Pro-Aging: Why the Best is Yet to Come with Ashton Applewhite.
March 25, 2022
Glennon Doyle:
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Once again, we are delighted and baffled that you keep returning to listen to us talk. It’s just a huge surprise and great joy of our life. And another huge joy of our life is aging. We at We Can Do Hard Things are pro aging. We are excited about aging. We are for it. As we discussed on the last podcast, the alternative to aging is death. And also, there’s just so much power and beauty to be found in aging itself. Aging equals best case scenario, okay?
Abby Wambach:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Glennon Doyle:
So, today we are going to celebrate aging because we would like to continue doing it, okay?
Abby Wambach:
Uh-huh (affirmative).
Glennon Doyle:
And so, what I want to start with is this very cool thing, which is that a lot of people ask us about the paintings behind us as we sit on this couch, speaking to you on this podcast. If you want to see the paintings, you can go to our Instagram and check them out. They’re absolutely beautiful. And so, what I want to tell you about these paintings is that the woman who painted them, her name is Mary Ann Flynn-Fouse, and she painted them when she was 80 years old. She’s now 86 years old. She is un-flipping believable.
Glennon Doyle:
She says of, her work, this was her quote when she was 80, “I’m a fan of doing something new. Mentally, I’m still very modern.” So, the art that inspires us each day in our office, and you, as those of you who watch the podcast on our Instagram feed, is made by an 80 year old badass.
Abby Wambach:
So great.
Glennon Doyle:
And so, the theme of this podcast is one thing that I read in our guest today’s book, what 88 year old folk artist, Marcia Muth said, “You are never too old. And it is never too late.”
Abby Wambach:
I feel that.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
It’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
So, to discuss all of this beautiful situation we have, which is getting older, which is for the lucky ones, we have today, Ashton Applewhite, who is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. Ashton Applewhite is a leading spokesperson for the emerging movement to raise awareness of ageism and to dismantle it. A co-founder of the Old School: Anti ageism Clearinghouse, she’s been recognized by the New York Times, the New Yorker, National Public Radio and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism. Ashton blogs at This Chair Rocks is the voice of “Yo Is This Ageist?” And has spoken on the Ted main stage and at the United Nations. Welcome, Ashton.
Abby Wambach:
Yay!
Ashton Applewhite:
Thank you. Good to be here.
Amanda Doyle:
Ashton, on this podcast, we believe that often the thing that screws us up the most is the picture in our head of how things are supposed to be. And it seems that, in addition to individual and structural ageism discrimination, it’s the picture in our head of what aging is that seems to be screwing a lot of us up. And so, we are thrilled that you are here to tell us that picture of aging in our head is wrong. So, can you share with us, what do we get wrong? What are some of the predominant myths and stereotypes about aging that are just simply not true?
Ashton Applewhite:
I’m happy to. I wouldn’t say that anyone’s attitude is wrong, because of course there’re no binaries, and it depends on what your fears are and what your circumstances are of course. Well, the most annoying stereotype about aging is the mother of all stereotypes, which means grouping, thinking of a group as the same, all members of a group are the same. We grow more different from each other as we age. Every newborn is unique. Every 17 year old is different, but they’re way more alike developmentally, socially, cognitively than 37 year olds who are way more alike than 67 year olds and so on out. All stereotypes are wrong and misinformed, but the idea that old people are alike is particularly misinformed. I would say, another really common misconception is that older people are incompetent, that we are not interested in new things, that we’re not creative, as you pointed out about the artist who made those beautiful paintings.
Ashton Applewhite:
My guess is she was creative at four, she was creative at 40, and she’s going to be creative at 90. We don’t turn into some weird thing. We just become more distilled versions of ourselves. It’s why I chose, as the epigraph to my book, a quote by the wonderful writer Anne Lamott, which is that we contain all the ages we have ever been. And so, I would say, back to your question, because we are bombarded, all of us, we all have these ideas inside us, no judgment, but we are bombarded by negative messages about age and aging from childhood on, starting with children’s books and Disney movies. And if we don’t stop to question them, they become part of our identity. And there are real losses. There are genuine things to worry about. I’m not a Pollyanna, but we only hear the negative side of the story. So, I would say that it’s important to acknowledge the things that we gain and the ways that aging enriches our lives in addition to some of the fears and the losses, which likewise, are different for each of us.
Glennon Doyle:
And in your book, you talk about we all think we’re going to end up in a nursing home, but what are the numbers for that?
Ashton Applewhite:
Thank you for asking me that question. I love that. When I gave my Ted Talk four years ago, the percentage of Americans over 65 in nursing homes, not all senior residences, I mean, I would’ve pegged it starting out at 20% or 30%, was 4%. Since then, it has dropped to 2.5%.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow!
Ashton Applewhite:
And it continues to decline. It’s not that our fears aren’t real, it’s that they are so out of proportion to the reality. And that’s a perfect example
Glennon Doyle:
And dementia, right? We all think we’re going to lose our cognitive ability.
Ashton Applewhite:
You stammered there. That’s a very bad sign. That’s what happens. We think, “Oh, crap! I can’t find my keys. Then I’m not going to know my dog by Tuesday.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Ashton Applewhite:
It’s not the case. 10% of the population ends up with Alzheimer’s. That’s according to the Alzheimer’s association. It’s a terrible disease. That’s a big number, but most of them are in their late 80s and 90s. Age is the biggest risk factor. What we don’t talk about though, is that 20% of the population escapes cognitive decline entirely. We all know some of those really sharp 90 year olds, right? And that most of us will lose some processing speeds, the name of the movie you saw with what’s her name, but that is as bad as it gets. For the vast majority of us, you can’t find your keys, you’ll find them in the morning. If you can’t remember what keys are for, that’s a problem. But, guess what? Kids forget things too all the time. And really interestingly our attitudes towards aging affect how our minds and bodies function. And my favorite study, and this is blue chip science done by Becca Levy at Yale University, shows that people with …
Ashton Applewhite:
It’s often framed as positive attitudes towards aging, which I don’t like, because it sounds like “Happy think let’s ignore the scary shit.” People with fact rather than fear based attitudes towards aging are less likely to get Alzheimer’s even if they have the gene that predisposes them to the disease.
Abby Wambach:
Whoa!
Amanda Doyle:
That blew my mind. Let us stop and just really take that in. Ageism is not just wrong because you’re treating older people in a discriminatory way. Actually, by adopting these negative views of aging, you are literally hurting yourself. You are hastening bad outcomes for yourself by thinking badly about aging.
Ashton Applewhite:
You are making yourself more vulnerable to what you fear. Ageism absolutely harms our health in addition to harming our sense of self, our sense of ourselves as competent, as attractive, as employable as socially and economically valuable and on and on and on. And ageism is any judgment on the basis of age, including your too young. And younger people encounter a lot of it, although less than older people, because we live in such a youth obsessed society. So truly, it casts a shadow across our entire lives.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. And it’s almost like the ageism of older people contributes to the ageism of younger people, because when people dismiss older people, we get pissed off, and then we want to just put down the younger people. It’s like an ageism, “I’m rubber, your glue” situation.
Amanda Doyle:
Right. It’s like, “Okay boomers” versus “OMG millennials.” And we’re just battling it out.
Ashton Applewhite:
In my rainbow pony unicorn universe, we would not use generational labels at all. They have no scientific basis. The whole concept of generational warfare was invented by right wing think tanks in the 1970s. I write about all this on my blog, which is free, searchable by topic. So, you can look up the research, or a lot of it’s in my book.
Glennon Doyle:
Was everything terrible created by right wing think tanks in the ’80s?
Ashton Applewhite:
Also, in fairness, journalists love generational labels, and marketers love generational labels, but they have no scientific base. They obviously foster stereotyping as though everyone born between year X and year Y shares the same set of characteristics, when class by far and gender and race and geography have more of an effect on shaping our trajectories through life. But it’s irresistible like click bait, like six annoying things millennials do, and it’s really hard not to click on it. And then, you’re right away in an us versus them mindset that is really counterproductive and divisive and destructive and bad.
Glennon Doyle:
I want to go back to the ideas that we have that are not right, because if we want to change those ideas for many reasons to free ourselves and to free others from these stereotypes, it’s important to actually change our ideas in our head. So, I think a lot of us think, as we get older, we will become less happy because of all of these other factors. So, can you talk to us as another wrong idea we have in our head about the U curve of happiness?
Ashton Applewhite:
You bet. I mean, I didn’t know any of this 15 years ago when I started out researching. And one of the things I encountered really early on was something that’s called the U curve of happiness, U bend if you’re British, which shows that people are happiest in the beginnings and the ends of their lives. And I cannot tell you how skeptical I was. I thought they must have cornered to 80 year olds and given them a cookie and said, “How are you doing?” Then I thought, “Well, it must be true if you’re healthy or if you’re wealthy.” And this data obtains across race, across class, everywhere in the world. And it is a function of the way aging itself affects the brain, the healthy brain, because we get better at not sweating the small stuff and having a longer view.
Ashton Applewhite:
The Stanford longevity center did a study. They started it right before the pandemic, coincidentally, so they had the parameters in place. And they learned that older people, despite being more isolated and obviously at greater risk of dying from COVID, were more resilient simply because they had lived through more stuff and it was easier to imagine getting through it.
Abby Wambach:
Wow!
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so interesting.
Amanda Doyle:
I was looking at that study too, because I saw it referenced in some of your work. And it was interesting the way they described it as we talk about happiness shorthand, but the researchers were using the word savoring, not that there’s just happy joy all the time, but this ability to savor the moments. And it’s as if we would think the closer we get theoretically to death, although it could be tomorrow for any of us, but the closer we get that we would be more afraid of death. But actually, that is the opposite as well, right?
Ashton Applewhite:
It’s counterintuitive. I mean, I love the way you put this, because I remember thinking heading into this, “It’s all going to suck.” And one of the things that’s going to be the most awful, I had this mental image of the shadow of the Grim Reaper stretching across the sad iron bedstead in which the old person cowered. And the anxiety about dying grows less as we get older. Older people don’t want to die. They especially don’t want to die in pain, but they don’t think about it a lot. And as you figured out, I think are intuitive, it relates to that business of living in the present. Kids live in the present because they don’t have the experience or cognitive ability to do anything else. Older people live in the present as a conscious choice.
Ashton Applewhite:
We are more careful about how we spend our time, who we want to spend it with, and are just better at living in the moment. You don’t have to be a Buddhist or a billionaire. Again, it’s just a function of the way it happens for most of us. There are exceptions. My mother in-law used to say she just frankly didn’t believe me. And I would say to her husband, “How’s it going?” He said, “I’m happy.” And she was not so happy. She was not so good at living in the moment. There are always exceptions, but this is how it pans out for the vast majority of people on earth.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so comforting.
Ashton Applewhite:
Getting older is complicated. I was thinking about the title of your podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things,” and how it bumped into one of my least favorite sayings, which is “Old age isn’t for sissies.”
Glennon Doyle:
Way to be misogynistic, homophobic, and ageist all in one sentence.
Ashton Applewhite:
We all get older unless we die, as you pointed out. Although, that phrase, “Old age beats the alternative,” I used to think that, and then I thought, “Wait. What that really means is the only thing worse than being old is being dead.”
Glennon Doyle:
Right. Fair point.
Ashton Applewhite:
But, we all get older. It is a hard thing, but it is a universal thing. And the ways in which we adapt are available to most of us. There are things that help, but they’re not necessarily the obvious thing. For example, the most important component of aging well is not health, which is what I would surely have guessed. And then, I thought, “Well, money, obviously.” It’s having a solid social network.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God! It just keeps coming back to this. For God’s sakes!
Ashton Applewhite:
Where women have an advantage, and that doesn’t have to do with how wealthy you are, right?
Glennon Doyle:
Right.
Ashton Applewhite:
Even how healthy you are. It’s how you are in the world, which is of course the subject of your podcast.
Glennon Doyle:
So, talk to me about that, because that hit us when we were discussing your work. The two predictors of how you will deal with aging are how you feel about aging and your social network, not your genes, not your whatever. So, talk to us about that. Who are these magical people? What type of social network do they have that makes them age whatever? What do you even say? Well, better? How do you age good?
Ashton Applewhite:
I say well, or I try and fudge that one because one person’s old age is different. If you’re an athlete, I’m looking at you, Abby, the loss of physical function is of a specific kind. You may still have great sex, but not be able to run fast or whatever it happens to be.
Glennon Doyle:
She nailed us.
Ashton Applewhite:
For couch potatoes like me, the fact that I can’t kick a soccer ball anymore is not a loss, but for someone else, it is. Again, it’s totally individual. I feel like you know the answer to your question better than I do, because it is really genuinely unique to each of us. Some people want to be around kids. Other people don’t want to. Some people want to be out in nature. Other people don’t care. We may not be able to do all the things we used to do in the same way that we did them when we were young, but we can do versions of them if they’re important to us.
Abby Wambach:
It’s almost like the way that I feel about what you just said is all of us have our specific personal identities, what makes us, us. For instance, you speak to my athleticism. It’s interesting because I feel like the things that make us, us, as we get older, if those things go away, then who are we inside? So, this last year I’ve been dedicating myself to learn how to physically work out that is in a way that is less suffering, and I’m not holding onto the identity of suffering as a form of my own personal sense of who I am, because I do think that as I get older and I start losing some of these capacities, whether it’s being able to run, I mean, I’ve traveled so many miles on my legs, having replacements and all of the things, I have to actually prepare myself for whatever future in terms of the life that I’ve lived, and also the person that I think that I am and the identities that I carry with me. So, it’s really interesting.
Ashton Applewhite:
For athletes and dancers, and there are probably other categories that don’t occur to me, the task is the hardest. There’re only two inevitable bad things about getting older. People you’ve known all your life are going to die, and some part of your body is going to fall apart. So, for people whose identity is bound up in physical accomplishment, that is a really tough task. For people like me who sit and type all the time, that’s less of a task, but I might be more invested in not having wrinkles, or some other component. There’s no component of our identity that aging doesn’t potentially affect, but aging is living, it’s how we move through life. But, I salute you for being proactive and seeing that there will be advantages to training in a different way and relating to your body in a different way. The losses are real, but there are also gains in what you learn about your body, how your body works. And those will pay off for the rest of your life.
Glennon Doyle:
Ashton, you mentioned just now that the things that are inevitable are those two things will change, and then also that we will lose people, people will die, who we love.
Ashton Applewhite:
That we’ve known all our lives.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. We’ve known all life.
Ashton Applewhite:
So, make younger friends.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. That’s good.
Ashton Applewhite:
For real. And that also speaks to something you mentioned about pointing fingers at boomers and millennials. If we have more younger friends, we remember how hard it is to be young.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Ashton Applewhite:
It’s easy to forget that, especially in a culture that bombards you with messages that because you’re getting old, you’re becoming hideous and useless. And especially for women where we have the double whammy of ageism and sexism, that’s so linked to being punished If we appear to visibly age. With younger women around older women, like me, like us, who really enjoy being the age we are and find power and confidence in it, they’d be less afraid of getting older and wake up earlier to how much of our youth we squander on worrying about it.
Glennon Doyle:
Wow! I love that idea that if we hang out with people … Because we segregate ourselves unbelievably, especially in this country.
Ashton Applewhite:
It’s a very age segregated society. We all do.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like we are committed to only hanging out with people who know as little as we do and that’s it, nobody younger, nobody older. But, if we did, we would see each other. I always wonder if that’s why I might have some more joy about getting older because so many people write to me about their lives that I read letters from 20 and 30 year olds constantly. And so, I’m remembering every day, how freaking hard it is.
Ashton Applewhite:
It is.
Glennon Doyle:
And how I wouldn’t go back there for anything.
Ashton Applewhite:
And of the reasons it’s hard is because of this culturally induced brainwashing about how awful it’s going to be, which has no basis.
Glennon Doyle:
Do you know any cultures who are doing it right? Because, we were talking about intergenerational living and how that is such an uncommon thing in American culture. But in fact, that helps people in many ways.
Ashton Applewhite:
Yeah. I mean, contact with people of different ages, it’s pretty hard to hang onto any stereotype if you’re mixing it up with people who embody that stereotype who, guess what?, are all different from each other, and some are jerks and some are great older people. I mean, there are lots of older people that don’t seem to have learned a thing along the way. I bet you’ve learned almost as much from the 20 somethings you deal with as the older side. I don’t think wisdom and aging are coupled. But, as far as doing it right, it’s less a question of cultures. There are cultures, especially everyone looks wistfully eastward when they ask me that question, as that was all great in countries, or I should say cultures, where there is Confucianism, ancestor worship, or indigenous cultures all around the world, in the US as well, where older people are held up and even revered.
Ashton Applewhite:
I will say though, that the world I want to live in doesn’t hold older people as more valuable or less valuable. Cultures like the early United States was a gerontocracy. Older people had all the power, older white men, shocker. And this was a world in which it was not great to be young. You had to wait for your older brothers to die off if you wanted to inherit anything. So, I want a world of age equity where neither older and nor younger people inherit better or more value than the other and we can support people across the lifespan. Living in mixed age communities is absolutely a wonderful thing. We see it more than in different specific cultures. We see it in communities, smaller villages, places where the older people aren’t shunted away or hidden. And people remain in community.
Glennon Doyle:
So, in order to do that, we’d have to get rid of ageism. And I want to talk about what it really is. You’ve said, “Like racism and sexism, ageism is not about how we look, it’s about what people in power want our appearance to mean.” Can you just talk to us about that?
Ashton Applewhite:
That’s an oof worthy idea. All prejudice operates to pit people against each other, every form, whether it’s [Marks’ 00:00:25:19] example of factory workers from different countries. If they’re fighting, then factory owners can continue to exploit them. Same with older workers and younger workers arguing about who’s better. Then employers can fire the old people who have higher salaries and hire younger people who then PS typically quit. And so, there’s much higher turnover, which then old people say, “Oh, those disloyal millennials. Well, guess what? When we were that age, we did the same thing.” It has nothing to do with when you were born, it has to do with the age you are, but that’s an example of really unhelpful generational finger pointing.
Ashton Applewhite:
So, all prejudice, the gender wage gap persists because it’s profitable. Hello, capitalism. And as long as women are arguing about who’s a better mom, if you’re in the paid workforce or you stay home, we’re not joining forces to close the gender wage gap so women can choose whether or not to stay home. And old versus young is just another contrived divide to keep us squabbling and divided so that we don’t join forces against the status quo.
Abby Wambach:
Amen.
Glennon Doyle:
So, it’s political. Everything you just said is political, and it’s also completely rooted in capitalism because aging contentedly does not sell, unless it’s like a pillow company or something.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Ashton Applewhite:
You can’t make money off satisfaction.
Glennon Doyle:
No.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
They have to keep us on this hamster wheel of being scared to death of aging so we will buy their shit that will help us somehow not age. That’s why everything you buy says “Anti-aging.”
Ashton Applewhite:
Yeah. Good luck with that.
Amanda Doyle:
I read that by 2030, it’s going to be a $400 billion industry worldwide.
Ashton Applewhite:
And it’s basically rooted and self-loathing. We all have those moments. I mean, I look in the mirror and sometimes it is like, “What the hell happened?” But then, I think about what did happen. It is a real challenge to question that narrative in a society where every magazine, every billboard reinforces this incredibly artificial expensive elitist, white, thin blonde standard of so-called beauty. And pushing back against it is the work of a lifetime, and it can only be engaged in with others. But, when you start to see the messages and where they come from, and then step back again in referencing your really good question to what purpose they serve, to make us spend money, to make us divide it, to make us walk in the room and think, “Well, she’s had work done. I wonder how old she is,” all that stuff, which we all do. No judgment, but it’s not healthy.
Ashton Applewhite:
It doesn’t serve our own interests collectively or individually. For the purpose of this discussion, which is … And I’m always aware, because the minute we start talking about women’s appearance, we are reinforcing the idea that it’s more important than it should be. But, in this context, a lot of women talk about becoming invisible. If the goal is to be perceived as sexually attractive, look at your friends who are sexually active. They’re not the thinnest, they’re not the prettiest, they’re not the youngest. There are some of the women who listen to this podcast, to what you say about doing the work on yourself, to understand and reach for what is genuinely good for you, and to beat back this idea of a norm. So, what we learn from all those things, what we learn from raising awareness of our own internalized racism or homophobia, those processes are all analogous. If you’re doing work on any of those fronts, they will help you think more holistically and realistically about getting older too.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just like that moment of self hatred, and then questioning it. I have that all the time. And that’s what any prejudice is or ism is, right? It’s like the moment of fear or dislike, or you are different than me, or I don’t like you. That’s your conditioning, fear of other or self is never our truest self. That’s our conditioning. So, instead of going with that knee jerk reaction, it’s questioning it. And with ageism, it’s often in ourselves. I was looking in a mirror the other day and was just noticing that my neck was looking a little bit different, and then was thinking about the Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck book, which made me remember Nora Ephron and made me very happy. But, it’s just that. It was that moment of like, “Oh, wait. Who taught me that my neck’s not supposed to look like this? And then, who benefits if I believe that?”
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Ashton Applewhite:
Exactly. There’s a great quote by Amos Wilson, I believe his name is. He’s a professor and he says, “If you want to understand any problem in America, don’t look at who suffers from it, look at who profits from it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Abby Wambach:
There we go.
Glennon Doyle:
Wherever there is suffering, there is profit right up the river. That’s exactly always true.
Ashton Applewhite:
The hardest part is to look at your own attitudes, in this case, towards age and aging, because no one wants to acknowledge that they’re biased. It’s uncomfortable. We’re all biased, but the cool thing is, and this is what consciousness raising did for women in the ’70s, is that once you come together and share your experiences, you realize, “Oh, it’s not me. It’s not that my tits are too small or my husband is particularly jerk, or my boss is particularly awful.” These are widely shared social and political experiences that we can come together and do something about. And that is really liberating, because then you start to see the forces, you see it in the culture. And so, it’s getting past that initial moment of looking at your own brainwashing and collusion. I know that’s a complicated idea and I don’t want to blame people for their own hardships, but we do have to look at that to get started. And then, you’re off and running.
Glennon Doyle:
Then you’re off and running. That’s sisters love language you just said. That’s the whole point of this podcast by the way, Ashton, is just the idea that when women tell their stories to each other, they start to learn that everything is political and everything is capitalism, and they start to learn, “Oh, it’s not me. It’s them.” We could have named the podcast that, “It’s not you, it’s them.”
Amanda Doyle:
Also, it feels like one of the last forms of discrimination, where we unabashedly engage in self policing and policing of others. We can check ourselves now when we’re policing people’s gender. We become an awareness, but we still consume these lists of what not to wear over 30, or what level of sexiness or boldness is allowed from people who are 40 and 50 and 60 around us. I will catch myself putting on a shirt if it’s too high and I’m like, “I’m 42. 42 year olds wear this shirt?” What is that? We’re doing the work of the system on ourselves by even asking that question. That’s a crazy question to ask. There’s no shirt 42 year olds wear.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Ashton Applewhite:
There’s no such thing as age appropriate except for children, period.
Amanda Doyle:
And speaking of children, I had this wild situation, which I’m so interested what you think about this, because it just came to me yesterday. I was in the park with my daughter, my then five year old daughter, and she walked up to a mom in the park and she says, “Hi. I’m Alice. I’m five. This is a Amanda. She’s 42.” And she said, “What’s your name? And how old are you?” And the lady clearly did not want anything to do with this question. And so, we got through this awkward moment and we were walking away from the park. And it was really upsetting to me because it felt like what a mom was supposed to do in that situation was tell their daughter it’s not polite to ask people’s age. But, I couldn’t do it because it felt like introducing a poison to her that was not in her mind, the idea that there is shame around having lived more years and therefore we don’t ask people how old they are.
Ashton Applewhite:
Yeah. Why do you think it was at the top of her mind?
Amanda Doyle:
I think it’s how she identifies herself. She’s trying to be friendly. It’s what she knows to say about herself.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it’s because adults don’t know how to talk to kids. I was an elementary school teacher and adults don’t know what the hell to say to children. It’s like little aliens have walked up to them, adults lose their mind, and they only know two things. They know how old are you and what do you want to be when you grow up?
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s all adults say to kids.
Ashton Applewhite:
I mean, I have a friend who says, “If you’re going to ask a kid how old they are, that’s fine. But, you should say how old you are too.” I really like that idea. Just put it out there as a neutral identifier. I mean, all this stuff, it’s so interesting and so unexamined. So, the more we talk about it, and I guarantee the deeper you go, the more interesting it is. How do you answer the question, “How old are you?” Is not so simple because I think it’s important to say how old we are. Great work around is to say, “I was born in 1952,” which confuses the person who asks the question if they can’t do math, like me. So, it short circuits the fixed meanings that we all attach to a number the minute we have it. And it puts the proper thing forward, which is, “Oh, she’s been around for a while. She must have seen stuff and done stuff.”
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s so cool.
Abby Wambach:
I’m just going around now. I’ve been born in 1980. That’s it.
Glennon Doyle:
Plus you can remember it.
Ashton Applewhite:
But, on the other hand, we also want to push back and say, “Well, why do you want to know? I’ll tell you. This is not exactly cocktail party casual chit chat, but I’m happy to tell you, if you tell me what changes in your mind when you have the number, or if you’ll think about why you want to know.” It’s a little like asking white people typically, “Oh, where are you from?” Which is not a question we typically ask of a white person. So, I want a world in which age is both out there and yet reduced in value because it says so little about a person. In fact, it says a lot less about what you have in common, what you’re interested in, than we think it does, because of all that generational labeling. And the older the person is, the less it reveals about them.
Glennon Doyle:
That starts with ageism of all of us saying to your daughter over and over again, “How old are you?” Because, all she’s doing is parroting back to the culture, what the culture has taught her is important about human beings because.
Ashton Applewhite:
But, age really is more … Childhood is different because we change so much in every year, and because what is appropriate for an eight year old is not appropriate for a four year old. What’s appropriate for a 38 year old is appropriate for a 34 year old. So, it’s a little problematic to extrapolate from childhood out, but I encourage you to do so from any stage in adulthood to another stage in adulthood, because the frames of reference stop. They’re obsolete, they box us in, they’re irrelevant like those dumb marketing checklists that say what … I think Stitch Fix had something that had these incredibly small age categories, what 24 to 26 year olds were wearing. And then, at Stitch Fix, I believe, I’m not sure it was Stitch Fix, it was age 40 and up. Marketing checklists routinely end at 65 as though everyone over 65 does the same stuff, when in fact, diversity increases.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. They might as well have said 40 or even more irrelevant. But, I just want to circle back to what you said, sister. The thing about Alice, I just think it’s so important because those questions we ask children are revelatory of both those questions of the ageism in our country, because we say to children, “How old are you? And what are you going to be when you grow up?” We tell them, by those questions, that what matters is your age, and also what you’re going to be between the time you’re 25 and 50, your identity. All we care about is what you’re going to be when you grow up, is your career. And we tell kids that’s all that matters about them. It’s so freaking weird. And then, we don’t even know what we want to be in five years, but we ask these little five year olds. The important thing about you is your career. Tell me, five year old, what your career is going to be.
Ashton Applewhite:
And believe me, at 50 or at 65, or in my case, I’m about to turn 70, I never did know what I was going to be when I grew up. But, the idea of things ending or there being any fixed transition attached to a chronological age becomes increasingly less valid and accurate over time.
Abby Wambach:
I think that I was just going to interrupt you and I want to actually clarify …
Glennon Doyle:
Yes, you were. That’s why I just stopped you and grabbed your hand.
Abby Wambach:
I know, but I want to clarify if what I was about to do is ageist, because I think that we do this a lot. I think that you said you’re coming up on 70, and I was like, “Oh, my gosh!” Over here, because to me you don’t look 70. I think what I was just doing was so fucking ageist. I apologize. And also, why do we do that? Why is that so important to me? Why was it important to me to let you know how young you look?
Ashton Applewhite:
So, here we are back to women’s appearances, but let’s talk about it. Absolutely, you certainly don’t owe me an apology, but on the other hand, I have worked hard to learn not to accept that as a compliment, because if I do accept it, it’s at the expense of everyone else who’s also 70 and looks 70. We all look the age we are just in different ways, but they aren’t lucky enough to look as whatever you see that you like as I do. So, it’s an incredibly common thing to do. The one good snappy answer I’ve come up with is when someone says “You don’t look your age,” say, “You don’t look your age either.” And let that sit. The reason it comes across as a compliment and why it is well-meaning on your part, which of course does not let you off the hook as you already know, is because we live in a society that worships youth.
Glennon Doyle:
Worships youth. It’s like when somebody says you’re so thin. Are you supposed say thank you? If I say thank you, that means I’m accepting that thinness is a goal or that we’re worshiping thinness. And also, there’s a whole thing where somebody says you look younger than your age, it is shocked by it. It might be somebody who spends a lot of their one wild and precious life on this earth desperately trying to anti-age. Do we want to make that valorous? Same with thinness, like when people say you’re so thin. What I do sometimes say now is, “Oh, yeah. I have a raging eating disorder.” That ends the conversation real fast.
Ashton Applewhite:
I have a friend who’s about to give birth, and her whole body looks linearthic with the giant belly. And when people say she looks great, by which they mean, she looks thin, she says, “Well, throwing up for the first six months really helped,” because she had really bad morning sickness forever.
Glennon Doyle:
I like those responses because they bring a disequilibrium about, “Oh, yeah. That must be interesting.” Here’s the price that some of us pay for the cultural obsession with that idea.
Ashton Applewhite:
There’re a lot of analogies between the body acceptance movement and the pro aging movement.
Glennon Doyle:
Can you talk about women and invisibility? Because this is another thing that I am feeling really excited about, which people usually talk about as a negative. Can you talk to us about women feeling, in our culture, we become invisible?
Ashton Applewhite:
Yeah. I mean, I’ll squirm a little bit on that one because it is related for most of us. Well, I was going to say heteronormative terms, but my daughter happens to be a lesbian. And I remember saying to her long ago, “Tell me it’s better. Tell me lesbians are not so judgey about appearances and are more generous and forgiving to other women.” And she said, “Get over it, Ma. We all want to be with the cute girl at the bar.” But, the reason I’m uncomfortable talking about it for one thing is that I never was Va Va Voom. I never was invested in my appearance that way, in turning heads when I entered the room. If I ever did, I was too clueless to notice it. So, I didn’t experience that as a loss, which makes me anomalous and therefore less qualified to comment on other people’s experience. And also, it’s complicated because I do think there’s a complicated notion of complicity, which I already touched on. I don’t ever want to say, “You’re responsible for your problems.”
Ashton Applewhite:
But, we are only invisible in terms of our self worth and our identity if we accept that idea on the terms of other people, and those are the terms of patriarchy, misogyny, and capitalism. But, it is very painful for a lot of women, but part of making it less painful and even a source of power is doing the work to divorce our sense of attractiveness and power. Think again about who’s getting laid from these typical standard evil normative patterns of what the culture wants us to value in terms of our appearance in particular.
Glennon Doyle:
And tell us again, who’s getting laid? I want to just reiterate that.
Ashton Applewhite:
Not the thinnest, not the youngest, not the prettiest, but the people who know their lovers are lucky.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, shit! That’s so good. I love that. Sissy, you were going to jump in. What did you want to say?
Amanda Doyle:
I always thought the invisibility thing is so interesting, because the idea of invisibility is predicated on the male gaze.
Ashton Applewhite:
Pretty much. Except for the lesbians at the bar.
Amanda Doyle:
That’s true.
Ashton Applewhite:
That is how I think of it almost all the time. I agree.
Glennon Doyle:
But, I don’t think invisibility just means visual. I’m talking about invisibility as a wider thing in terms of middle aged and older women being invisible at a table, at a meeting.
Amanda Doyle:
So am I.
Amanda Doyle:
I’m talking about the same thing, but that suggests there’s only one group in power to give the attention and the gays and the power. Whereas, I mean, older people are the largest group in America. If we knew our value in ourselves and looked at each other and pointed the gaze, both in the power and the attention and the value, who the hell’s invisible now? [crosstalk 00:45:21].
Glennon Doyle:
So, we wouldn’t be worrying about being seen, we would be worried about seeing.
Ashton Applewhite:
Invisible to whom, and on whose terms?
Amanda Doyle:
Yes, exactly. One of the biggest fears, a value of my life, which was super challenged by your work, is my independence. And so, I think a big fear of getting older is this idea of losing my independence and being dependent on others. And so, it was really interesting to read about the myth of independence. And then, it occurred to me as I was reading that, I was thinking about assisted living homes and how that is such a fear for me. And then, I was thinking, “Assisted living. All of my life has been assisted living.”
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve been assisted this whole time.
Ashton Applewhite:
I’m stealing that.
Amanda Doyle:
Please do.
Ashton Applewhite:
I love that. It’s like a great quote. One of my favorite quotes in the book by a Dutch gerontologist named Yon Bars, “Autonomy requires collaborators.” We are interdependent from childhood on when you need a lot of assistance when you’re in diapers, when you are caring for people who are in diapers, whether they’re two or 102, you need assistance. And I’m really glad you pointed, because I do think that is the most important chapter of the book is there’s this whole myth and it’s fostered by, of course, capitalism that you are aging successfully, air quotes around that, if you are running up the stairs, driving at night, in essence, not aging, which costs money and involves luck. Sushi, leisure, gyms, all those things cost money. No one is independent ever. And when we stigmatize it, we make it more fearful.
Ashton Applewhite:
And I want to make a wonky distinction here between ageism which is prejudice and discrimination on the basis of age, and ableism which is prejudice and discrimination on the basis of physical or cognitive function. A lot of what we think of as ageism is the fear each of us has alluded to in this conversation, fear of losing some physical or cognitive function leading to needing more help from people on terms that we have less control over than we used to. That’s actually ableism. And people live with beautiful, meaningful lives with disability from birth onward. It’s different to age into disability versus being born with it and so on. But, if we acknowledge and think more about the overlap and join forces, I mean, some of these people in disability justice who are almost all young queer women of color, they are badass and they celebrate interdependence.
Ashton Applewhite:
So, think what we could learn from them about adapting to impairment and about solidarity and about refusing to feel shame and instead feeling pride. I read a great quote, “Living with disability is a creative act.” How gorgeous is that? So, instead of going, as it is now, “Ew! Don’t want to think about being old. Don’t want to think about being disabled and really don’t want to think about how they come together.” Think of the power in acknowledging, not only where they’re different, but where they overlap, what we can learn from that, and how we can join forces and reduce stigma.
Glennon Doyle:
I love that.
Abby Wambach:
This is so important to me.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s so important. It’s so huge.
Abby Wambach:
I have such a fear of dying, but it feels like this is the proactive research based information that I need to curb some of those death and aging … Because I think that’s also a part of death. It’s the aging process, they’re so linked.
Ashton Applewhite:
Let me say one thing on that because people use that line of thought, which I’m not saying you were doing, Abby, to rationalize ageism. Some say it’s natural or it’s okay because we’re going to die and it’s about fear of dying. Old people are reminders of mortality. Of course, there’s an element of truth in that, but I think the conflation of the two is a function of ageism. Don’t want to think about getting older, don’t want to think about dying. We are aging from the minute we’re born. It’s not something annoying that old people do. And dying is a discreet biological event at the end of all that living. People may look at me and think I’m ancient, but they don’t look at me and think I’m dying. But, it’s really important to talk about getting older because it paves the way to talking about dying, which is really important.
Glennon Doyle:
And I actually love talking about dying too.
Ashton Applewhite:
Excellent.
Glennon Doyle:
But, can we just ask you one question?
Ashton Applewhite:
I don’t so much, but I’m getting there.
Glennon Doyle:
I do. Can we ask you one question before we jump into these cues that we have from the pod squad for you? It is an inevitability that we will lose people we’ve known for a long time. Do you see an approach to that inevitable loss of other people, that brings power and peace to aging people as opposed to panic and resistance? Is there an approach that you’ve seen to loss that leads to more peaceful [crosstalk 00:50:46]?
Ashton Applewhite:
I hope this doesn’t sound like a cop out, but I think it’s individual. I think it depends on how your community … One serious drawback of white middle class culture, which is mine, is this shortage of ritual and shared experience. I mean, look at Day of the Dead in Mexico. I would love to have one day a year where I could go back and party on my mom’s grave and feel connected to her, which I’m sure would be just a cultural appropriation of the worst sort or whatever. But, we have a piosity of ritual. It’s not all ageism. These long lives are new. So, we need to invent rituals and transitions. In Japan, they celebrate your 60th birthday. It’s viewed as this time, this really happy transition, into the stage of your life when you were freed of a lot of obligations that held you down before and could go explore all sorts of new things.
Glennon Doyle:
Amen.
Ashton Applewhite:
But, I do think acknowledging that we are aging paves the way to acknowledging that we are mortal. And for sure, the best way to have as much control as possible over the circumstances in which we die is to talk about it with those potential collaborators and to make it a recurrent conversation, because what we want at one point in life is probably going to change as we get older.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s so interesting. You said the celebration at 60 in Japan, I just want to end with that. It’s amazing that we fear this time of life, which everything could get fucking awesome, all of the things that we worry so much about, all the care taking, all of the keeping up appearances, all of the striving and all of that stuff that stresses us up. And for women, it’s like, at the moment that we reach the height of our confidence, our contentment, our wealth usually, that’s when society decides we’re worthless. But, we are at the height. We should be reclaiming that completely, and we should be so excited for that time to come.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. I am.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Ashton Applewhite:
I’m significantly older than you, which is both a real number, but also utterly individual, because I’m growing older in a way that’s different. Just looking at us all, we’re all healthy, it looks like, we’re all white. We all have a certain amount of privilege, and those confer obvious benefits to us. I am happier in my work than I’ve ever been. I don’t love having really bad arthritis, such that they have to put giant pieces of metal in me now to keep me going. But, on the other hand, that can happen. And thank you, Medicare. I can afford it. Who would’ve thought that I would hit my professional stride in my 60s?
Glennon Doyle:
That’s awesome. All right. Let’s hear from some of these pod squaders. Let’s hear from Leah.
Leah:
Hi, ladies. This is Leah. I am in a stage of life that I have termed pediatric and geriatric care. And I feel like I am caught in the inbetween of trying to work on myself and become a better human of who I am, but at the same time, care for both young children as well as aging parents. And there’s this holding space for planning ahead for the excitement of learning and schooling for my kids, but also the planning ahead for the long-term care and housing and end of life stages that come with aging. And I am struggling to be present in both at the same time. And I would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, suggestions on how to be present and yet plan in both stages of life while being caught in the middle. Thank you, ladies. Love you all.
Ashton Applewhite:
I would say cut yourself some slack big time. Remember that U bend of happiness? You are at the trough. Life is long. And right now, you are juggling … I mean, I remember when I had my first kid. If I could do the laundry, and I couldn’t do the laundry period, maybe another day, I’d put lipstick on. That was it. Good for you. Pat yourself on the damn back, because it really truly gets easier. And I will now get political and point out that if we live in a society that provided financial support and paid for caregiving and paid caregivers, whether they’re for your children or to help for anyone, a living wage, and I know single payer healthcare that’s affordable, the stresses on you and your family would be much smaller. So, when you come up for air, and it’s going to be a while, and try and cut yourself some slack to work towards that social and political change.
Glennon Doyle:
Let us never forget we are at the trough. We are troughing and it’s the best we can do right now in the trough. Good for you, Leah. Good for you for being alive and writing sentences and.
Ashton Applewhite:
Good for you.
Glennon Doyle:
Leah’s crushing it. Let’s hear from Jeanie.
Jeanie:
Hi. My name’s Jeanie. Well, I just dropped off my baby this last weekend and it’s the worst ever. And maybe you could talk about why life seems dimmer and I feel like my life is over, which is so dumb, because I know it’s not. And I know that there’s a lot I’m also looking forward to, but maybe you could still talk about why this represents aging and leaving behind a part of your life that was so precious and putting one of your favorite beings in a place where she doesn’t know anybody and there’re boys and other scare-ies out there and she’s all alone, and how are you supposed to be okay with that. I love you all, and I really would appreciate an answer to those questions. Thanks. Bye.
Abby Wambach:
Damn, Jeanie.
Glennon Doyle:
We love Jeanie. She would really appreciate an answer. Ashton, tell her it’s going to be okay.
Ashton Applewhite:
Well, I would say that I hope the baby in question is a college age child, not an actual baby.
Glennon Doyle:
If it’s a baby, Jeanie, go get your baby. It’s not time.
Ashton Applewhite:
What you’re going through is really hard. It just is. And sit in the grief. It will pass. I was so sad at the thought of my daughter leaving home that my partner said I was pre nostalgic. When we dropped her off at college, I was a wreck. He said, “Pull yourself together, completely, legitimately.” When the plane took off and the roar of the engines, I let out this … I still remember this gut wrenching sob. Finally, I get home. The moment I have dreaded for years arrives. I walk past her empty bedroom, and I swear to God, it popped into my head, “Oh, now I have a guest room.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Ashton Applewhite:
That was it. I was over that, because I had done all my morning beforehand. You are doing it probably a better way or a more logical way. It will pass. She will come home. And the fact that you were able to let her go, in some ways, it means that she will be freer to return to you as a grownup eventually on her own terms. You’re doing great.
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
And Jeanie, you might have a guest room.
Ashton Applewhite:
A guest room. That is a true story.
Abby Wambach:
And I think that the phase of life that she’s moving through might have come to an end and a new one is beginning. And I think Glennon is also very pre nostalgic. I think that she realizes things will be problems if we don’t work on them now. So, Chase went off to school, and then we have Amma and Tish to head out over the next four years. And we are just like, “We need friends.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. So, we’re entering a new part of our life, but it’s also a little bit like … I mean, I’m not antiaging and I’m not anti children leaving the house. You must think of the alternatives. If they don’t leave, they don’t leave.
Ashton Applewhite:
And that is way worse for your sex life than menopause.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. Let us count our blessings so we can become sex Queens. That’s all I’m saying. Now is our time. We’re going to end with our next right thing. And I just want to say, you could do this little thing if you wanted to do this little thing. I have always had this vision of myself as an old lady, and it is my favorite vision of myself.
Abby Wambach:
Cool.
Glennon Doyle:
You know this one actually. I’ve talked to you about this. So basically, I’m just walking on a beach, and I have the most beautiful gray hair, and it’s long and curly, but it’s in a ponytail. And I’m just walking on the beach, just doing my daily walk, and I’m so full of peace and power and calm. In my vision, I’ve always just left my small purple beach house, but I feel like that’s a little bit capitalistic of me, so now I’ve changed it to a purple sweater. I’m just wearing a purple sweater.
Abby Wambach:
Purple house?
Glennon Doyle:
Purple is involved, but it’s just a sweater, because that feels like something I can control more, right?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
But, the point is that I love this vision of myself. It’s not something to fear or worry about. It’s like a goal to get to. It’s like, “What do I have to do now to become that badass peaceful woman in the purple sweater on the beach?” It’s like the truest, most beautiful version of myself is that, and it’s an old version of myself. So, maybe, if you feel like it, you could just imagine what’s the truest, most beautiful older version of you. And then, it could become this beautiful lighthouse as opposed to something that you’re avoiding, but it’s like something you’re becoming.
Ashton Applewhite:
And also, there’s a whole thing in my book about becoming an old person in training, which is a phrase I appropriated from a geriatrician named Joanne Lynn. You can have that future older you be as far off down the road as you need her to be for it to be psychologically tenable. But, the minute you perform the exercise that you just so beautifully described, you have stepped off the hamster wheel of age denial. You are right. It’s a little trick of the mind in a way, but then you’re not … And you look at the older people around you instead of looking past us and think, “Oh, I love what she’s doing,” or “Ooh! I hope I don’t do that.” And that helps you gradually relate to the future you instead of being distanced from her, which is where ageism takes root in pretending we’re not going to get old and making the older you a subject of fear and even self-loathing. This is the opposite. So, I think it’s a really beautiful exercise and I hope everyone listening is able to engage in it.
Amanda Doyle:
And it’s full circle, because where we started with Anne Lamott, we end because she is already inside of you. So, you already have her. So, get to know her.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you for this beautiful conversation, Ashton. I just feel like it really moved me.
Abby Wambach:
Well, it makes me know I’ve got a lot of work to do, because I’ve got some ageism inside of me. It’s cool.
Ashton Applewhite:
Yeah. But you’re already so far ahead by just acknowledging that you have less work to do than you think.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Good job, babe. All right, y’all. We can do beautiful things like get older. We’ll see you back here next time.
Ashton Applewhite:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn’t, don’t worry about it. It’s fine.