our inner ageist
a
bout a decade ago, at age 60, I had a rude awakening. A frail older woman sat next to me in a restaurant, and I noticed her tattered clothes and dirty hands. She ordered free samples and I felt uncomfortable. My inner dialogue went like this: “She shouldn’t be here at my favorite vegan restaurant. It’s so sad, those wrinkles, that frailty, poverty, and neediness. I’ll never be like that.” I was meeting a hidden, unknown part of myself that was attributing to her what I was denying and rejecting in myself—my own loss of youthful vitality and potential dependency, loneliness, and poverty. In fact, I was projecting onto her a dark image of my future self and deeply disliking what I felt. I was shocked by this new awareness, especially because I had worked and rallied against the other “isms” and stereotypes of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Yet, deep in the hidden recesses of my unconscious, ageism—invisible and insidious—persisted in me. In that moment I became aware of “the inner ageist” in myself and dubbed her “the bag lady.” She personifies the fear of losing everything, being unable
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3rd Act magazine | fall 2021
How Our Hidden Attitudes and Images of Age Shape Our Actual Experience—and What That Means for the Fight Against Ageism by Dr. Connie Zweig to take care of oneself, and ending up abandoned on the streets. And she led me on an unanticipated journey. With ageism, we project our negative fantasies of “old”—ugly, frail, needy, senile—that leads to condescension and stereotyping: “greedy geezer,” “old bat,” “over the hill,” “out to pasture.” And when millions of young people project what they fear about aging onto elders, the latter try to appear and to act as if they are younger. Hence, the epidemic of
anti-aging marketing, advertising, surgery, and hormone replacement therapy. I didn’t know it at the time, but “the bag lady” is an epidemic image within women in our culture. In 2016, Allianz Life Insurance Company did a survey that found that almost half of women respondents said they sometimes fear losing their money and becoming homeless, regardless of income level. So, I was not alone in carrying this hidden figure. www.3rdActMag.com
