Welcome to
Going Over 60
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If you're age 60 or approaching that passage, this site's for you.
The idea came to me when I kept reading and hearing about people in
their early sixties described as "elderly" in newspapers and on local
TV news broadcasts.
If the pundits who report our news and shape public opinion think we're old,they can influence the public to follow suit.
But if I have a say in the matter, that's not going to continue.
And Im sure there are plenty of you out there who feel the same way.
So with your support, Going Over 60 will serve these purposes. It will provide
- A platform for changing perceptions and dissolving myths about age and aging
- Advocacy and information for those of us over 60 who
are still working and confronting age discrimination--both in the
workplace and in seeking work
- A sounding board for you. A place where you can sound off, share your opinions and observations on life over 60
I hope you find this site interesting, relevant, and most important,
useful. If there's any topic you think we ought to cover or
investigate, please drop us a line at goingover60@gmail.com
We'd like to hear from you.
Thanks for stopping by.
Fran De Long
Editor, Going Over 60
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Don't call me
elderly
An item in a New York City newspaper recently described a 63-year-old woman as "elderly."
Elderly?
I beg your pardon.
Elderly sounds frail and dependent. Elderly is old.
Elderly is definitely not me.
I'm over 60, and my life follows pretty much the same patterns it did
when I
was in my fifties and forties. I relish having dinner out with friends,
an occasional movie, a day at the MoMA and a night at the Met.
And I'm still working, forgoshsake. Not just because I need to
keep busy. I need to pay the bills. I'm still refurbishing
my wardrobe and furnishing my apartment. I plan to fly to Seattle
later this year. And that all takes money--much more than the
leftovers from my Social Security check after I pay the rent, which is
zip.
Someone once asked Gloria Steinem how it felt to be sixty. She replied, "It feels a lot like fifty."
Exactly. At sixtysomething I still have the same interests and
same lifestyle I've always had. Nothing much has changed, except
that I've gotten--well--
older.
But adding a few more digits to my age has transformed me, in the eyes
of the media and the marketing mafia, into someone outside the
mainstream of American life. I've slipped from the comfort zone
of "Us" into the twilight zone of "Them"--you know, those old folks
shuffling about outside the 18-to-54 demographic, peering in at the
majority presumed to be the only ones still fully engaged in living.
The group dismissively lumped under the rubric "elderly" once they
cross the great divide between 59 and 60.
I've watched earlier generations march reluctantly yet somehow
dutifully into that zone, accepting their fate as senior (read:
second-class) citizens, a demographic largely ignored except by the
peddlers of Depends and denture adhesives and funeral-coverage
insurance.
Well, I don't intend to follow in their footsteps. Nor, I suspect, do
most of the 24 million Boomers over 50 and approaching the big six-oh.
Imagine calling Jack Nicholson elderly. Or Susan Sarandon. Or Paul McCartney.
It's time to redefine age and aging in America. Sixty in the twenty-first century just ain't what it used to be.
Sixty was "elderly" in the 1930s, when most people didn't live much
past age 65. Back then, over 40 was over the hill. But today, we're all
living much longer. I thought everyone knew that--especially media
people.
Thanks to better nutrition and health care, life expectancy in the U.S. now extends to 77.6 years. Millions of Americans
are living well into their eighties and nineties.
I doubt any of them want to spend the last quarter or third of their lives consigned to elderlyhood.
So it's time for all of us to readjust our thinking about what constitutes "middle age," "old" and "elderly."
We've heard the admonitions to take better care of our bodies. Millions
of health- and aging-conscious people, it appears, have gotten the
message. They exercise, they play tennis, they power-walk. They take
vitamins and enzymes and hormones. They slather on sunscreens and
retinol creams. Every day I see women in their forties who look thirty,
men in their fifties who look forty.
Today's 40-year-old is still young, and someone edging 50 is--maybe--approaching middle age.
So why not ratchet back each decade's perceived age by ten years?
You've heard it already. Forty is the new thirty. Fifty is the new
forty.
And sixty is the new fifty!
Maybe one day we won't have to couch that idea in "the new" verbiage.
We'll simply say "sixty" and people will think of that age as vital and
vibrant, released from the gray mantle of advancing senility and
fragile health.
Many Boomers in their fifties and sixties today were the freethinkers and
rebels of the 1960s and '70s. Those attributes are still part of their
character.
Does anyone really believe that the activists who marched for civil
rights and against the Viet Nam war would walk meekly into the sunset
now that they're pushing 60?
I don't think so. Not the generation that spawned rock 'n' roll and
turned bluejeans into a global phenomenon. Not the kids collectively
dubbed "The Youth Culture" because their influence as a generation was
so groundbreaking, so explosive and pervasive it impacted everything
from music and fashion to politics and sex.
So listen up, all you advertisers and editors and TV news anchors. Our
presence--and spending power and voting power--still pack a powerful
punch. And we're not going anywhere anytime soon. All we ask is that
you understand this--and respect it.
And whatever you do, don't call us elderly.
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Media watch
Old Hat
Calling 60-plus "elderly" is so Old Hat
Keep an eye on
your local newspaper, your favorite magazines and TV shows. Are
any of them calling anyone 60-plus "elderly"?
If so, please let us know. We're keeping tabs on media that are broadcasting "yesterday's news" on this subject.
You can contact us by e-mail at goingover60@gmail.com or at a P.O. Box which will be active shortly.
Please include
the name and date of the publication where you read it. Better
yet, send a clipping with the publication's name and the date it
ran. If you heard it on TV or the radio, just send the station
name, the channel or radio-dial number, the program name, and the date
you heard it.
We'll put the item in our Old Hat Gallery of Yesterday's News. If we call attention to their outdated thinking, maybe they'll think twice before they put that annoying label on us again.
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