Next Wednesday, Oct. 9, Ashton Applewhite will be in Oak Park to help us celebrate Ageism Awareness Day. She will speak at the 19th Century Charitable Association, 178 Forest Ave. at 6:30 p.m. This program is sponsored by the Oak Park Aging In Communities Commission, which I chair.
Ageism refers to stereotypes (how we think), prejudice (how we feel), and discrimination (how we act) toward others or ourselves based on age. It negatively impacts our health and well-being, our financial security, and the economy. It exists in many forms, influencing everything from personal interactions to public policy, and it impacts us at every age.
Ashton Applewhite is one of the world’s foremost activists, writers, and thinkers regarding ageism. She travels the globe speaking about and encouraging anti-ageism. Some of what she will talk about next Wednesday, right here in Oak Park, will be what ageism is, how we internalize ageist beliefs, how ageism affects our prospects and potential, how to counter ageism in ourselves and in our culture at large, and the intersection of ageism with ableism, racism and sexism.
The program will be kicked off by music from our own community musicians, George Bailey, Carl Spight and Dorie Blesoff, and will include a Q&A session between Ashton and the audience.
The first time I met Ashton Applewhite was in 2017. I was in “retirement transition” and she was firing on all cylinders. Ashton had just published her groundbreaking book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, in 2016. This book is a major step forward in the world-wide movement to expose and dismantle ageism.
I met her at a conference in Chicago, at a time when I had just started reading books by Dr. Bill Thomas, Angeles Arrien, Elizabeth White and others like them. In the hallway, between sessions, we had an unhurried conversation. She was gracious, and everything she said made sense to me. She talked about both theory and practice — how everybody is always aging, how almost everybody is both subject to and a perpetrator of ageism, and how being called “young lady” is insulting and disrespectful.
In 2022, the United Nations and World Health Organization named Ashton one of the Healthy Aging 50, a group of leaders “transforming the world to be a better place in which to grow older.” That same year she was named one of the world’s most inspiring women by FemaleOneZero and she won the Maggie Kuhn Award.
Having Ashton Applewhite speak in our own neighborhood about ageism is a special opportunity that I hope you can take advantage of. Obviously, if you have no interest in ageism and how it impacts your world, then just don’t show up. But if you have even a spark of interest, do yourself a favor and come to the Ageism Awareness Day program next Wednesday at the 19th Century Charitable Association. It starts at 6:30 p.m. It’s Free. You can reserve a seat at www.oak-park.us/AAD.