Famous older folks speak up about aging

Botox, collagen, plastic surgery and even voice surgery are so widely used nowadays that you can hardly find anyone who will admit to being old, let alone to thinking it is not a crime to be so.

When the media deign to portray older folks at all, we are almost always shown in caricature – sick, sexless and silly. As the 83-year-old, former 20/20 host, Hugh Downs, puts it:

“It is depressing to see ‘old’ portrayed as close to senile because it is contrary to how people our age feel.”
    - The Cleveland Plain Dealer, 26 March 2004

The negative media image of people older than about 45 makes it difficult to find out what people think and feel about getting older. But a few brave celebrities – people whose livelihoods depend on being able to get work in the public eye – have spoken up. Not at great length, but they make some interesting points.

Yoko Ono, who is 71 years old, was asked what John Lennon would have been like, this year, at 64.

“He would be just John,” says Yoko, “ - all that he was before…But I think talking about a person’s age is ageism, like racism or sexism. It isolates attitudes.”
    - Naples Daily News, 19 March 2004

57-year-old David Bowie says it’s harder to get his music heard on radio stations these days, but he likes that life is getting simpler as he gets older.

“I was quite scared of getting old in my 40s,” he says. “But as I approach 60 – you learn to embrace getting older.”
    - cbsnews.com, 8 March 2004

Actress Teri Garr is 54 and says age is rough on actresses and on women in general.

“Oh, being a woman over 50. They might as well throw you out the window. I guess it’s for everybody who’s aging, but it’s really left for men. It’s much [worse] for women. And it’s not even 50; it’s 40. You hit 40 and that’s it. I don’t know how fair that is. It’s like women over 40 and 50 don’t exist.”
    - Backstage, 29 March 2004

Former White House press secretary and host of Now with Bill Moyers on PBS is embracing age as he plans to retire from television after the November election.

“I turn 70 this year and while there’s no marker at the border, I know I’m entering unfamiliar territory. It’s as if some imaginary trip wire breaks and the little odometer on your psychic dashboard starts clicking faster and faster. All of a sudden the horizon that once seemed far, far away, looms right there in front of you. You feel an irresistible urge to slow down, to take your foot off the accelerator, touch it to the brake – gently, but surely – and start negotiating yourself out of the fast lane.”
    - Alternet.org, 16 March 2004

Garrison Keillor, 61, says after suffering a midlife crisis, he has come to terms with getting older. He now thinks happiness is easier to come by for older people and he has a lot of what he calls “old guy advice” about that.

“Go for a nice walk and do some push-ups. Sex is always good. A hamburger will work, if you make it right and make it yourself. It should be rare and have raw onion and a lot of mustard. A martini, just one, is really fabulous. Going to Mass on Sunday morning, if it is the right sort of Mass, when the homily is short and the choir hangs together just right…Sleep. Sleep is always good. You almost always feel better when you wake up. Baseball games. And Louis Armstrong…There are so many ways you can make yourself feel better.”
    - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 31 March 2004

Jack Nicholson, who turned 67 just a couple of weeks ago, thinks he might like to be a role model for some of us.

“My generation is the new old,” he says. “We’re living longer. If I can’t find real models, my idea would be to inspire that. I don’t want to live thinking that everyone in the world thinks that life is over at 45 years old, because it certainly isn’t.”
    - Time, 8 December 2003

74-year-old Doris Roberts plays the mother on Everybody Loves Raymond. In her spare time, she speaks out against ageism, even appearing before Congress in 2002.

“It’s terrible the way we have been air-brushed out of society,” she says. “There are very few women over the age of 50 who are working [as actresses]. I happen to be one of them, and I’m very grateful. But it’s wrong. Don’t we have doctors, lawyers, judges, executives, who are women over the age of 40? Of course we do. But no magazines will even carry an article about them. We’re a group they’re uninterested in. And it’s the last bastion of bigotry in this country...”
    - Backstage, 24 February 2004

Bette Midler is 57 now, and says she and her husband are slowing down. But she doesn’t mind.

“It’s very curious to be this old,” she says. “I’ve never been this old. I kind of don’t dislike it.”
    - More, December 2003

We began with Hugh Downs and let’s finish with his good advice to folks of all ages.

“It might be wise for people to start thinking about their later years earlier than they usually do. It is one minority that, with luck, we will all join. We need to be able to think about getting older.”
    - Iowa City Press-Citizen, 30 March 2004

He's right and that’s what we are doing here at timegoesby.net – thinking out loud about getting older.

Comments

[Dan Duffy]

I am so pleased to see men and women celebrate the gift of aging. I've come to realize it's the best alternative and I look forward with eagerness to growing older every day.
Please review the latest exhibition plans and contact the studio or Dublin gallery if you wish to participate.
All the best,
Dan Duffy

ORIGIN GALLERY
83 Harcourt Street, Dublin, Ireland
Noelle Campbell-Sharpe, Director

Solo Exhibition: SKIN DEEP, contemporary portraits of women
A collection of recent paintings and drawings by Daniel Mark Duffy

Description:

The work to be presented in September of 2007 will be the aesthetic culmination of a reverentially connective expedition taken with women over 40 years of age. His primary objective has been to intimately celebrate the women represented via an extraordinary collaborative journey that has enabled him to create uncompromisingly feminine contemporary portraits. Duffy deftly attempts to resurrect ancient traditions of goddess and fertility worship through the utilization of a classical realist painter’s brush.
This collaboration with 25 women of varied cultures circumvents many of the disturbing misogynistic pitfalls and the resulting nude or partially nude portraits reflect that consciousness. Exquisitely realized, his paintings and drawings of women emerge authentically as empowered citizens of the world. Their eyes and narrative poses engage with a resonant truth, vulnerability and strength that insist the viewer appreciate all they are without submitting to or permitting devaluation or objectification.
As the reality of horrific abuses and unrelenting degradation persist against women in far too many cultures throughout the world, these portraits rise in defiant testament.
Daniel Mark Duffy recognized that the maturing woman is often dismissed and or devalued in contemporary Western culture. He contends that the majority of mainstream media IE. press, advertising and films consistently present a minimized commercially relentless image of a young slender version of “woman” which has come to represent an inevitably destructive and marginalized iconic ideal. This trend can and has had a devastating effect, minimization of physical diversity that disables or short-circuits emotional development and self esteem, encourages discrimination and often may divert attention from one’s authentic purpose.
The mature woman, whether she be full-figured or thin, mother, daughter and or sister, heterosexual or lesbian, gray haired or coiffed, smooth skinned or magnificently creased with history are honored in this collection of faces and forms. Through his realist approach the artist asks the viewer to embrace the familiar yet often overlooked beauty of these mature women and to recognize a life-affirming truth that resonates in a cosmetically unedited celebration of our aging vessels. This new body of work by the artist Daniel Mark Duffy steps onto the field to engage those who would prefer or have been conditioned to dismiss the mature woman and invites us to share with the world the reality, the power, the truth and the beauty of their legitimacy.

Daniel Mark Duffy is a world-class portrait artist whose work hangs in many of America’s finest private, corporate, academic and institutional collections.

[Corinne Feldman]

I am an 83yr. old woman who is in good health and quite attractive.
I do not know where to go to meet some women and men about my age. I have blue eyes and blond hair and am
slim. I am fairly new in Las Vegas and do not know many people. I thought about going to a senior center, but don't know where it is
to me.

[crohns]

Old age can prove to be a curse in lot many cases when with falling memory and declining health one is unable to take care of everyday situations. Long term care insurance providers are one such service providers in the field of insurance who provide services to old people who have been rendered incapable of handling their own affairs in the twilight of their lives. It is a relatively new program designed to fill in the vacuum created due to an overwhelming need for it.