Diversity & Inclusion Resources

This book explores the ways people aging past midlife are portrayed in the media; interactions with adult offspring; the esthetics and politics of representation in media; and the incitement to commit suicide for those with early signs of "dementia." The sudden onset of age-related shaming can occur anywhere - the shove in the street, the deaf ear at the meeting, the shut-out by the personnel office or the obtuseness of a government. Turning intimate suffering into public grievances,this book effectively and beautifully argues that overcoming ageism is the next imperative social movement of our time.

What if nearly everything that we think of as the "natural" process of aging is anything but? In Agewise, renowned cultural critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette reveals that much of what we dread about aging is actually the result of ageism--which we can, and should, battle as strongly as we do racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry. Drawing on provocative and under-reported evidence from biomedicine, literature, economics, and personal stories, Gullette probes the ageism that drives discontent with our bodies, our selves, and our accomplishments--and makes us easy prey for marketers who want to sell us an illusory vision of youthful perfection.

Includes discussions of stereotyping of older persons, implicit ageism, a social-developmental view of ageism, attitudes toward older adults, ageism in the workplace, ageist behavior, ageism and its potential relationships to self in later life, family response across cultures, reducing ageism, and ageism research.

This insightful and moving book looks at how people of various ages view the process of aging and the social and emotional perspectives it evokes. Includes 50 interview reports describing people's views regarding the aging they see around them and their own aging processes.

Laura Hurd Clarke examines the relationship between aging and women in a culture obsessed with youthfulness. From weight gain, to wrinkles, to sagging skin, to gray hair, the book explores older women's complex and often contradictory feelings about their bodies and the physical realities of growing older. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted over a ten year period, Hurd Clarke brings alive feminist theories about aging, medical treatments, beauty work, femininity, and the body.

In her inspiring essay, Doing Sixty, Steinem shares her views on age stereotyping, the unexpected liberation that comes with growing older, and defines what she perceives as the fact that women become more radical as they age. Steinem describes turning fifty as "leaving a much-loved and familiar country" and turning sixty "as arriving at the border of a new one" in which she looked forward to "trading moderation for excess, defiance for openness, and planning for the unknown."