"Show Me the Doll That Looks Like You"

 

Tracey Gendron, gerontologist, professor and author of “Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It” says it best: “even the most well-intentioned efforts to educate people about age are often misleading and damaging.”

Here are two examples of damaging effects that well-meaning people can inflict on their audiences.

From a website advertising educational resources for Sisters: “As we age, it is expected that we will lose things – health, independence, loved ones and friends, and even meaning.” (Emphasis mine.)

That “it is expected that we will lose meaning” as we age is a shocking statement, a despairing statement, a damaging statement and totally unfounded. Losing meaning in life is not the natural, developmental state of our later years. But that very concept aligns with the ageist belief that our later years are circumscribed by loss and decline. 

A second example of misguided and incorrect understanding of aging in material marketed to Sisters is a program titled, “From Autonomy to Interdependence”. Now, there are some good points in that title, namely acknowledging that at some time we live in a mode of interdependence. Actually, this is true not only when we are physically or cognitively limited, it is true throughout our life. The obvious examples include depending that the corner convenience store will be open so that I can buy the gas I need to get to work, or remembering the panic many experienced when the grocery store shelves were so empty (especially the toilet paper shelf) during the COVID pandemic.

And about trading autonomy for interdependence – Autonomy, according to the Collins online dictionary “is the ability to make your own decisions about what to do rather than being influenced by someone else, or told what to do.”

So, autonomy has to do with choice. It is one of the domains of quality of life. If we have no autonomy, we have a very diminished quality of life.  With cognitive and/or physical decline, a person may not be as independent as before the onset of these conditions. But the opportunities for autonomy remain. I may not be able to dress myself, but I can choose the dress I would like for another to help me put on. I may not be able to drive to see a dear friend, but I can use Zoom, email, telephone, Facebook, etc. to stay connected with that dear friend. Or I may invite her to come, to do the driving I cannot do.

When we read and unthinkingly absorb phrases such as the two I have indicated here, we are deepening within ourselves the false and negative myths of aging.  As a result, we too would react in the same way those young Black children reacted in The Doll Study when they were asked, at the end of their session, “Show me the doll that looks like you.”

(The narrative about The Doll Study and internalized ageism can be found in the first page and a half of a longer piece I wrote. Find it here:here: