Growing Old
A Linguistic Consideration
Of the Alternatives
By
Alleen Pace Nilsen
Don L. F. Nilsen
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Some of the Alternatives
Growing old as a man
vs.
Growing old as a woman
and
Growing old in a primitive culture
vs.
Growing old in a capitalistic society
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Alleen: An Afghan Proverb
“If you see an old man, sit down and take
a lesson. If you see an old woman,
throw a stone.”
In my youthful naiveté—we were there between 1967
and 1969—I dismissed this as totally unrelated to me
because surely as an American, I will never
become “old” in the way of Afghan women with
their missing teeth, grey hair, walking sticks, and
general lack of health and beauty care. Besides I
will make myself useful so that when I am old I
will still be making a contribution.
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Don’s Reaction
Looking at the male
part of the proverb, I
chose to think about
the Afghan phrase
“Safid riche,” which
is a term of respect
for a “white beard,”
that is someone
able to give
“grandfatherly
advice.”
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Alleen’s Reaction
But then, I thought
about my paternal
grandmother, whose
life in many ways
was much like the
lives of present day
Afghan women.
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• Alleen: She never smiled in a picture because she
was missing a tooth.
• She gave birth to ten children.
• In effect, she was a single mother because her
husband was out of town teaching school.
• She never had running water or electricity in her
house.
• Yet she was a community leader and instrumental in
founding the PTA in two rural Arizona counties.
• Four of her five daughters graduated from college
and had successful teaching and family careers.
• What brought me up short, was that after we moved
to Arizona, my father came to my 48th birthday party
and sadly shared the fact that his mother died when
she was my age, “and she was an old woman.”
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Alleen Becomes a Feminist
• I was so intrigued by all the evidences of sexism that
I saw in Afghanistan that when we returned to the
University of Michigan, I viewed myself as a feminist.
However, the “real” feminists in 1970s Ann Arbor
frightened me so much that I decided to study
sexism in the dictionary rather than in real life.
• I foolishly thought that I could study language
without having to get involved in social issues.
• But one of my first discoveries was that the
contrasting American terms of “Grandfatherly
advice” and “Old wives’ tales” send the same
message as does the Afghan proverb.
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Alleen: Sexism and Ageism
• Discovering that language and social issues are
intimately connected was my first big surprise.
• And now that I have lived with that surprise for
something like 40 years, I have begun to observe
some interesting connections that the language
shows us between sexism and ageism.
• Some of the revealed prejudices are against females
of any age, but they are stronger when the target is
old and so they are more obvious and recognizable
as a prejudice.
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Don: Old Age and Death Are Serious
Dilemmas for Both Males and Females
• Consider how most of the religions of the world
promise an afterlife, a resurrection, or reincarnation.
• And think of all the stories we have about Heaven
and Hell.
• And look at all the folk stories of the world that
feature ghosts and communication with “the dead.”
• Because we do not like to think about death and
dying that we euphemize.
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Don: The Search for Eternal Life is a
Popular Theme even in Children’s Books
•
Rick Riordan’s books, as seen in the film, Percy and the Olympians,
are filled with mythical creatures who illustrate many different
versions of immortality.
•
In the Harry Potter books, Lord Voldemort (whose name means
something like “Running from Death”) is a major character. The
books revolve around him trying to gather up the seven parts of his
soul that he has planted as Horcruxes (one of which is Harry).
•
One of the reasons Alleen is depressed by the success of Stephenie
Meyers’ Twilight books is that Bella repeatedly tortures herself--and
readers--by obsessing on the awfulness of her growing old while
Edward (the vampire) will stay his beautiful and perfect 17-year-old
body. She would rather give up her soul and become a vampire than
grow old. The reason these same books depress me is that Edward is
so “perfect” that as a male I could never compete with him.
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Don: To Keep from Being
Reminded of Death, We. . .
• Illogically avoid calling someone old, and instead say they are
older, elderly, or grandmotherly.
• Refer to old people as seniors or senior citizens, who are living
their golden years—not in old folks’ homes, but in assisted
living or retirement communities.
• Give such communities names like Sun City, Leisure World,
Green Valley, and Golden Hills.
• Instead of saying someone has died, we say the person has
passed away, crossed over, or gone to join a loved one.
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Don: Another example are the jokes based on
General Douglas MacArthur’s response to
being fired by President Eisenhower, “Old
soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
• Old teachers never die; they just lose their principles.
• Old athletes never die; they just lose their supporters.
• Old robbers never die; they just steal away.
• Old editors never quit, they just write away.
• Old blondes never fade; they just dye away.
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Alleen: But still there are differences in the attitudes
that people express toward aging in females and
males.
• In relation to the question of whether women should be given
the right to vote, Mark Twain remarked that it was a moot point
because women would never give their age.
• When our local legislature changed a law about drivers’
licenses, the Arizona Republic ran the story under the headline,
“No longer a felony for women to lie about their age.”
• Years ago when Gloria Steinem turned 40, the media made a
big deal about it. She responded with something like, “Yes, I’m
forty and this is what 40 looks like….If all women would be
honest about their ages, people wouldn’t be so surprised.”
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Alleen: Changing Attitudes
• I’ve recently been encouraged to see a few women
proudly making associations between themselves
and concepts related to being old.
• In September, when Barbara Boxer was conducting a
Senate inquiry into a military matter and kept being
addressed as Ma’m,” she asked them to address her
as Senator rather than as Ma’m because she “had
worked very hard to become a senator.”
• Sandra Day O’Connor in a recent interview said that
she thinks that a decision made by “a wise old man
or a wise old woman” will be the same, but still it’s
nice for the public to know that women are being
included in decision making.
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Don: Males Aspire to Adulthood While
Females Cling to Youth.
• Boy Scout leaders address 12-year-olds as “Men,”
while 50-year-old exercise instructors address their
50-year old participants as “Girls.”
• Black male teenagers address each other as “Man!”
while black teenage girls address each other as
“Girl!” Women’s cosmetics are marketed under
such names as Cover Girl and Breck Girl.
• Mother-daughter look-alikes are often featured in
advertisements and illustrations. Mothers are
flattered to be mistaken as their daughter’s sister but
fathers do not want to be mistaken as their son’s
brother.
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Alleen: How Healthy Is Our Present
Emphasis on Body Image?
• We have made progress since the early 1900s when H. L.
Mencken declared that “Woman’s body is the woman,” and
when “respectable” women had to be laced into tight corsets
and hobbled by long skirts and petticoats.
• But today’s commercialization of beauty products and
procedures makes me feel like women—either young or old—
are welcome in American society mainly because of how much
money we will spend on non-basic items.
• One of our doctoral students, Laura Walsh, just completed her
dissertation in which she showed that in the most popular teen
magazines for girls, the same body image is repeated over and
over again.
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Alleen: Women’s Body Image
• Laura compared the image and the message in teen magazines
to those in prize-winning, serious young adult novels by Laurie
Halse Anderson. Her book Speak is about a girl who was
traumatized by being raped and then ostracized for stopping a
wild party. Her Wintergirls is a serious study of two teenage
girls with anorexia.
• Laura was shocked to find that virtually every girl pictured in
the magazines she studied, whether in an advertisement or in
an article, had straight long hair, was slender, and looked as if
she had just walked through the white picket fence that
surrounded Dick and Jane in the old readers.
• Popular teen magazines are totally controlled by advertisers,
which means that for a magazine to keep selling, even the
editorial content must promote the currently popular image.
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Alleen: Magazines for Adults
• In October, I found something similar in the 25 magazine
covers displayed in an “Of Interest to Women” rack in the
Omaha, Nebraska airport. All but four had pictures of women
with long hair, big smiles, and at least a hint of cleavage. Even
their dresses were similar.
• Of the four “different” covers, three showed food prepared
from recipes published in the magazine, and one showed a
group of young men apparently on their way to pick up dates.
• In the “matching” display of 25 magazines “Of Interest to Men,”
there were magazines devoted to sports, cars, body building,
motorcycles, and women. Apparently, the manager could not
find 25 men’s magazines and so the bottom two shelves were
filled with collections of cross-word and sudoku puzzles.
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Alleen: The Beauty Business: Then
and Now
• When I was a teenager, dyeing one’s hair was something to be
kept secret. A famous slogan was “Hair coloring so natural
only your hair dresser knows for sure!” Today it is almost
mandatory for women to color their hair. Jamie Lee Curtis
stands out because she dares to go grey.
• Plastic surgery was even more of a secret, but thanks to Joan
Rivers and tons of advertisements for plastic surgeons, today
plastic surgery is way out in the open.
• Last month, Kathie Lee Gifford was pictured in our local
Sunday paper saying, “I have no lines in my forehead. What do
you think I do? Iron it every morning? You think people don’t
know I use Botox?”
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• Alleen: Last summer, an especially nasty campaign sign
displayed at a venue for a speech being given by Nancy Pelosi
read, “BOTOX DOESN’T WORK ON THE BRAIN!”
• My job at ASU used to include getting our student teachers
ready to go into high school English classrooms in the Phoenix
area. I would give them a talk about modest dress and how
they were to be careful so that their breasts would not show
even when they leaned over in class.
• Don accused me of trying to rid the world of small pleasures,
but he need not have worried because capitalism soon made
all such concerns old-fashioned. Even the Director of all of
ASU student teachers no longer gives her “dress
appropriately” speech because she grew tired of arguing with
girls who would say things like, “I paid a lot of money to look
like this and I’m not going to cover it up!”
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Alleen: Newsweek Magazine Pointed to the
Oprah Winfrey Show as an Example of
Hysterical Marketing of Health and Beauty
Last year, the editors devoted nine pages to a
discussion of what they called “Crazy Talk” as
exemplified on the opening page.
GET A LUNCHTIME FACE-LIFT!
TURN BACK THE CLOCK!
WISH AWAY CANCER!
ERADICATE AUTISM!
HARNESS POSITIVE ENERGY!
ERASE WRINKLES!
BANISH OBESITY!
CURE MENOPAUSE!
LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE EVER!
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• Alleen: The lead was about a January visit from Suzanne
Somers, a 62-year-old actress and self-help author.
• Each morning she rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin
on one arm. Two weeks a months, she smear progesterone on
the other arm.
• Next she swallows 60 pills—40 supplements in the morning and
the other 20 in the evening.
• In her books, she also tells about starting each day by giving
herself injections of human growth hormone, vitamin B12, and
vitamin B complex.
• She wears “nanotechnology patches” to help her sleep, lose
weight, and promote “overall detoxification.
This is only a sampling of what she does because
she believes that with “chelation therapy” and
“biochemicals” she can be her same beautiful self
while living until she is 110.
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Don: Men as a New Market
• Men are now where women were when Alleen was in high
school. We tiptoe around the idea of hair coloring as we begin
experimenting with Touch of Gray. Donald Trump is teased for
his elaborate comb-over and almost any man wearing a wig is
accused of wearing a rug.
• Even more than with women, the emphasis is on “staying
young” and “virile.” Virile is based on the old Latin word vir,
meaning “man,” which is seen in such words as virtue, vital,
virtuous and werewolf, as well as in the carefully chosen brand
name of Viagra.
• We suspect that the “promised” rewards for using Viagra was
a major factor in opening the door to the way that commercial
interests are now beginning to treat men much like women
have been treated for decades.
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Don: Is the Traditional Male
Endangered?
This cover of Newsweek
from September 27,
2010 illustrates the
changing times that are
making both men and
women nervous. The
story went on to
question whether (or
how?) it’s time to
rethink masculinity.
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Don: “I Feel Pretty”
by Joel Stein, TIME October 25, 2010
One month later, TIME printed a half-humorous piece connecting
capitalism to the idea of health and beauty treatments for men.
• In 1997, skin care products for men (aftershave, eye gels,
wrinkle erasers) was a $40.9 million business.
• In 2009, it had climbed to a $207 million business.
• L’Oreal’s line of cosmetics for men went up 30% in the first half
of 2010.
• Menaji, a rival company, has grown 70% each year since its
founding in 2000.
• When Joel Stein called founder Michele Probst, she was just
back from mailing 18 packages to soldiers overseas.
• Her concealer is called camo, and it comes packaged like
chapstick. Her bigger packages resemble cigar boxes.
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• Don: “The M word [make-up] is cancer to us. . . We are skin
care that looks good.”
• Lisa Ashley, a make-up artist who has started her own line of
products, includes Charlie Sheen, Howie Long, and Terry
Bradshaw, among her clients.
• What Stein calls his “Homer Simpson lines,” Ms. Ashley refers
to as his nasolabial crease, a term that made him feel so
“unmanly” he knew he would never apply the product himself.
• He was amazed at the cost: $55 for 0.33 oz. (9 grams) of eye
moisturizer—until Ashley dropped some Toppik powder on his
hair line and his balding disappeared. He bought the largest jar
she could find, which was either $45 or $12,000. He can’t
remember, but he does know that it is not makeup and he will
never leave the house without it.
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Alleen: Animal Metaphors and What
They Show about Human Thinking
• In earlier writings I have discussed the biases against older
females as shown through positive metaphors based on young
animals, but negative metaphors based on old animals.
• For example, as soon as a girl is too young to be called a chick,
she goes to hen parties and cackles with her friends. Once
married, she feathers her nest, and after she has her brood, she
begins feeling cooped up and wonders if she made a mistake
by putting all her eggs in one basket. Finally, she henpecks her
husband and turns into an old biddy.
• An especially mean-spirited comparison of women to chickens
appeared during the 2008 presidential campaign when pundits
created an anti-Hillary Meal Deal mug: “Two fat thighs, two
small breasts, and a bunch of left wings.”
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• Alleen: We see something similar with cats. Parents
used to name little girls, Kitty, and encourage them
to act kittenish. Older girls were more likely to
become catty, and to engage in cat fights or live in
cat houses.
• Puss, an alternate name for cats (and vaginas), is
cognate with pouch and purse. It’s connection to
sexuality was shown in one of the James Bond films
about Pussy Galore and Her Flying Felines.
• The most recent cat-related term to come into
general use is the word cougar for an older woman
who goes “prowling for young men.” Whether
cougar is a positive or a negative term differs as
shown by how a recent Arizona incident was treated
in the media.
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Don: DON’T FORGET ABOUT
HORNY OLD MEN?
There aren’t as many negative animal metaphors
about old men. For example, I think I’m on my way
to becoming a silver fox, but think about a player on
the Los Angeles Rams football team. He is so loved
by LA fans, that they buy him a Dodge Ram truck,
which he is careful not to use as a battering ram. He
has inherited his grandfather’s Civil War ramrod
muzzle and while he stands ramrod straight on the
football field, he tries not to ram his ideas down the
throats of his friends.
Nevertheless, he eventually turns into an old
goat, otherwise known as a horny old man.
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Alleen: From Soccer Moms in
2008 to Mama Grizzlies in 2010
• The biggest surprise in the 2010 election was the “tough talk”
between male and female candidates as when in August, Sarah
Palin told FOX News that President Obama did not have the
cojones to get tough on illegal immigration.
• In an October Nevada Senate debate, Sharron Angle zinged
Harry Reid with “Man up, Harry Reid!” This incident got heavy
media attention, but Missouri Democrat Robin Carnahan had
already used it in a Senate debate with Rep. Roy Blount.
• In September, Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell
told a radio interviewer that her primary opponent needs to
“put his man pants on.”
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Don: The New Politics
The quote accompanying
This photo came from Rush
Limbaugh:
“If 51 seats was really the
objective—if getting the
majority is really that
important, then let’s go
balls to the wall for
Christine O’Donnnell”!
Newsweek, Sept. 27, 2010
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• Don: Linguist Deborah Tannen related this shelving
of polite sensitivities to the blurring between public
and private.
• Communication professor Kathleen Jamieson says
that tough language frames the attacker as tougher
than the person attacked.
• Linguist George Lakoff explained that the
Republican worldview emphasizes masculinity and
strength, while Democrats underscore the more
feminine quality of empathy. This is why, “If you’re a
woman candidate who’s a conservative, then you
have to say you’re more masculine than the other
guy.”
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Alleen: Why Do We Have a
Double Standard?
•
It has not worked for male candidates to reverse the sexism on
women. For example, no one has told a woman candidate to be more
ladylike.
•
In Colorado, Ken Buck was widely criticized for telling voters to
support him because unlike his opponent Jan Norton, “I do not wear
high heels.”
•
Jerry Brown apologized to Meg Whitman after an aide was recorded
calling Whitman “a whore.”
•
New York Governor candidate Carl Paladino was chided by Katie
Couric for referring to a woman candidate as someone’s “little girl.”
•
In Arizona, Harry Mitchell’s opponent chided him for “being Nancy
Pelosi’s lapdog.”
“Tougher talk when male, female candidates collide,” by
Kathleen Hennessey, Tribune Washington Bureau 10/17/2010
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Alleen: “Woman Up” by Nancy
Gibbs (TIME Nov. 8, 2010)
• In her essay, Gibbs admitted that it was refreshing for women
candidates to call out their male opponents “for hypocrisy or
political cowardice . . . But what are we to make of rhetoric that
is less Margaret Thatcher than Lorena Bobbitt?”
• Her hope was that today’s young women, many of whom think
that the gender wars are over, will be radicalized by what, at
least to some of us, are consciousness raisers.
• However, she speculated that what some people view as an
“orgy of emasculation,” is just the opposite. The imperative to
“man up” honors “that old male model and is a powerful allure
to men who want to hear it respected.”
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• Alleen: She went on to say that,
• While it may sound like a Sisterhood-HearMe-Roar rallying cry, it may actually “be
calculated to appeal not to women but to
men—the strong, silent types who have been
left behind in the Hecession, dismissed or
derided by a metrosexual media culture, and
whose ability to hunt and gather and provide
for their families is threatened by an
economy skewing more female and more
verbal, toward service and away from
muscle.”
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Alleen: In Conclusion
• We started this out with the idea that we
would do a “Ms. and Mr. Debate about
Gender Issues,” but the more we worked on
our “debate,” the more we realized we are all
in this together.
• While there are things we might both want to
change about gender issues in our culture,
we shuddered when we read a March 10,
2008 BBC news story, “Chinese Facing
Shortage of Wives.” Now that technology
makes it possible to discover the sex of
fetuses, some countries have begun to
systematically abort females.
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• Alleen: The study warned that by 2020, China is
expected to have 30 million more men than women.
In 2000, 110 Chinese males were born for every 100
Chinese females. In 2005, the number of males had
risen to 118 for every 100 females (in southern
provinces it was 130 boys to 100 girls).
• Similar statistics can be found for India and other
Asian countries. It does not take a great deal of
imagination to see the truth in the prediction that
such situations are worrisome because of the
“prospects of social instability.”
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Comments and Questions
Welcome
• Since this is still a work in progress we
would love to hear comments and
suggestions from any of you. Send
notes to:
» Alleen.Nilsen@asu.edu
»
or to
» Don.Nilsen@asu.edu
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