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One thing that every person
in this room is going to become:
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older.
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And most of us are scared
stiff at the prospect.
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How does that word make you feel?
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I used to feel the same way.
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What was I most worried about?
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Ending up drooling in some grim
institutional hallway.
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And then I learned that only four percent
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of older Americans
are living in nursing homes,
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and the percentage is dropping.
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What else was I worried about?
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Dementia.
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Turns out that most of us
can think just fine to the end.
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Dementia rates are dropping too.
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The real epidemic is anxiety
over memory loss.
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I also figured that old people
were depressed
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because they were old
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and they were going to die soon.
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(Laughter)
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It turns out that the longer people live,
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the less they fear dying,
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and that people are happiest at
the beginnings and the end of their lives.
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It's called the U-curve of happiness,
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and it's been born out
by dozens of studies around the world.
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You don't have to be a Buddhist
or a billionaire.
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The curve is a function of the way aging
itself affects the brain.
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So I started feeling a lot better
about getting older,
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and I started obsessing about why
so few people know these things.
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The reason is ageism:
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discrimination and stereotyping
on the basis of age.
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We experience it anytime someone assumes
we're too old for something,
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instead of finding out who we are
and what we're capable of,
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or too young.
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Ageism cuts both ways.
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All isms are socially constructed ideas --
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racism, sexism, homophobia --
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and that means we make them up,
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and they can change over time.
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All these prejudices
pit us against each other
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to maintain the status quo,
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like auto workers in the US competing
against auto workers in Mexico
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instead of organizing for better wages.
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(Applause)
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We know it's not okay to allocate
resources by race or by sex.
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Why should it be okay to weigh
the needs of the young against the old?
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All prejudice relies on othering,
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seeing a group of people
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as other than ourselves:
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other race, other religion,
other nationality.
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The strange thing about ageism,
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that other is us.
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Ageism feeds on denial,
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our reluctance to acknowledge
that we are going to become
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that older person.
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It's denial when we
try to pass for younger
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or when we believe in anti-aging products,
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or when we feel
like our bodies are betraying us
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simply because they are changing.
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Why on Earth do we stop celebrating
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the ability to adapt and grow
as we move through life?
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Why should aging well mean struggling
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to look and move like younger
versions of ourselves?
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It's embarrassing
to be called out as older
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until we quit being embarrassed about it,
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and it's not healthy to go through life
dreading our futures.
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The sooner we get off this
hamster wheel of age denial,
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the better off we are.
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Stereotypes are always
a mistake, of course,
-
but especially when it comes to age,
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because the longer we live,
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the more different from
one another we become.
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Right? Think about it.
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And yet we tend to think of everyone
in a retirement home as the same age,
-
old --
-
(Laughter) --
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when they can span four decades.
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Can you imagine thinking that way
about a group of people
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between the ages of 20 and 60?
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When you get to a party, do you head
for people your own age?
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Have you ever grumbled
about entitled millennials?
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Have you ever rejected a haircut
or a relationship or an outing
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because it's not age-appropriate?
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For adults, there's no such thing.
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All these behaviors are ageist.
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We all do them,
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and we can't challenge bias
unless we're aware of it.
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Nobody's born ageist,
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but it starts at early childhood,
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around the same time attitudes
towards race and gender start to form,
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because negative messages
about late life bombard us
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from the media and popular
culture at every turn.
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Right? Wrinkles are ugly.
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Old people are pathetic.
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It's sad to be old.
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Look at Hollywood.
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A survey of recent
Best Picture nominations
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found that only 12 percent
of speaking or named characters
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were age 60 and up,
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and many of them
were portrayed as impaired.
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Older people can be
the most ageist of all
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because we've had a lifetime
to internalize these messages
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and we've never thought to challenge them.
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I had to acknowledge it
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and stop colluding.
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"Senior moment" quips, for example:
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I stopped making them when it dawned on me
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that when I lost
the car keys in high school,
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I didn't call it a junior moment.
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(Laughter)
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Like I stopped blaming
my sore knee on being 64.
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My other knee doesn't hurt,
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and it's just as old.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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We are all worried about
some aspect of getting older,
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whether running out of money,
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getting sick, ending up alone,
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and those fears are legitimate and real.
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But what never dawns on most of us
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is that the experience of reaching old age
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can be better or worse
depending on the culture
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in which it takes place.
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It is not having a vagina
that makes life harder for women.
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It's sexism.
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(Applause)
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It's not loving a man that makes
life harder for gay guys.
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It's homophobia.
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And it is not the passage of time
that makes getting older
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so much harder than it has to be.
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It is ageism.
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When labels are hard to read
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or there's no handrail
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or we can't open the damn jar,
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we blame ourselves,
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our failure to age successfully,
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instead of the ageism that makes
those natural transitions shameful
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and the discrimination that makes
those barriers acceptable.
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You can't make money off satisfaction,
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but shame and fear create markets,
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and capitalism always needs new markets.
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Who says wrinkles are ugly?
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The multi-billion dollar
skin care industry.
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Who says perimenopause and low-T
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and mild cognitive impairment
are medical conditions?
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The trillion dollar
pharmaceutical industry.
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The more clearly we see
these forces at work,
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the easier it is to come up
with alternative,
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more positive,
and more accurate narratives.
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Aging is not a problem to be fixed
-
or a disease to be cured.
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It is a natural, powerful,
lifelong process that unites us all.
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Changing the culture is a tall order,
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I know that, but culture is fluid.
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Look at how much the position
of women has changed in my lifetime,
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or the incredible strides
that the gay rights movement
-
has made in just a few decades.
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Right?
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Look at gender.
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We used to think of it is a binary,
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male or female,
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and now we understand it's a spectrum.
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It is high time to ditch
the old-young binary too.
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There is no line in the sand
between old and young
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after which it's all downhill,
-
and the longer we wait
to challenge that idea,
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the more damage it does
to ourselves and our place in the world,
-
like in the workforce, where
age discrimination is rampant.
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In Silicon Valley, engineers
are getting botox and hair plugs
-
before key interviews,
-
and these are skilled
white men in their 30s,
-
so imagine the effects
further down the food chain.
-
(Laughter)
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The personal and economic
consequences are devastating.
-
Not one stereotype about
older workers holds up under scrutiny.
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Companies aren't adaptable and creative
because their employees are young,
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they're adaptable and creative despite it.
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(Applause)
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We know that diverse companies
aren't just better places to work,
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they work better,
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and just like race and sex,
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age is a criterion for diversity.
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A growing body of fascinating research
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shows that attitudes towards aging
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affect how our minds and bodies
function at the cellular level.
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When we talk to older people like this
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or call them sweetie or young lady,
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it's called elderspeak,
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they appear to instantly age,
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walking and talking less competently.
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People with more positive
feelings towards aging
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walk faster,
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they do better on memory tests,
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they heal quicker, and they live longer.
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Even with brains full
of plaques and tangles,
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some people stayed sharp to the end.
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What did they have in common?
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A sense of purpose.
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And what's the biggest obstacle
to having a sense of purpose in late life?
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A culture that tells us that getting older
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means shuffling offstage.
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That's why the World Health Organization
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is developing a global
anti-ageism initiative
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to extend not just
lifespan but healthspan.
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Women experience the double whammy
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of ageism and sexism,
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so we experience aging differently.
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There's a double standard at work here,
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shocker --
-
(Laughter) --
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the notion that aging enhances men
and devalues women.
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Women reinforce this double standard
when we compete to stay young,
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another punishing
and losing proposition.
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Does any woman in this room
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really believe
that she is a lesser version,
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less interesting, less fun in bed,
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less valuable, than
the woman she once was?
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This discrimination affects our health,
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our well-being, and our income,
-
and the effects add up over time.
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They are further compounded
by race and by class,
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which is why, everywhere in the world,
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the poorest of the poor
are old women of color.
-
What's the takeaway from that map?
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By 2050, one out of five of us,
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almost two billion people,
-
will be age 60 and up.
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Longevity is a fundamental hallmark
of human progress.
-
All these older people represent a vast,
unprecedented, and untapped market.
-
And yet, capitalism and urbanization
-
have propelled age bias
into every corner of the globe,
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from Switzerland,
where elders fare the best,
-
to Afghanistan, which sits at the bottom
of the Global Age Watch Index.
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Half of the world's countries
aren't mentioned on that list
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because we don't bother to collect data
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on almost two million people
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because they're no longer young.
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Almost two thirds of people
over 60 around the world
-
say they have trouble
accessing healthcare.
-
Almost three quarters say their income
doesn't cover basic services
-
like food, water, electricity,
and decent housing.
-
Is this the world we want our children,
-
who may well live
to be a hundred, to inherit?
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Everyone, all ages, all genders,
-
all nationalities,
-
is old or future old,
-
and unless we put an end to it,
ageism will oppress us all.
-
And that makes it a perfect target
for collective advocacy.
-
Why add another ism to the list
when so many, racism in particular,
-
call out for action?
-
Here's the thing:
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we don't have to choose.
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When we make the world
a better place to grow old in,
-
we make it a better place
in which to be from somewhere else,
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to have a disability,
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to be queer, to be non-rich,
to be non-white.
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And when we show up at all ages
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for whatever cause matters most to us --
-
save the whales, save the democracy --
-
we not only make
that effort more effective,
-
we dismantle ageism in the process.
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Longevity is here to stay.
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A movement to end ageism is underway.
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I'm in it, and I hope you will join me.
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(Applause)
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Thank you. Let's do it! Let's do it!
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(Applause)
Maricene Crus
9:52 - 9:55
because we don't bother to collect data
on ALMOST 2 million people
Thank you!