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"Hey, Hey, Hey, What's so Wrong..."
Aug. 12th, 2011 12:17 amTuesday's New York Times science section had an article this week on old people getting plastic surgery. That, coupled with my post from Tuesday, has led me to a rather icky discovery of something I did admittedly kind of already know. Which is that we kind of have this ideal, in America -- I don't know how it is in other cultures, having dog-paddled but never really been immersed in any other than American -- that old people are supposed to be adorable grandparents.
Old ladies are supposed to be tiny and do knitting, or fat and do baking, and old men are supposed to whittle things and dispense pithy pieces of wisdom and fix neighbourhood bikes. They're allowed to be lonely, but only so they can adopt small children as honourary grandchildren or be used to shame us generally into spending more time with our own old people. If they're bad-tempered or put their makeup on all over their faces or have to wear Attends or sag in random places, we turn them into the subjects of honestly very mean-spirited comedy.
And I'm not trying to say that everybody needs to go out and adopt some isolated nursing-home inmate, but really I think it's wrong both to idealise old age or to make fun of it. Idealising it removes us from all the problems that come with getting old and also makes it look like people who don't fit the ideal are defective -- hence, I think, things like old-person plastic surgery. I mean, Jesus Christ, this one woman in the article spent seventy-seven thou on facelifts to get rid of wrinkles and implants to cope with sagging breasts. She's eighty. At eighty, people should not have to focusing on this kind of thing. I cannot even count all the better ways to spend that money to enrich one's own life or someone else's. And at the same time this whole "lol let's as a culture shame old people and send them the message that once you are old your usefulness has ended and you should keep out of sight" thing is absolutely heinous.
The thing is, old people are just like everybody else, in that they deserve to be treated with respect. Whether they bake you apple pies and tell stories of their children, or have Alzheimer's and scream at you and refuse to bathe or -- like one old lady I visited while I was working -- have to be talked out of suicide. I've really kind of run the spectrum of old person personality types; I've had an adorable old man who wanted me to meet his cat and showed me around his house and called his wife "Mom", I've had a hilarious old lady with MS who was wheelchair-bound and showed me how to lift her from her chair to her toilet, I had an old man who was totally bedridden and with whom I communicated through really patchy hand signals, and an old lady who threatened to punch me while I was giving her her bath. And every single one of them deserved my respect and the best care I could give them, by virtue of being human beings. And I really hope that's how I've carried myself throughout this summer, and how I do for the rest of my life, because that's not just true of old people, it's true of everyone.
Which is not to say it wasn't hilarious when my one old gentleman had me burn a bonfire made of used Depends, or when Audrey (my Wednesday client) stole the dated brick from a condemned schoolhouse down the street from her apartment (actually, Audrey always does something funny when I visit. ♥ She makes me squee).
In other, non-soapboxy news, I stopped by Michael's to-day to enjoy my new and undoubtedly brief period of solvency. It's been about a whole week since I was over, so they already have about eleven-thousand new products in the scrapbooking section, and I was amazed and ... hilarified? amused is too gentle a word, I think. Hilarified to find that you can now buy adhesive metal gears and keys for your scrapbooking or cardmaking projects. At this point, I'm starting to think that 'steampunkery' should be a word in much the same way 'fuckery' is. I may start using it. "What kind of steampunkery is this?" I will say, staring in disbelief at the fact that you can now buy tiny watch faces as embellishments. They discontinued my goddamn copper pearlised dots that I use for eyes, but they've started producing tiny glitter-covered top hats and monocles that are already adhesive-backed.
Naturally I eschewed this silliness and instead managed to spend seventy-five dollars (!!!!) on scrapbook paper and cake glitter, and that embellished tape I've had my eye on for about six months now. >_>
I also went to Target and discovered that it is nearly impossible to find a black, wire-free bra in 38B. Did you know that there are a lot of black, wire-free bras in the nursing section? There are. There are a lot fewer in regular. But I got to embarrass a teenage male cashier by buying bras and underpants, and I found The Most Beautiful Scarf in the World, which I purchased because of its aesthetic qualities and also I love scarves and also it helps me pretend winter is NOW DAMMIT.
To-morrow I work at the library, and Saturday we are going to our vacation in the mountains. I look forward to sitting in the sun by the lake doing crossword puzzles and reading all day, as well as the greased-watermelon water polo that has become something of a family tradition. Also Maria's birthday! I finished her calender and everything. :D
I would say that to-day was a success.
Old ladies are supposed to be tiny and do knitting, or fat and do baking, and old men are supposed to whittle things and dispense pithy pieces of wisdom and fix neighbourhood bikes. They're allowed to be lonely, but only so they can adopt small children as honourary grandchildren or be used to shame us generally into spending more time with our own old people. If they're bad-tempered or put their makeup on all over their faces or have to wear Attends or sag in random places, we turn them into the subjects of honestly very mean-spirited comedy.
And I'm not trying to say that everybody needs to go out and adopt some isolated nursing-home inmate, but really I think it's wrong both to idealise old age or to make fun of it. Idealising it removes us from all the problems that come with getting old and also makes it look like people who don't fit the ideal are defective -- hence, I think, things like old-person plastic surgery. I mean, Jesus Christ, this one woman in the article spent seventy-seven thou on facelifts to get rid of wrinkles and implants to cope with sagging breasts. She's eighty. At eighty, people should not have to focusing on this kind of thing. I cannot even count all the better ways to spend that money to enrich one's own life or someone else's. And at the same time this whole "lol let's as a culture shame old people and send them the message that once you are old your usefulness has ended and you should keep out of sight" thing is absolutely heinous.
The thing is, old people are just like everybody else, in that they deserve to be treated with respect. Whether they bake you apple pies and tell stories of their children, or have Alzheimer's and scream at you and refuse to bathe or -- like one old lady I visited while I was working -- have to be talked out of suicide. I've really kind of run the spectrum of old person personality types; I've had an adorable old man who wanted me to meet his cat and showed me around his house and called his wife "Mom", I've had a hilarious old lady with MS who was wheelchair-bound and showed me how to lift her from her chair to her toilet, I had an old man who was totally bedridden and with whom I communicated through really patchy hand signals, and an old lady who threatened to punch me while I was giving her her bath. And every single one of them deserved my respect and the best care I could give them, by virtue of being human beings. And I really hope that's how I've carried myself throughout this summer, and how I do for the rest of my life, because that's not just true of old people, it's true of everyone.
Which is not to say it wasn't hilarious when my one old gentleman had me burn a bonfire made of used Depends, or when Audrey (my Wednesday client) stole the dated brick from a condemned schoolhouse down the street from her apartment (actually, Audrey always does something funny when I visit. ♥ She makes me squee).
In other, non-soapboxy news, I stopped by Michael's to-day to enjoy my new and undoubtedly brief period of solvency. It's been about a whole week since I was over, so they already have about eleven-thousand new products in the scrapbooking section, and I was amazed and ... hilarified? amused is too gentle a word, I think. Hilarified to find that you can now buy adhesive metal gears and keys for your scrapbooking or cardmaking projects. At this point, I'm starting to think that 'steampunkery' should be a word in much the same way 'fuckery' is. I may start using it. "What kind of steampunkery is this?" I will say, staring in disbelief at the fact that you can now buy tiny watch faces as embellishments. They discontinued my goddamn copper pearlised dots that I use for eyes, but they've started producing tiny glitter-covered top hats and monocles that are already adhesive-backed.
Naturally I eschewed this silliness and instead managed to spend seventy-five dollars (!!!!) on scrapbook paper and cake glitter, and that embellished tape I've had my eye on for about six months now. >_>
I also went to Target and discovered that it is nearly impossible to find a black, wire-free bra in 38B. Did you know that there are a lot of black, wire-free bras in the nursing section? There are. There are a lot fewer in regular. But I got to embarrass a teenage male cashier by buying bras and underpants, and I found The Most Beautiful Scarf in the World, which I purchased because of its aesthetic qualities and also I love scarves and also it helps me pretend winter is NOW DAMMIT.
To-morrow I work at the library, and Saturday we are going to our vacation in the mountains. I look forward to sitting in the sun by the lake doing crossword puzzles and reading all day, as well as the greased-watermelon water polo that has become something of a family tradition. Also Maria's birthday! I finished her calender and everything. :D
I would say that to-day was a success.
