"Shut Up, Granny"
Hello, ageism, my old friend.
We’re reminded that we’re dying slowly. Daily. We slather expensive creams on our faces that sting and burn. Strangers probe us with needles and lasers. We cut and fill and give ourselves over to science in hopes that it will rewind the clock, that somehow we’ll crawl back to the crib instead of an open grave. We download apps that draw lines on our faces and furrow our brows, and we laugh and share it with our friends, our young friends, because, my god, this is who we’ll be. And then we circulate articles about how this generation isn’t “aging well,” while this other generation seems to have swathed themselves in time travel, and why not brag that we still get carded at 30?
In an Instagram reel, a guy overlays his photograph over one of the cast of Cheers. Look at how old they look at thirty, he smirks. On one side of his mouth he touts that millennials have achieved the halcyon dream of aging in reverse — while on the other side of his mouth he’s careful to say he welcomes aging.
Well, no, you actually don’t.
As a woman who always looked young, I’m slowly becoming reminded that I have fewer years ahead of me than behind. And while I survived the diet culture of the 80s and 90s, the ways in which women picked one another apart with the precision of surgeon’s scalpel, and how magazine editors and savvy marketers created a heightened fear of the inevitable, I can’t seem to wrap my head around a generation using social media to broadcast how much they loathe age.
On that same Instagram post, someone politely chimes in, challenging the author, and then the swarm. The comments of shut up, granny. You can use a little work. You Gen-Xers look so old. And many other comments too unkind to type — which puts me to thinking that we like our seasoned counterparts compartmentalized.
We love the videos of the ninety-year-old World War II veteran dancing the two step to Too Short. We praise the iconic style of the late Iris Apfel. We seemingly applaud the age diversity of models on fashion runways, while Vogue rightly reminds us that this is all tokenism. A sweet press play that gives the allusion of progress against ageism yet younger generations are quick with the walker and Depends comments. Companies carefully word job descriptions to weed out those over forty because apparently your brain dies after a certain age. Hoards still remind women of a certain age of what they can and cannot wear, and while many appear woke in their politics and pronouns, one thing is clear —
Getting old makes people violently uncomfortable. Old is the mud they sling on aging faces. Youth is the magic totem they desperately clutch in their hands forgetting that even the generations that age well (whatever that means) will wrinkle and die. That it’s an honor and privilege to live a long life. That the lines on one’s face are a constellation of a great life endured and lived.
It’s strange that we spend our teens pining for adulthood. We want to be legal, we want to drink, we want the power adults wield. Our velocity is staggering. And there’s this space of contentment until that morphs into one of resentment. It seems to me that people we adore our grannys and nanas and pop-pops because they’re just so cute, while loathing the space we occupy between a smooth skin and one blemished by time.
Perhaps I’m more aware of this because I am in my late forties and my body is beginning to remind of this fact. But while I spent the greater part of my youth hating myself, I’m finally in a space of acceptance and love. I only wished I could’ve told the younger me this: you should’ve loved more, ached more. That you were strange and beautiful and awake. It took years to arrive at this space, this moment to see my years as a gift. To be grateful to be alive.
But social media and the world would have it differently. They will forever remind us that we’re past our best-by date. We are irrelevant, expired. Sour milk. Rotting fruit. We are not aging well. We are not young. And I don’t know what to do with this hatred, this covert disdain. Only to look at my hands and say you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.
This was originally published on Medium. I’m feeling more inspired to write, in general, lately, so I’m going to roll with it and share all the great stuff here.
Yep. Nailed it!
It's especially obvious at the gym, when the younger generations carefully avoid engaging with me. Even if it's something as benign as asking where the bathroom is, the answer is far more credible when it comes from someone under forty.
Great piece! I look at my wrinkles and gray hair as badges of honour. I've made it through 58 years - that's something to be proud of!