Are You Afraid of Ageism?
Whoa! This book "How Not to Look Old" that I talked about a couple of weeks ago has apparentlly taken the NY Times bestseller list by storm. (Disclosure: I have not read it, nor do I intend to, because it is one of those books that's "in the air" and I feel I already know what's in it.) The difference between this book and any other beauty book is that this one's aimed at working women who want to look young not for any personal reason, but because they need to keep their jobs or advance their careers.
I must confess I feel their pain. I had my eyelift done twenty years ago because I thought I looked tired, and that was not a good thing for someone in the PR business. Anything I do to look younger, I do because I love to work, and I don't want to be ejected from the work force for the sin of old age.
According to Ms. Krupp, most women can't afford to look old, and now they don't have to. An article in todays NY Times says "indeed, the real trend behind “How Not to Look Old” is the rebranding of aging from biological inevitability to outmoded lifestyle option." Do you know what the title of the article is? "Nice Resume. Have you Considered Botox?"
Eeek. Here's joy Behar, from The View :“The only way to age gracefully in my business is to die young like Natalie Wood or James Dean, but Shelley Winters or Marlon Brando could not get a job on the Food Network right now."
THis is a grim trend. There was a time when a woman could let her hair go gray after a certain age, and stop the diets, skip the gym, or ditch the high heels. No more.
There are actual statistics about how long it takes for a 50-year-old woman to land a job compared to a 30-year old.
"In one study on hiring practices, for example, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied to entry-level jobs in Boston and St. Petersburg, Fla., by sending out 4,000 résumés as a female job applicant; the résumés varied the year of high school graduation, which dated the job seeker as being from 35 to 62.
The study, published in 2005 by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, found that younger women were 40 percent more likely to receive an offer of a job interview than women over 50;"
And Ronnie Bennett, a New York TV Producer who blogs at Time Goes By: What it's Really Like to Get Older has chronicled her experience of being forced into having to leave New York and take early retirement by age discrimination in the TV business. Now Ronnie fights ageism in her blog, and as a chronological sample of photo self-portratis that shows her aging across the top of her site. You can see where she quit coloring her hair and wearing makeup -- about when she left the work force.
Where are we going with this? Surely we all know we will age? Our bodies will one day betray us, no matter what treatments we select. But maybe.....not......just.....yet.
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