Ageism and Invisibility

Are we victims of the way young people think, act, and feel towards us or the way we think, act, and feel towards ourselves?

I’ve been the victim of ageism.

When I was still working, I showed up for a court reporting freelance assignment and was brusquely dismissed by another reporter who showed up for the same assignment. I withdrew into myself, packed up my equipment, and left the room quietly, feeling marginalized and invisible.

I was twenty-five years old. The other freelancer had decades on me.

That was the only time in my sixty-five years that I have felt disadvantaged or discriminated against due to my age and experience, or lack thereof.

Ageism cuts both ways

I had never heard the word ageism back then, but I hear it often today, always in the realm of how older people feel marginalized or invisible in a youth-oriented society.

But ageism cuts both ways. How often are young people, as an age group, characterized as lacking work ethic and motivation? How often are they perceived by the older generation as being rude and immature? Inexperienced? Naive? Irresponsible? Rebellious? Spoiled? Coddled?

Geez, the kids today.

These stereotypes have been used to characterize young people for generations. Yes, even us, when we were young.

Now that we’re older, we’re stereotyped as set in our ways, cranky, slow, unproductive, physically weak, and mentally incapacitated.

And based on the fear so many express about aging, it seems that we have internalized those stereotypes.

The enemy within

I’m not denying that ageism towards seniors exists, particularly in the workplace, but do we sometimes wrongly ascribe an ageism bias to what really are neutral interactions?

Are our experiences of irrelevance or invisibility always the result of external forces or are we struggling against the enemy within?

A few years back, when I was in my late fifties, I was carrying a suitcase up a subway staircase in Philadelphia. A much younger man offered to help me. As I was having no difficulty with the weight of the suitcase, I thanked him for the offer but assured him I could manage.

Perceived through a negative lens, I could certainly have attributed the young man’s offer as a form of ageism — or sexism for that matter. Did he really think an older woman could not be physically capable of lugging a small suitcase up a flight of steps?

I did not interpret his gesture through that negative lens.

An offer of assistance to anyone at any age in my opinion is merely an act of kindness.

It’s when we stop offering assistance to our fellow human beings that we make them invisible.

Workplace ageism

I’ve been fortunate to have never experienced workplace ageism. The career from which I retired began at age fifty.

I had gone back to college in my late forties for a teaching certificate. I became certified to teach middle school language arts.

Not only was I an older job applicant, but language arts teachers were not in high demand as were those with science or math certifications. There were plenty of us looking for jobs. (This was in 2005, long before the current teacher shortage crisis.)

But I used my age and my experience as a mom of teens to my benefit. I quickly landed two interviews and received two job offers. Irrelevant just because I was older? Clearly not.

Age and experience can be our calling card if we believe in ourselves and our value to society.

Interacting with younger colleagues

During my teaching career, I worked closely with many younger teachers. Professionally, we were on equal footing. Socially, however, it was a different story.

I rarely frequented the staff lounge, preferring to spend my prep period and lunch working at my desk. I did not find my rare attempts at socializing with the younger teachers terribly enjoyable.

I did feel rather marginalized from their conversations. Not because they did not include me, but because I didn’t care to be included. I found discussions about shopping trips, bar hopping, dating, day care problems, and trending social media posts boring.

It was evident in those conversations that the young teachers lacked life experience, were a bit immature, and rather naive.

Oops. Was I guilty of ageism?

Nope. Being of different generations, we were just at different points in our lives, resulting in divergent interests.

I was far more interested in hanging around with people my own age.

Early retirement packages

During the first few years of my teaching career, the district offered early retirement packages targeting teachers at the high end of the pay scale, who, of course, were the older teachers.

Looking at these offers through a negative lens, the district could easily have been accused of ageism. But was it really ageism?

No. It was economics. The most senior teachers were making more than twice the starting salary of a novice teacher. No specific teachers were targeted. Their salaries were. And acceptance of the packages was purely voluntary.

Yet there were those who, having internalized the stereotypes of aging, perceived themselves as being specifically targeted due to their age.

Interestingly, those of us who were a bit younger and didn’t have the requisite number of service years to be eligible for the early retirement packages couldn’t understand the angst of the senior teachers. Those packages were extremely generous and we would have willingly jumped at the offer.

There was no enemy yet within us warping our perception of the good deal that was being offered.

Perception is not reality

Ageism affects how we think, feel, and act not only towards others but, perhaps more importantly, towards ourselves.

If we internalize negative aging stereotypes, we risk having those stereotypes warp our perception of who we are and of how we think others see us.

Don’t let an -ism color your world.

And give the young kids who might ignore you a pass. After all, they’re immature, rude, inexperienced, unmotivated, coddled . . .