The headline for this video on the front page of Yahoo! is “‘First Grandma,’ a senior Olympian, has independent streak.”
Just think about that for a bit, what it means to say that someone has an “independent streak.” It means that their natural state is presumed to be dependence, and that any attempts to be independent are regarded as a charming eccentricity in someone who hasn’t accepted her uselessness.
Just another example of the way that we infantilize the elderly, and in particular elderly women (often to the detriment of their health). The kicker is that Marian Shields Robinson was born in 1937 — so she’s not yet 72.
EW
They might as well just go ahead and call her uppity, for fuck’s sake.
Or “feisty.”
So true. If there’s an upside the the retirement savings catastrophe that will prevent the largest American generation from ever retiring, it might be that as long as they still have to work for a living they refuse to be treated like they belong safely out to pasture. On the other hand, it might also mean we have to keep living with the politics of the Boomers’ youth forever …
As an aside, there was a great commercial — maybe Nike — years ago with a goateed septuagenerian guy saying, “I’m not strong for my age. I am strong.”
Amen. I stand in solidarity with the elderly, as a handicapped person who’s gotten more than enough infantilising talk from people who really, really ought to know better.