Old Women, Aging and Ageism
Barbara Macdonald and Cynthia Rich
Ageist Attitudes
Old Women's Project Video

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This is a book of essays and speeches by feminist lesbian Barbara Macdonald and her much younger partner, Cynthia Rich. Macdonald was 65 decades ago when she began writing about ageism within the women’s movement - the only old woman, she recalls, at practically every event she attended. She focuses an unwavering light on attitudes and behavior that are still the rule among people of every age group.

She was the first to identify ageism as a central feminist issue and to see that young women's alienation from old women, their dread of becoming them, their revulsion towards old women's bodies, is the direct result of a sexist consumer society that falsely empowers youth and disempowers the old. "Your power as a younger woman," she wrote, "is measured by the distance you can keep between you and older women." 

Her observation that trying to look young for as long as possible is the equivalent of “passing” for a minority woman is a shocker - but it is a point well taken. To the extent that we are trying avoid being classified as “old,” we are separating ourselves from a group which is perceived by our culture as powerless, helpless, ugly - and frightening, because the old appear to be closer to death. In reality, of course, death is not something that happens only to the old. We “pass” for younger until it is no longer possible rather than embracing our ages, insisting on being treated the same as when we were 40, and by these powerful actions redefining the cultural perception of what 60 looks like, or how 70 behaves.

Macdonald also foresaw the “professionalization” of the care of older women, the burgeoning studies of gerontology, the whole system of younger people making a living from studying the old - segregating and defining them - rather than befriending them as equals, integrating them into the larger community and allowing them to speak for themselves.

The book is a compilation of essays and speeches – some are repetitive, but Macdonald is always refreshingly straightforward in her thinking and her phrasing, and Rich gives a younger woman's point of view and commentary. This is a good consciousness-raiser.

Real life examples of ageist remarks

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