Question: What are
the two most offensive words in the English (or any other) language?
I’ll give you two hints:
- Neither word is on George
Carlin’s famous, “Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television.”
- Unlike George Carlin’s Seven
Words, both words are never censored, either on television or anywhere
else (and, taken together, they should be).
Answer: Age
Appropriate
Age appropriateness is generally defined as “suitable for people
of a particular age.”
I once subscribed to a magazine that marketed itself as the
magazine “for women of style and substance.” Since I like to believe that I
have ample amounts of both style and substance, I loved that magazine. I tore
out stories to keep for later reference, and quoted it often in my blogs.
Until I read an article about age appropriateness in all
things, which caused me to promptly cancel my subscription.
Of course, there were the usual tips about clothing—and to
my female readers, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The length of our
skirts and dresses should become increasingly longer as we grow longer in the
tooth, while the plunge of our crepe necklines should creep up in direct
proportion to the amount of the crepe skin on our necks as it creeps down.
Now, I have to admit that there is some truth in some of
this. I once went to a baseball game with a friend. As we were walking up to
the ticket counter, we happened to get in line behind a woman who was encased
in very tight lycra pants and a tank top. And, let us say that the woman was
weight challenged. My friend looked at the woman, then looked at me, and said,
“If you ever see me leaving the house dressed like that, please shoot me.”
Perhaps a bit extreme, but you all have my permission to do
the same to me.
And, I firmly believe no woman over the age of 25 should
ever be allowed to leave the house wearing Dockers pants.
So I wasn’t offended by the article on the articles of
clothing that we should or should not wear.
No, it wasn’t until I got to the section on “Age Appropriate
Hair” when I started feeling the heat creep up my admittedly crepey neck.
In discussing appropriate hair styles, the question of
length cropped up again.
The recommendation: The older you get, the shorter, more
cropped your hair should be.
The reasoning: Because long hair—from the back—suggests youth, which apparently serves as a kind of attitudinal
bait and switch to people standing in line behind us waiting to get into, say,
a baseball game.
The actual words that the article used were along these
lines: Our long hair from the back can be unsettling to men when they see how
long in the tooth we actually are from the front, which results in a sharp drop
in their desire.
Okay, maybe I’m paraphrasing. But, hand to god, the article
actually used the word UNSETTLING, as
in “it can be unsettling to men when you turn around and they realize “just
how old you really are.”
Now, being a woman of style and substance, and one who
happens to have very long hair, I’d also like to believe that I am many things,
from the back and the front, none of which I would describe as unsettling, to
men or to anyone, for that matter. Arlene Dahl said it best when she acerbically
snorted back to James Mason in the 1955 movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth, “I may have been a
disturbance to men, never a burden.”
Keep in mind that the concept
of age appropriateness isn’t restricted to just us old, crepey-necked, unsettling
women. Implicit ageism is the
term used to refer to the implicit or subconscious thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors one has about older or
younger people. These may be a mixture of positive and negative thoughts and
feelings, but gerontologist Becca Levy reports
that they “tend to be mostly negative.”
Ya think?
Age-based prejudice and
stereotyping usually involves older or younger people being pitied,
marginalized, or patronized. This is described as “benevolent prejudice” because the tendency to pity is
linked to seeing older or younger people as “friendly, but incompetent,” or, in
my case, unsettling.
Katrina Kaif said, “I feel it
is important not to get overly obsessed and overly carried away with just the
physical aspect. There is more to beauty than just the physical appearance. You
are also a complete person, and a woman should have an identity beyond just the
way she looks.”
Amen, sister.
And so if you happen to be in
line behind me someday, please know that I will go on being unsettling—as well
as disturbing, unexpected, crepey, long in the tooth and sometimes short in the
skirt (but never in lycra or Dockers!).
And, as always,
remember this: It’s NEVER too late
to be what you might have been!
Want to know more about transforming limited thoughts and
beliefs into limitless possibilities? Check out my Examine–Envision–Emerge
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