty with uncommon grace, are simply in prolonged slumps. Denial turns a natural progression into a personal failure.
“The fear of aging is cultural,” notes Applewhite. “There are many societies where older members are venerated. If we don’t challenge the theory that to age is to lose value as a human being, we will continue to internalize a negative message.”
Stop the Stereotypes About Aging
As for the stereotypes surrounding the easy targets of aging, such as memory and appearance, Applewhite says: it’s time for a different approach.
“I used to think the expression ‘senior moment’ was self-deprecatingly cute,” she says. “But when I was in high school and misplaced my keys, I never referred to it as a ‘junior moment.’  Everyone can lose their keys. Memory issues don’t mean dementia.”
Then there is what Applewhite refers to as the lengths people will go in order to duck away from “age shame.”  She says, “Botox, facelifts, the desire to look younger —  all of it is rooted in shame about something that shouldn’t be shameful.”
As Applewhite writes in her book, it's time to move past that attitude: It's embarrassing to be called out as older until we quit being embarrassed about it. Well, I'm not anymore. When someone says, "You look great for your age," I no longer mutter an awkward thanks. I say brightly, "You look great for your age, too!" 
Conversation with Ashton Applewhite
In an interview with Next Avenue following the presentation, Applewhite went into more detail about discrimination, multi-generational friendships and age equity.
As Applewhite has been talking about ageism, she’s been struck by how some men approach the topic differently than women do.
“I’m starting to get push-back from white men who say I’m not generous enough or nice enough to white guys,” she says.
She mentioned an exchange she recently had with a man who had heard an NPR interview Applewhite gave while promoting her book and then sent her an email. He took exception to her suggestion that “white men are seldom discriminated against except by ageism and [her assertion] that ‘it pains me to defend white men’… it sure seems like she is trying to say that because of the color of my skin and my gender that she doesn’t need to know anything else about me to determine what I am like.”
In her reply, Applewhie wrote that she stood by her claim that ageism is the first form of discrimination many men encounter, adding that the second comment was more “tongue-in-cheek” but that she stood by it.
“Every woman on the planet is oppressed by sexism, every person of color by racism, every woman of color by both sexism and racism,” wrote Applewhite. “The path to power and visibility grows steeper when we add homophobia, ableism, and other prejudices to the mix. The path for white men is the least steep, which is why I advocate for those on the margins.”
‘We are Olders and Youngers Simultaneously’
Applewhite notes that friendships with people of all ages are another tool to combat ageism.
“People you’ve known all your life are going to die, and that’s why it’s so important to have younger friends,” she explains. “We are olders and youngers simultaneously — being friends with older people also makes younger people less afraid of aging.”
According to Applewhite, making those connections can be as simple as finding something you like to do (a sport or a community activity) and finding a mixed-age group with which to do it.
These inter-generational friendships can also help improve the climate around ageism in general, Applewhite says. “Older women can be resentful,” she admits. “As it is now, women ‘compete’ to stay young, but all that does is reinforce ageism and sexism.”
By a universal embrace of what Applewhite calls "age equity," there's a potential for fewer divisions to exist among people.
“Youth and age are different. We need to acknowledge and respect the differences without organizing them into silos,” she says.
To that end, Applewhite has started employing a simple response to the question about age that she learned from someone when she was on tour for This Chair Rocks. 
“When somebody asks you how old you are, say ‘I was born in 1952’ [as she was] because the questioner won’t know the answer immediately,” she says. “People profit from our insecurities, but they can only do it if we agree to their terms.”
Old School: Resources to Fight Ageism
In addition to raising awareness about ageism via her book and her blog, This Chair Rocks, Applewhite was a team leader on the curated site, Old School, which launched in August, 2018 and offers a wealth of information on websites, campaigns, individuals and organizations leading the charge against ageism. Just a few examples: Senior Planet, Aging for Life,  The Age of No Retirement, National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, and Next Avenue.
“Old School belongs to all of us. All of the information, except the books, is free. It’s been especially exciting to see the growth of anti-ageism campaigns — and there are lots of them,” she says.
All of this is to say that when it comes to ageism, Applewhite says with a smile, “This isn’t my delusional teapot. This is really happening all around the world.”
Look for an excerpt from This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism on Next Avenue in July.


Ashton Applewhite and Her Manifesto Against Ageism

Julie Pfitzinger

Ashton Applewhite, the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Aging, wants us to "dismantle the dread" about growing older and start recognizing that aging is not a disease to be cured.
Recently, Applewhite has taken her message to a worldwide stage by speaking at the annual international TED Conference in Vancouver in June 2017,
Next Avenue readers may be familiar with Applewhite, our 2016 Influencer in Aging of the Year. She consistently challenges people to recognize and rise up against ageism, which she calls the "last socially acceptable prejudice." In this engaging TED Talk, she calls on the world to recognize ageism, stop making disparaging quips about our own “senior moments” and pitting our current selves against our future selves.
Applewhite told Next Avenue in an interview last fall that now is the time to build a movement against ageism and to do it right.
"Since we’re at the very beginning of this movement, we have an incredible opportunity to make it truly inclusive, to try and ensure that no one, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status — all of these things — is left out of this conversation. Everyone ages, after all," she said.
Watch her TED Talk here.


Want to End Ageism? Start by Watching This TED Talk

Shayla Thiel Stern

Old School is the useful and illuminating website for all things anti-ageism, created in 2018 by Next Avenue's Influencer in Aging Ashton Applewhite and two fellow activists. Want to know what the World Health Organization is doing about ageism? It's there. Interested in what steps Australia is taking to change that conversation? Check out the Campaigns tab.
Old School creator Ashton ApplewhiteOld School: Thinking Big
Now, thanks to an anonymous donor from the tech world, Old School has received a three-year grant to expand its offerings as a clearinghouse for anti-ageism resources.
She's excited that "a global movement to dismantle ageism is underway."
"The grant is enabling us to think big and to dream," says Applewhite, 68. "We have a lot of ideas in the hopper, and we're excited." Her Old School co-founders helping expand Old School are Kyrié Carpenter, 35, and Ryan Backer, 32. The grant will pay for their salaries and for a web developer. 
"People need to have a sense of age discrimination as a problem that we can come together and do something about," says Applewhite.

The Old School clearinghouse — whose goal is to make discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of prejudice — is one way that Applewhite, Carpenter and Backer are helping others learn about ageism and take action against it.
Ashton Applewhite Takes on Ageism
Applewhite has been preaching the gospel of equality for older adults for years, through her book "This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism," social media and a TED Talk that just made journalism site Stacker's list of 50 essential civil rights speeches.
The Old School clearinghouse pulls together online tools, books, blogs and papers, campaigns, podcasts, speakers, videos, organizations and COVID-19-related resources on anti-ageism. Everything, except the books, is free. And they're all vetted for quality by Applewhite, Carpenter and Backer.
"We consider the current version to be Old School 3.0," Applewhite says. Coming up: a webinar resource category and, Applewhite hopes, "taking down the COVID section not too long from now."
Carpenter, who attended graduate school to become a therapist and worked in a long-term care space with people with dementia, says: "When we started the site there were no anti-ageism campaigns. Now we have thirty-three. The movement is underway; we're definitely making progress."
Much of the Old School work is behind the scenes — "like creating consciousness-raising sessions, interactive presentations and our about-to-be-released guide to starting a consciousness-raising group around the intersection of ageism and racism, "Ageist? Racist? Who, Me?" says Applewhite.
She's excited that "a global movement to dismantle ageism is underway," noting that the body of evidence for it wouldn't exist without Old School.
"Imagine if the women's movement had had a central repository of vetted resources, best practices and ways to meet and learn from fellow advocates," says Applewhite.
She's enthusiastic to see that younger people are joining up with older ones to combat ageism.
An Intergenerational Campaign
"We need older and younger people to join forces if we are going to deal with the wicked problems facing humanity. Prejudice operates to pit us against each other. It's unhelpful and divisive. We do not need to add age to the mix," says Applewhite.
To combat ageism in our daily lives, Carpenter (who's also managing editor of ChangingAging) says, we can start by noticing when we characterize a situation as "young" or "old" as in, "I'm too old to mountain bike anymore."
"We don't actually mean chronological age. We mean the culture would not accept it," Carpenter says. "If we don't unpack it, it becomes a stereotype."
Backer, who studied gerontology in college and has facilitated anti-ageism workshops around the world, recommends interacting with people of all ages to help curb ageism.
"For me, it's also doing the uncomfortable work of understanding how I've been conditioned to be ageist," they said. 
Old School offers a ready-made presentation on ageism, similar to those sexual harassment and discrimination workshops many employers have for their workforce.
"We helped to start the Age Equity Alliance, which is changing workplace culture at large," Backer says. "But for an individual facing this struggle [at work], I would recommend Patricia Barnes' book 'Overcoming Age Discrimination in Employment: An Essential Guide for Workers, Advocates & Employers,' as well as her blog, which is on the Old School site, Age Discrimination in Employment."
Applewhite's excited about what Old School will teach in the future. "Social change is slow, not sexy, and we're in it for the long haul," she says. 
If you have an ageism-related resource you'd like to contribute to Old School, there's a form on the Old School site for submissions.


Old School: The Go-To Site for Anti-Ageism

Alix Boyle

Yes, I'm weary of the endless talk about the age of presidential candidates. Yes, much of it is ageist. But I'm not sorry it's taking place. Here's why:
President Joe Biden at the White House, April 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. It's making far more people aware of ageism than ever before
"Ageism certainly is on everyone's radar these days," a friend remarked last week. No kidding! We have the conversation about Biden's age to thank. No matter who's doing the talking, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum, people are acknowledging the ageism inherent in asking whether someone's "too old" to hold office. That's huge! Because ageism has gone largely unexamined until recently. Because most bias is unconscious. Because change requires awareness.
It's teaching people to distinguish between age and capacity
Another benefit of the conversation about octogenarian officeholders is that it's teaching people to distinguish between age and capacity. Age-related decline is real, but it affects each person in different ways and at different rates. That's why geriatrician Louise Aronson and countless other experts on aging — ten of whom weigh in here — recommend focusing on cognitive and physical health instead of age when evaluating leadership ability. 
"Ageism is certainly on everyone's radar these days." 
Decoupling age from competence also separates ageism from ableism: prejudice around physical and mental capacity. Lots of younger people are disabled, and the vast majority of older people are not. When we lose sight of that, we reinforce dual stigma.
It's not going away — for legitimate reasons
The ongoing discussion about the age of political candidates isn't stopping anytime soon. Earlier this month it ramped up to a fever pitch when the Department of Justice declined to prosecute President Biden for his handling of classified documents. The special counsel went on to call Biden a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" who had "diminished faculties in advancing age." Ouch! Biden didn't like it. Neither did the progressive commentariat, which cried foul.  
Decoupling age from competence also separates ageism from ableism: prejudice around physical and mental capacity.
Let's get a couple of things straight:  
·  It's not ageist to call Trump and Biden old. They're old! 
·  It is ageist to call someone "too old" for a job. Plenty of youngers aren't up to a given task. Plenty of olders are qualified. Age-based assumptions are as harmful and ignorant as racial or gender stereotypes.
·  It's ableist to shame people for memory lapses, as special counsel Robert Hur did.
·  The conversation shouldn't center age. It should center capacity.
Age and ability are different. That distinction is fundamental. The current discourse conflates the two, making it far harder to get to the heart of the matter: is the person mentally and physically up to the job? That's why questions about candidates' competence are completely legitimate. Voters are entitled to be informed about the health of the people who represent us. 
Testing is not the answer. Even doctors have a hard time assessing cognition. No test is neutral.  Biden is better at legislating than campaigning. Trump is the reverse. How to evaluate those skills and deficits? How to compare the results? 
Let's See Strengths in Action 
Team Biden vehemently maintains that the President's strengths as a diplomat more than compensate for his shortcomings as a debater. Let us see those strengths in action. More media appearances. (He's held fewer press conferences and given fewer interviews than any president since Reagan.) More events. (Biden did Super Bowl interviews in 2021 and 2022. This year's game had an estimated 123.4 million viewers.) 
Brushing voters' concerns under the rug, or dismissing them as ageist or as partisan, does no one any favors.
The Biden team says this is a strategy. If so, as journalist Ezra Klein points out, it's more of "a strategic adaptation to Biden's perceived limits as a candidate." For better or worse, Biden has to win an election in order to remain head of state. No matter how qualified he may be to hold the job, it's not ok to shut down discussion of whether he can get the job.
A world leader needs to be able to communicate. Voters can forgive a stutter. Silence, not so much. Brushing voters' concerns under the rug, or dismissing them as ageist or as partisan, does no one any favors. It makes it harder to challenge ageism and ableism on legitimate grounds. It's not good for democracy. 
If Biden's candidacy fails because people think he's "too old," don't blame age. Blame ageism. Blame ableism. Blame capitalism: a culture in which people are either employed or worthless. Blame an appearance-obsessed culture that values speed over substance and entertainment above all. But don't blame age. 


We Can't Shut down the Conversation About Biden's Age. That's Fine With Me.

Ashton Applewhite is on a mission to dismantle ageism: both the discrimination we face and the kind we inflict on ourselves when we internalize negative myths and stereotypes. Sexism and racism no longer get a pass, she points out; isn’t it high time to make discrimination on the basis of age just as unacceptable?
Read her new book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, check out her blog “Yo, Is this Ageist?” or catch her giving a live talk, and you won’t feel the same about comments like, “You look great for your age.” You could also read the Next Avenue article about her one-woman show, This Chair Rocks. You’ll find yourself picking up her sticky phrasing, like swapping "olders" (as opposed to "youngers") for "seniors," a term no one actually likes. (Below is a short video of Applewhite, 63, talking about why this language works well.)
A pioneer in the nascent anti-ageism movement, Applewhite has plenty of suggestions for how to re-envision the years ahead and work together towards an all-age-friendly world — such as increasing opportunities for civic engagement, training people for longer working lives, including olders (can’t help myself there) in clinical trials and incentivizing more people to go into geriatrics. She is the kind of charismatic leader that movements need — armed with cold hard facts, snappy comebacks and creativity — like dying her hair white in a statement of “age pride.”
Applewhite’s book will be published on March 15. We chatted over email as she prepared for the release. Highlights:
What's your advice to those who hit a milestone birthday — usually the ones starting with 50 — and feel increasingly invisible, irrelevant and written off by a youth-infatuated culture?
Ashton Applewhite: If only it started at 50! Women freak out at being “over the hill” at 30 and guys in Silicon Valley have plastic surgery at 40 — God forbid they look like they have two kids and a mortgage! My advice is to think about what it actually feels like to be that age, and compare the experience to the way it’s portrayed in the culture — in birthday cards, for example. What I hear over and over—and it’s certainly true to my experience at 63 — is that these decades trump our insecure 20s and stressed-out 30s in so many ways. Why allow ourselves to be bushwhacked by needless dread?  Why not draw comfort and strength from the evidence all around us that older people have plenty to say and to contribute?
We can’t stop aging, even if we wanted to. What we can change is the way we feel about it — the first step in any revolution. Then we can begin to see where those ageist messages come from, and the commercial and political purposes they serve. Then, we can work together to dismantle the last socially sanctioned prejudice, as we have with racism and sexism and homophobia.
Your book cover isn't just a great-looking piece of abstract art. What were you trying to capture there? We gave brilliant designer and friend Rebeca Mendez a tough commission: Come up with a cover that feels warm and human but also sharply political. And will jump out at readers from a crowded bookstore window. She was scratching her head until my partner suggested the book’s epigraph as inspiration. It’s a quote from writer Anne Lamott: “We contain all the ages we have ever been.” Rebeca’s painting beautifully captures that idea.

An ageist society aspires to “agelessness,” an artificial and unattainable goal that strips us of our years. I love the way the cover represents the opposite, which I call “agefulness” — a rich accretion of all the things we’ve done and been, stored within our bones and brains, that makes us who we are.
Tell us how an anti-ageism campaign can be a public-health initiative.
Every few weeks there seems to be a new story about how attitudes towards aging affect the way older minds and bodies function — at the cellular level. People with more positive views of aging do better on memory tests, walk faster and are more likely to fully recover from severe disability. And they actually live an average of seven and a half years longer. Those who think of aging as illness and decline, on the other hand, are less likely to seek healthcare or to exercise, and they die earlier.
We also know that some people seem to escape cognitive decline well into their 90s and beyond.  What do they have in common? A positive attitude toward aging, and a sense of purpose. We don’t know how to define Alzheimer’s, let alone cure it, so preventive measures make sense:  helping older people stay engaged and purposeful. What's the biggest obstacle? The pervasive ageism that sidelines and segregates older member Americans, making it infinitely harder to find meaning and purpose in late life.
Health has the biggest effect on how we age — and how much it costs. Better attitudes toward aging, better health. Think what a national anti-ageism campaign would do to extend not just the lifespan but the 'healthspan' of all Americans.
You say the time is ripe for a radical anti-ageist movement. What kind of actions are you suggesting?
I’m asking people to wake up to the ageism in and around us, embrace a more nuanced and accurate view of growing older, cheer up and push back. What ideas about aging have each of us internalized without even realizing it? How do they play out across our lives — from boardroom to bedroom, in muscle and memory — and what changes inside us once we perceive these destructive forces at work? What might an age-friendly world — friendly to all ages, that is — look like? What can we do, individually and collectively, to provoke the necessary shift in consciousness, and catalyze a radical age movement to make it happen? My book lays out a blueprint.
If this new movement had a slogan, what would it to be?
Age pride! Age pride is for dissed teenagers and dismissed olders and everyone in between. Age pride is for Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, who said, 'We must be proud of our age,' and who, if she’d lived long enough, would have beaten me to 'Occupy age!' — my other favorite slogan. Age pride is for everyone who refuses to regret waking up a day older, who acknowledges long life as the privilege it is, and who is prepared to challenge the power structures that underlie all discrimination. We are all aging. Everyone benefits when we make common cause against oppression. Age pride is for everyone.


How to Swap Ageism for Age Pride

Marci Alboher

Ashton Applewhite, our 2016 Influencer of the Year, dares you to tell her she "looks good for her age." She practically begs the cheeky shop clerk to say, “Can I help you, young lady?”
For Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, longtime blogger, and voice of the "Yo, Is This Ageist?" blog, these are teaching moments. After all, she is at the forefront of a new movement — a revolution, really — that challenges all of us to examine the ageist stereotypes and language that have gone unquestioned in American culture until now. This past fall alone, Applewhite has addressed the United Nations as a keynote speaker on the International Day of Older Persons, published a buzzy op-ed in the New York Times and spoke to a dozen audiences at conferences and book-signing events about her work.
We believe her writing and speaking has, in fact, sparked this revolution, and that ageism affects the mission of every influencer on this list. That’s what makes her our choice for 2016 Influencer of the Year.
Next Avenue:  Mass movement, culture change, social justice — you use these words when you talk about ageism and what to do about it. What does this movement look like?
Applewhite addresses the United Nations as a keynote speaker on International Older Persons Day in October 2016.Ashton Applewhite:  A movement takes millions of faces and voices. My book is a manifesto, which is a call for social change and as such, it’s up for appropriation.
Even if all the readers of my book do is reflect upon their own experiences with aging, and as a result think a little bit differently about it, that’s huge. Only a small percentage is going to take the next step, which is to think about where all the negative messages about aging come from and what purposes they serve, and to seriously question them. And then only a few of those people are going to take that change outward into the world.
But everyone is aging, so the number of people who are open to thinking about this is enormous, and that’s the base of a movement. They could be butchers, they could be astronauts, they could be young and they could be old. Ageism cuts both ways and affects everyone, which is fundamental.
What will the revolution look like? I think the best model is probably the women’s movement, which was catalyzed by consciousness-raising. Women came together and started comparing notes, and realized that feeling depressed — or oppressed — wasn’t a personal problem. It was a widely shared political problem that required collective action. So I’m going to guess this movement will assume some of that form, although we have a lot to learn from all the movements that preceded this one.
Since we’re at the very beginning of this movement, we have an incredible opportunity to make it truly inclusive, to try and ensure that no one, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status — all of these things — is left out of this conversation. Everyone ages, after all. Ageism intersects with and compounds all other forms of discrimination. The flip side is that when we make the world better to grow old in, we also make it a better place to have a disability, to be gender-nonconforming, to be non-white, and so on. Ageism is the perfect target for collective advocacy. That’s very exciting.
Ageist messages seem to be ubiquitous once you start noticing them, but where do they originate?
Well, you can’t monetize satisfaction. If aging is a problem, then they can sell us stuff to “fix” it. Who gets to say that wrinkles are ugly? The multibillion-dollar skin care industry is who.
Worse than making aging a problem is making aging a disease. You see this in the medicalization of normal changes—like perimenopause, like lower testosterone, like mild cognitive impairment, if there even is such a thing—which are pathologized so they can sell us stuff to "cure" these natural transitions.
It’s very compelling when people cop to being ashamed of aging. That shame comes from an external culture that wants to convince you that there’s a “right” way to age, which is basically to deny that it’s happening, and try and conceal its effects. What if you swap that age shame for age pride? That allows you to see that you're not failing at anything. If you wake up in the morning, you’re aging “successfully.” Aging is an accomplishment.
But by its sheer numbers, the baby boom generation should be able to call out and stand up to ageism in a way that previous generations couldn’t, right? Or at least demand better treatment by the advertising industry?
The baby boom, by the virtue of our sheer demographic clout, is going to change things. I’m dead center, at 64, and I think we’re finally acknowledging that we’re going to get old. (P.S. it’s already happening.) But I also think that as the healthiest, best-educated and historically most fortunate generation in history, there’s a lot of denial going on.
We don’t look and act the way our parents and grandparents did at our age, and I think there’s a lot of wishful thinking that somehow we’re going to slip the noose entirely. I think that’s a lot of what’s powering the aging in place movement — which should really be called ‘staying in place,’ because aging is lifelong — the idea that we can somehow keep on living the way we always have. It makes a lot more sense to acknowledge the inevitability of change and plan to grow old in community, wherever that community ends up being.
Bill Thomas (one of your last year’s Influencers, and I’m a huge fan) has a beautiful phrase in his book, Second Wind: the “tyranny of still.” It describe the notion that long as we’re still running, or still driving, or still dating younger people — we all have our stills —we can stop the clock. As if that would be a good thing! Why on earth do we celebrate the all-important ability to change and grow through life until we hit late middle age? Why should the measure of “successful aging” become how much like younger versions of ourselves we can still move and look like?  It’s a punitive and stupid metric and we’re doomed to fail.

Are there larger cultural or public health consequences related to ageism? 
We know, thanks in large part to the work of Becca Levy at Yale [a 2016 Influencer in Aging], that attitudes towards aging affect how minds and bodies function at the cellular level. When I first learned a number of years ago that the brains of people who were cognitively sharp to the end could be riddled with Alzheimer’s-type plaques and tangles, I had a hard time believing it, but it’s true. What did those people have in common? They had a sense of purpose. They were engaged in life. They never bought into the stereotypes that getting older means becoming useless, or incompetent, or helpless. We know that people with positive attitudes towards aging have better memory, they walk better, they’re more likely to recover from disability. Becca did a hallmark study that shows they live an average of 7 1/2 years longer. And they live better.
Whether you’re progressive or conservative, whether you love old people or hate old people, everyone agrees that the biggest factor that affects how well we age — and how much it costs — is health. So if attitudes about aging have a measurable effect on physical and mental function, how about kicking off an anti-ageism campaign as a public health initiative? And while we’re at it, when kids in elementary school are learning about sexism and racism, why don’t we teach them about ageism?
You feel that people of all ages should learn to recognize ageism and learn to combat it — not just the older people who experience more of it.
Ageism casts a shadow across our whole lives. I urge people to become an “old person in training,” and the sooner the better. It’s just a mental trick, a way of connecting empathetically and imaginatively to your future self, at whatever remove you’re comfortable with. It’s a way of getting off the hamster wheel of age denial, or, ideally, not getting on it in the first place.
The earlier sooner we make that leap, the sooner our lives are stripped of the reflexive dread that makes aging in America so much harder than it has to be. You glimpse the territory ahead with an open mind, and you’re off and running. I think that’s powerful.


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