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'Old:' such a negative term in our culture! Just think about the terms we use every day: old biddy, old hen, dirty old man, old goat, geezer, old fool, old maid, old fogey, old fart, over the hill, out of date, gomer, finished, querelous, gnarled, crazy, grandma, gramps, out to pasture, down the drain, little old lady.
One has only to look in the greeting card displays to see the common joke of old age. It's pathetic; it's funny; it's to be avoided at all costs. The word 'old' has such a bad connotation that more and more people now refuse to use the word. Instead, they call themselves 'older.' But what exactly does that say? Older than what? It's a relative term: compared to a two-year-old, a three-year-old is 'older!
The media portrays old, especially old women, in a mostly negative way. The late unlamented TV show Golden Girls was an example of playing the old woman for a clown, characterized by many stereotypes. To be fair, there are a few positive roles on the screen, but mostly of very attractive 'young old' women. Men, of course, generally get better treatment.
Looking at popular magazines, it is difficult to find anyone over the age of 25. Even Modern Maturity magazine pictures the old as white, affluent, heterosexual and aged around 50 or so!
It is hard to have a good youth and a good life when the future looks so grim, is so dreaded - and looms ever closer. Think about it: the average life span of a person in the United States is about 76 years. When we define old age as beginning at 40 (yes, 40, and even 35: look at the greeting cards that pity the 40-year-old as 'over the hill'), it means that for the average man or woman, they will be defined as old for almost half of their life. And everyone knows they had better live it up for the first half, because the last half is going to be pretty bad.
Other stages in life lead one to look forward to the next. A child can't wait to 'grow up;' one looks forward to Junior High, then Senior High, then college, finding a significant relationship, children, and 'making it' in the so-called real world. So why do we dread the next phase, the phase in which we get to use all of our earlier experiences and hard-gained knowledge? Why does our society tell us to live life to the fullest when we are young, but expect that will all be negated when we get old?
Let's face facts - it is actually pretty hard getting old! Going through the problems, the failed relationships, the mistakes, and the regrets do not make the process easy. How much better off we would be if we looked to being old as the time when we benefit from some of those hard lessons we learned while we were getting old!
Since we all will get 'older,' and the alternative isn't so great, it is time to reclaim the word. Actually, it is past time for us who are old to stand up and say "I am old" and say it proudly. It is time to refuse to buy demeaning cards or to patronize stores that sell them. It is time to stand up and get 'bloody minded' (thanks to Alex Comfort for the term) and confront ageist remarks and actions.
Lesbians have taken the word 'dyke' for their own and found it can no longer hurt. By using the word 'old' - not 'older' - ourselves, we take the word for our own. We can take the word and make it ours - proudly. By using the word 'old' with pride and self-respect, we can make it a symbol of attainment, not one of losses and loathsome remarks.
