Vídeo: Ashton Applewhite: idadismo não é assim tão simples

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[Music] we are on the air with another episode of It’s not that simple from the Francis Manel du santush Foundation today we’re going to talk about agism if I was going to ask you one thing that we all become in our lives it would be old right so what does that mean what does becoming old mean how are old people perceived around the world and is there discrimination well we’re going to address all of these questions and more with today’s star guest she is Ashton Apple White renowned writer and activist Ashton is the author of the chair rocks a manifest against aism she’s also a leading spokesperson an emerging activist for the promotion of everything we can do to battle against aism she’s spoken at the United Nations she’s been on the TED Talks main stage as well today she is here with us on this show to break down this topic so welcome Ashton first of all to break it down for us what is agism and where do we find it Well the I’ll answer the second question first we find it everywhere starting between our ears and we have to recognize it between our ears before we can challenge it in the World At Large because most bias is unconscious uh the dictionary definition is discrimination and stereotyping on the basis of age just as racism is discrimination on the basis of race Etc we are being AG just any time we make an assumption about a person or a group of people on the basis of how old we think they are too young as well as too old right it’s any judgment on the basis of age what are the biggest myths as far as uh agism is concerned in your uh in your opinion there are so many and you’ll hear me talking mostly about discrimination against older people because we live in such a youth Centric Society I would say the um there’s so many they all drive me nuts um but the one that um I probably dislike the most is the myth that all older people are alike that at some point we fall off a cliff and become belong you know join this lumpy gray mass of people called the elderly you know with this the in front of it um or we just you know become the same and in fact uh nothing could be further than the than the truth all all Prejudice relies on stereotypes the assumption that all members of a group are the same which of course is never the case it is especially inaccurate when it comes to age because the longer we live the more different from one another we become the older the person the less their age tells you about what they’re doing what they’re capable of their cognitive development their physical capacity it reveals less and less about us because we are so different the definition of becoming old is changing constantly as well right because uh two or three generations ago um maybe when you hit your 40s or your 50s um you could be considered old because of the life expectancy now obviously and and according to some to some statistics I saw the number of people aged 65 or older is projected to more than double from around 1.6 billion in in in 2050 so tell us about how the the definition keeps changing and how the expectations keep shifting too yeah everyone everywhere is living longer the smile on my face is sort of ruul because it’s very very rare to have someone even in their 70s I am 72 or 80s or 90s admit admit to being old because the word has such pejorative associations people say I’m not old well if there is more road behind you than ahead you are definitely not young and I tend to use the word older right we are certainly older there is no point at which age begins again because the the characteristics of age and aging are so diverse they’re different for each of us um so in the workforce at least in most of the developed world you you are old at at 30 in China in certain Fields you are old at 35 in advertising or Tech right from the point of view of an employer from the point of view of entering a a home where you know for older people typically they allow people to to enter at 50 55 even most um social security and benefits like that medic here in the United States starts at 65 so the point is twofold there is no point at which we become old and the Hallmarks are different for E even if I were to have um you know some sort of physical problem the way it affects me could be very different from the way it affects someone else depending on what I do for a living on how much money I have which always enters in on what’s important to me I I had a shoulder replacement well I never played tennis I’m not athletic so it was n’t a big problem for me but for someone who has invested in that it would have been a big loss and vice versa so it’s different for each of us there is no point at which old begins you mentioned that that we live in a youth centered uh society and in my opinion it’s it’s become more accentuated because we live also in the age of social media that is increasingly a younger uh Communications uh uh media whatever way uh uh you look at it um do you you think that social media has also had a a role to play in in increasing the stereotypes and the distances between what it means to be young versus old I think it’s both I don’t mean to wafful out of the answer but there are also a lot of older people on social media I use it a lot because my my job is to be a communicator uh it is certainly true that there are much more many more younger users on Tik Tok and Instagram than old but there are a bunch of accounts of older people there are younger women who follow older women who say I want to be like her when I get older so I think what social media does that is so pernicious especially for young people because we are more malleable and vulnerable when we’re younger is all this comparing of especially of appearance and any focus on women’s appearance is toxic period I’m not going to say another word about it but all of that is not good for us we know it’s bad for our self-esteem we know there’s a lot of shaming going around about body types and wrinkles and all that stuff but there’s also a lot of counter voices out there saying this is stupid um and you know here are some wonderful example so I think it depends on the context uh and I think it can also be a tool for good after all those tools are free and they’re Democratic and any older person who wants to get a message out there can do it I did want to talk to you about how much tougher it is for women because at least in in my community um I feel that there is increasingly more more pressure for women to look younger and they’re resorting to more and more Tools in order to make that happen not just from a a makeup standpoint but for from an artificial standpoint whether uh uh that’s that that’s surgery or or other smaller uh procedures that that they can they can do tell us how how much tougher it is out there for for for women I’m sure it’s always been that way but in today’s society where image is so important how much more do women suffer in this process I I can’t speak to that historically I mean aging is gendered it is harder for women because we are judged more harshly for appearing God forbid to age and so there are more pressures on women to alter our appearance and I will say very clearly no judgment on any of this I have had you know women say look if I didn’t dye my hair to cover the gray my boss would fire me I would he would see how old I am I would lose my job and I have children to support are you serious did women really oh yeah yeah I used to be a little more judgy about that stuff I mean I’m you know believe it or not I don’t dye my hair No One Believes me I wouldn’t believe me either anyway you know I was a little more preachy about it and she said you don’t get it and I learned my lesson there are so many pressures on women that I no longer say one syllable sincerely about how you look and what you do to look the way you feel you need to because there are tremendous pressures on us however when we dye our hair just to cover the gray or leave early accomplishments off our resume or lie about our age to be younger these behaviors aren’t good for us because they are rooted in shame about something that shouldn’t be sham and they give a pass to the underlying forces the discrimination and stigma that makes those behaviors useful so that’s what I do what I do which is to push for underlying awareness and culture change around where those forces are and an awful lot of them come from companies that profit of course from your insecurities and from your unhappiness and want to sell you Cosmetics surgical procedures diets all those things to change the way you look to fit an impossible standard no no doubt about that uh there is a difference between being judged we’re all victims of that on a daily basis multiple times and being discriminated against right so give us examples of how yeah true one leads to the other right I mean you have to be judged before you can be discriminated against I guess but uh give us examples of of what you notice when it comes to discrimination as far as age both from a social a a professional and a financial standpoint perhaps I have to write that down social professional and what was the third one Financial Financial see and I will tell you I am agist I have always had a terrible memory and when I see a with a younger person and they can’t remember the name of the movie they saw last week so and so I’m like see young people can’t remember anything either um how many phone numbers did we have to learn when we were younger and now nobody needs know any phone numbers anymore I me yeah there there age disc where we hear the most about age discrimination I would say is discrimination in the workplace which interestingly yeah and of course if you can’t make a living like that woman said I can’t I have children to support you will do whatever it takes to get a job or make enough money you know to pay your rent so I understand why that’s Paramount agism in the workplace is often the first form of discrimination white men encounter which is interesting right it’s sort of well welcome to what the world is like for the rest of us um and you hear I mean I hear these tragic stories or just look look through Linkedin see the comments on my feeds of people who say I have been doing this thing I have been honing my skills and now that I am a certain age I can’t get an interview if I get an interview it is over the minute I walk in the room or turn on my camera and it is nuts to live in a world where experience has become a liability especially in the face of a global labor shortage it does depend a little bit on what field you’re in as I mentioned Tech and advertising are notoriously AIS other fields are somewhat better Academia is more forgiving um but still there is this pervasive Prejudice and it does uh the the World Health Organization defines agism um in terms of how we think feel and act about age and aging so the Discrimination is the acting piece there in the US there is the um discrimination against in Employment Act that becomes active at age 40 but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to file a case the standard of proof is higher and the um the bureau that enforces it is underst staffed and under under um valued so you know it’s not easy to make your case uh and of course the financial costs are tremendous also especially for women who earn less and are penalized for time out of the workforce typically on unpaid child child care we we earn less right and we live longer so all these disadvantages are compounded by gender and by class as ever so everywhere in the world the people with the hardest time or the sickest and the poorest are old women of color you mentioned the World Health Organization tell us about their their initiatives and their programs in in order to try to battle this I’m so glad you asked that because I uh I love po because the Glo the World Health Organization in 2021 it would have been 2020 but they were a little busy with a global pandemic launched their Global campaign to combat agism and that that’s its real name not the name in my fantasies and I want to point out that it is the World Health Organization not the world old people organization in acknowledgement of the fact that everyone is living longer and with the goal of extending Health span our number of healthy years along with longevity itself and they realized that the biggest obstacle to that was age bias starting between our ears how we think and feel about getting older because if you think you’re just you know these these aches and pains or whatever is just what happens when you get older you’re not going to take care of it and you’re not going to engage in healthy behaviors starting Young right most of what there are very few diseases of old age most of them are conditions that start when we were younger and then become symptomatic as we get older that’s part of it the other piece of it that is so interesting is the growing body of evidence that shows that attitudes towards aging affect how our minds and bodies function at the cellular level people with positive and accurate feelings about aging live longer a lot longer seven and a half years longer we walk quicker we are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s even if we have the gene that that uh predisposes us to the disease these more accurate beliefs protect us from stress and the effects of living in a culture that discriminates against us there’s an awful lot about aging we can’t affect right an awful lot of luck and a l you know and and huge Global forces but we can control our attitudes relearning is not easy but it is doable and it is free the expectations for me is something that’s that that’s crazy with with when it comes to stereotypes about about age because there there are so many times that that we all become surprised about uh um people of a certain age who who who I guess um over overcome a lot of the expectations that we have and can perform C certain tasks whether they be physical or intellectual that we’re not expecting from them so what can we do to educate ourselves on what older people can do Ashton so we don’t have those expectations that sometimes are very low yeah well the the I I have a whole passage in my book about um becoming an old person in training which was a phrase I picked up from a geriatrician named Joanne Lyn when I started down this path about 20 years ago and I you know and I was like well I’m not old and I don’t know if any of that awful stuff is ever going to happen to me but I could learn I could start to look at and learn from the older people around me I could acknowledge that I might actually get old and join their numers so it’s a trick of it’s just a little trick of the mind right because agism sinks its Clause into us in denial like I’m not old I don’t want to belong to that club that will never happened to me and um so when we so it’s very so the most important thing we can do is to acknowledge that we will um get old and when we do it loses it’s sort of paradoxical but only in an AIS culture the more you actually know about age and aging the less fear it holds for you so uh so so there is that step and again most bias is unconscious and we can’t um can’t confront something that we don’t know is there so paradoxically look for ways in which you are ages instead of for evidence that you are not the best thing we can do is to have friends and contact with people of all ages just like it is pretty hard to remain homophobic if you are friends with people of all sexual orientations we we see the communities where people live longest and best are mixed age they are age diverse where we see that people of all ages have a role and have lives with meaning you don’t have to run a company you don’t have to end agism you definitely do not have to jump out of airplanes but if you look at around you at the older people who are in the world in all sorts of interesting ways and we are out there right and I I have a feeling that Portugal is less age segregated than the United States I always think everything is better uh outside the US but we have a very age segregated Society here make an old older or younger friend that in itself is an anti- agist act think of something you like to do and find a mixed age group to do it with I I I do think uh culturally um maybe some Latin and Latin European countries have more of a link between Generations because of how strong the family unit is uh and and how often they they are together and spend time together and that leads me to a question where do you have a model of where in today’s society we can look up to for for a dynamic that that works and is an example you know there’s no there’s no perfect place no um it’s I mean in in India the vast majority of older people live with their families you know into old age and death there is no Stigma or shame around receiving help of all kinds just as you did when you were a baby including with toileting imagine that it’s just part of life which is evidence you know that these values are cultural we’re not stuck ones we grew up with societies that put older people on a pedestal people often say like isn’t it better somewhere else and they look wistfully Eastward having this sort of idea that in Magic China or magic Eastern place that older people are venerated and valued and it is true that where there was a tradition and and some places still is of Confucianism of filial pety where where children are are raised to be very obedient and respectful of all older people there is more respect for older people but those societies are not great to be young in right I mean do you a lot of you know most countries when they when the median income Rises younger people move out of the family home there are huge losses we lose this connection we lose this intergenerational contact unless we can find it outside the family and of course include families in it so there’s always a tradeoff I don’t want to be on a pedestal I don’t think older people are more valuable or more even more wise than young people I want a world where everyone is treated with respect and where age is neutral where I’m not embarrassed to be old I’m not ashamed of my age but I also don’t think it gives me extra um different treatment except in so far as as we get older our bodies do work less well not necessarily our minds but you know I might want that chair I might want a place closer to the fire and in that sense as a compensation for perhaps for some of us reduced physical function and a lot of older people will be angry when they hear me say that because they’re like no I’m still I can wear more clothes I can stand as long as a young person maybe you can but a lot of older people cannot so in that sense I think being older you know deserves perhaps an extra affords but that’s it age should be neutral you’ve obviously spent great part of your career raising awareness to to this phenomenon um from from a practical standpoint in in your opinion what can be done as a society uh from an educa educational standpoint concretely on a day-to-day basis to kind of of of make it go away as much as much as possible from from every sense so in order to dismantle it on the ground what know what what kind of practical uh advice would you have um well I’m I’m smiling because of course it’s a huge question and I think that it is doable we will never get rid of agism we know that every form of bias racism sexism homophobia they all intersect and inform each other right aging is gendered so we’re not we need to also address sexism there’s tremendous stigma around the loss of physical or cognitive capacity the word for that in in English is ableism around ability we need to undo that as well we’re never going to get rid of all these things but the good news is that when we uh think about any aspect of this and chip away at the fear and ignorance that underly every Prejudice and by us we chip away at them all uh the very first thing we do is to think about how we ourselves think about age and aging how do you use the words old and young start there you know when people say I don’t feel old what they really mean is I don’t feel ugly I don’t feel useless I don’t feel incompetent I felt all those things at 13 way worse than I have ever felt them since so start to just look at look for evidence that you are biased because we are all biased I am agist I think and do AG things all the time but look look for it and then once you have that awareness the good which is not fun but once you see it in yourself you start to see it in the world around you automatically that happens it’s like letting a genie out of a bottle and that is really liberating because then you start to see it in the world around you and you’re like oh it’s not just me it’s not that I am bad or that I’m you know a failure it’s embedded in our social and economic system systems and that means that we can come together and do something about it and I want to mention a website called old school which is a pun um old school. info which is a Resource Bank of hundreds of free and carefully vetted resources everything is free except the books so go there olds school.in info search it under language search it under gender just noodle around watch a look at an infographic if you have a Workforce question if you have a language question because I’m really you know a a a global movement to and agism is underway and my evidence I launched the site with two other people in 2018 and it did not contain a campaign section and now there are over 30 campaigns around the world including the World Health organ uh the England just launched a national campaign this February so you can find people doing this work and you can find out how to join it in lots of ways and you can also meet up we do weekly zooms anyone can join so if you have questions or want some support come find me online you know what’s interesting in the English language as well as far as the stigma is when they when you say how old you are you know you are whatever years old and that doesn’t happen in many other languages and I and I I think maybe when people have a pun and say well I’m actually you know 60 years young uh but but that that old qualification already brings the uh the kind of stigma into it don’t you think as well a little bit only because old is stigmatized we need to towards a culture where old is neutral I mean to say 72 years young is to commit sort of the original sin if you will because it is to because you’re battling and old is bad so you know that’s not uh I mean I do know I have someone uh I know there are languages that say you know how long how long have you lived uh one little trick is if you say you know I was born in 1952 you are foregrounding the fact that you’ve been around for a while you’ve seen some stuff you’ve done some things which is how it should be it’s it’s it is not a neutral fact in that sense and that of course if the person is like me they can’t do the math so they’re going like how old would that be yeah so it focuses age is real we should we should name our age it shouldn’t be hidden away but it should be neutral we’ve obviously focused a great part of this discussion on uh age and agism towards the old Spectrum or towards the experienced mature Spectrum uh okay exactly but when when it comes to agism towards towards the young uh what’s your what’s your perspective on that you know it’s funny it’s one of the the tangles I get into with people sometimes who call it reverse agism or Adultism most people call it agism it’s all agism it is any judgment on the basis of age and I think it’s important to use one word because we are all up against the same thing which is someone making an assumption about us what we’re capable of or interested in because of how old they think we are young people experience a lot of it I mean I don’t know I remember as as especially as a teenager you know being filled with you know sort of indignation that people didn’t trust me to do something and it’s true that I had less experience but you never know you need to talk to that person whether they are 16 or 60 what do you know what are you good at what can you do in this position and find out always as an individual independent of what they look like or how old they are Etc young people off typically have trouble getting started in the job market again gender plays heavily into this women are never the right age right we are sexualized at an early age when we enter the job Market that is held against us we’re too sexy or cute to be taken seriously then once then we are too fertile if a woman has gets pregnant her pay goes down or she is vulnerable to being laid off the job if a says I’m gonna become a father he gets a raise right so you are too fertile and become a liability to employers and then boom you’re not sexy or fertile anymore and it’s over so there is never a right age this makes me very angry and it is truly a aism is the one bias that that starts when we are very young and pursues every human being straight through to the end I can tell you’re you’re very passionate about this no no no doubt about it h Ashton we’re gonna we’re GNA wrap up our conversation with a series of quickfire questions that we ask all our guests so in one word or sentence uh if you could please try to answer the following the following uh questions the first one is what is a personality trait that a good leader could really benefit from having and why oh I think uh generosity you know being it’s always more helpful if you call people in you know instead of criticizing to figure out um a way it’s not easy to do but a way where something they are doing is on the a path that is useful or constructive and to draw on that strength and to have as broad a vision as possible of the ways in which people could support the thing that you hoped with Advance what is the biggest challenge humanity is facing today climate change that’s and that is a a huge reason why we need to make friends and allies of all ages because we need all the people from all the places of all the ages um you know pressing for in order to address it if you could change one thing today by Magic what would that be whoa wow that’s a really tough one um you know I I I would I would I would I would block the but it’s a complicated question because it’s biology and economics and all the things I would I would perform a simultaneous operation on every brain and set of Ethics in everyone to eliminate the our habit of ranking humans in hierarchies of value that’s that could be that could be a topic for for a conversation in itself I I I I I completely yeah I get what you deserve for asking such question it is um and finally what is what is the biggest learning of your of your life and career oh gez this sounds cheesy but you know I I don’t think I know it yet I mean I am a generalist I’ve never been able to specialize in anything if you had told me 20 years ago I would be fascinated by aging I would have said oh why do I want to think about something sad that people do and we are aging from the minute we are born it touches on every aspect of Being Human every domain of study so I you know every every week I I or whatever I encounter some new idea or some better way to say something or a new lens to think about how we move through life so um I think it’s in my future okay that was a really long sentence but that’s fine it was the last it was the last answer uh Ashton Applewhite uhh what a delight it was to to have an opportunity to discuss this uh such impactful topic with you thank you so much for sharing your Insight and expertise with us you’re very welcome thank you for having me it’s not that simple that’s the title of the show and definitely this topic is not that simple to break down either I think Ashton did her best and she succeeded in making us understand uh this phenomenon a lot better than we did at the start of this show it was uh obviously a pleasure to have you on uh on on that side following this uh this conversation see you again very soon on another episode of the series from the Francisco man Santos Foundation take care [Music]