Ashton Applewhite: Hitting Her Stride at 65

One of the most absurd things in the world is that we all dread the one thing we absolutely know is going to happen: we don’t talk about death and as a result, we are all terrified of aging. We have an entire society that is paralyzed by this fear. The obsession with Kim Kardashian and plastic perfection has people worrying about aging and thinking about Botox at 15. How could that make for a happy society? Ashton Applewhite, activist and author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, joins Elisa & Lily and together they discuss the convenient truth that “if aging is a problem we can be persuaded to buy stuff to fix it or cure it when it’s not fixable or curable because it’s not a disease and it’s not a problem.” “One huge factor in this society is that there is so much age segregation. When you look around and you see all ages it feels fantastic, this is how life should be and this is how life was until urbanization came in and capitalism started separating workers of different ages and old age became a problem in the 20th century when retirement homes and nursing homes were invented. One of the problems is that we don’t age mingle and if you don’t mingle with people who are different from you, whether they’re a different color or a different gender or a different age then they seem distant and ‘other’, and this ‘othering’ thing is the source of all prejudice. The bizarre thing about ageism is that the ‘other’ is your own future older self.”

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