Birthday cards as a tool for change
Birthday cards are a great tool in exploring our attitudes to aging/ageing, teasing out our hard wired fears of ageing and taking steps to challenge and combat ageism.
In the past year there have been several on-line workshops focusing on ageism in birthday cards including Age Proud Leeds (Anti-ageism activism for everyone), Age of Creativity Creative Later Life meeting (Anti-ageism and Creativity), the Creative Ageing Lived Experience Network (Ageism and Creativity), and Age Friendly Banbury (Tackling Ageism).
The workshop sessions have used a range of formats including offering participants an opportunity to try out some co-produced resources that get people talking about ageism and their experiences of age discrimination, opening up discussions about how to overcome some of the barriers we face when we need to challenge ageism in society. One session started with a quiz using polling software, questions such as:-
“What percentage of British adults’ report experiencing prejudice based on their age? 11%, 26% or 52%
(The answer is 26%*)
*This research was published in 2018 for the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
“Ageism can be experienced by people at any age. In line with previous research, a higher proportion of British adults reported experiencing prejudice based on their age (26%) than on any other characteristic.” Developing a national barometer of prejudice and discrimination in Britain (equalityhumanrights.com)
The Centre for Ageing Better have recently produced their new strategy which refers to “One in three people within the UK report experiencing age prejudice or age discrimination.” Also a study of the use of language related to older age in web-based magazines and newspapers found that of 20 countries, the UK was the most ageist of all.
Other sessions have started with exploring ageism emphasising how it affects people of all ages as well as the issue of internalised ageism and how Ageism shows up in Birthday cards.
In some sessions participants have been organised into breakout rooms to consider a range of cards prompted with questions such as …….
1. Are these cards ageist?
2. If so, why?
3. What messages do these cards convey?
4. What stereotypes do they feed into?
5. How would you change the cards to be age positive?
The workshops surface a range of reactions……
“ I’m aware that such cards exist and I’m sick to death of them, but what can you do about it?”
“Some peers laugh along, complicit in the negativity saying “what do you expect at our age?”
“I realise the extent to which ageing and older people are equated with having no value, unlovable, daft and stupid, and it’s culturally acceptable to make these judgements and associations, dreadful to see and read the negativity.”.
“The cards for people in their 20s and 30s highlighted the stereotyping and othering of age right across the life course!”
One participant referred to a friend who recently turned sixty and was very depressed about it they went on to say:
“These cards underpin the cultural acceptance that ageing is bad”
Other participants commented that until they had become aware of ageism, and the need to fight it, they had used phrases like “over the hill”.
Workshops sessions allow debate and discussion from participants prompted by the images and text of cards. The subtleties and nuances of ageist messages can be drawn out such as the implied “negative” in hindsight of “wanting to get older” and why “still” beautiful?
By all accounts these workshops are very stimulating, creative and thought provoking aided by using examples of birthday cards – ageist and age friendly; showing how language and images reflect cultural attitudes to ageing and how we can change things, our attitudes in a positive way, be activists within our communities of friends and family.
