Newsletter and IYOP Initiatives Australian Coalition '99

AC '99 UPDATE - EDITION No. 6 (February 1999)
The Point About Ageing
By Helen Elliott

In my early twenties I was very ill and one of the consequences of this illness was that my formerly excellent teeth started to decay at a menacing rate. Like Martin Amis, I'm completely obsessed with teeth, so I was horrified at what was happening to mine. Horrified, but not intelligent. "If you keep on like this you'll have no teeth by the time you're thirty," my jovially insensitive dentist dropped one day. My response? Relief. Sheer relief. Thirty, I thought. That's OK. Nothing much happens after thirty.

How we change. Thirty years on and my comment would be that nothing much happens after death, but anything and everything can happen until then. (Although, I still don't really believe that one day I may have white hair.) It was nothing less than brilliant of whoever it was at the United Nations to suggest that we have an International Year of Older Persons. Because, if anything in life is certain - other than the much noted and quoted death and taxes, of course - it's the fact that we all get older. We are all an older person than the one we were last year. We change. Our perceptions change. But we don't think much about this thing called ageing. We donıt like to think much about it because "old" has such bad press.

"Old" has been twinned with decrepitude, being finished. "Young" has stolen the limelight. The very word "young" rings with energy, dynamism and speed. Funny about the way that bit of fiction has cosyed into our brains. Or perhaps not. A glance at the most popular television shows is illuminating. Anyone over 50 is portrayed not just as stereotype, but as caricature.

Instead of writing-in characters who are nuanced and complex, people deeply involved and often powerful in the life about them they are turned into "a character". A character is generally someone to laugh at. Older women are reduced to being sweet, dotty, "grannies" or bitter, dotty women without children. Older men become bumbling fools.

The advertising industry is just as bad. Where do they get the idea that older people are all so uniformly cravatted and blonded? So uniformly middleclass?

So desperate to turn life into one great cabin cruiser of prissy comfort? Not from reality, I'd say, having just done an idle check. Real television, on the other hand, documentaries, flatly tell another story. The recent documentary about the White House Press Corps, surely the most intense and demanding Press Corps anywhere, constantly featured a most unstereotypical leader of the pack.

This is Helen Thomas. The now legendary Helen Thomas. She's 78 and she's the one with inside knowledge. The inside running. This beautifully dressed woman with bright red nails is the one to whom the others defer. And although she doesn't have white hair to match the White House, I swear she's got wrinkles.

And talking about the White House, isn't Bill Clinton over 50? Optimists might be tempted to observe that the one positive thing about the Lewinsky affair is that it's brought something not often talked about into focus. People over 50 are still interested in sex. If the rush of interest in Viagra indicated as much, Bill Clinton confirmed it. The point about ageing is that we are still unique selves whatever age we are. Life does not just finish at a certain date, the way I thought it would when I was 20. It was just unimaginable to me when I was young to believe that there would be different pleasures - and difficulties - in store for me.

In this Year of Older Persons there is one central undeniable truth for each individual. No matter what age you are now, you'll be older tomorrow. It isn't a case of It Could be You - itıs a certainty that It Will Be You.

AC'99 welcomes Helen Elliott, our new freelance journalist. If you wish to comment on Helen's article, or any other part of UPDATE, please send your letters to the Editor at ac99nat@vicnet.net.au fax (03) 9820 4247 or mail to
Australian Coalition '99, Level 2,
3 Bowen Crescent, Melbourne, VIC 3004.

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