Archives for November 2019

You might as well yell SEE ME! a little louder, because the fact is that the advertising world ignores us. We should be an easy bullseye for marketers but in reality, not so much. A third of the U.S. population is over 50, but when it comes to media images (talking TV and print) we only garner 15 percent according to research done by AARP. It was based on a random sample of more than 1,000 images published or posted by popular brands and organizations.

Face it. We’re caricatured in marking images as looking old and out of it and heading fast for the dustbin. Despite the fact that more than 53 million people over 50 are still working as one third of the U.S. labor force, only 13 percent of the images showed these older individuals at work. Instead, they were often shown at home or with a health care provider. Younger workers, on the other hand, were shown with their also young co-workers, and often with technology products. Only 5 percent of the images showed older workers using technology, despite the fact that 69 percent of people between 55 and 73 own a smartphone. You can bet those same people own computers and are online much of the time.

A big part of the problem is that most workers in the advertising and marketing industries are young themselves. Their natural inclination is to use images of people who look like them. Ageism is the norm in the advertising world so it’s no surprise that boomers are either invisible or shown in ways that distort who we are and the contribution we are still making to the economy. Even worse, we are often portrayed as clueless and out of touch, just foils for younger people to dismiss as “practically dead.”

The good news is that AARP did something about this trend. They teamed up with Getty Stock images to introduce a collection of 1,400 images showing older people doing what we do…running businesses, participating in sports or active pursuits and interacting with younger generations in ways that are far from insulting.

So the problem is not solved but things are looking up. Searches for “seniors” on Getty have increased 151 percent from a year ago. The most popular image now is one of women in t-shirts doing yoga. A decade ago, the best-selling photo was an older couple in sweaters on the beach.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

It seems to me there’s a bias for work, as though work is inherently better than leisure, and unless we figure out some sort of livelihood after we retire, we’re headed toward doom and demise. The headlines are all about having no time to retire or reinventing oneself for your next act. I’ve used some of those words in the past. But now I think it’s more complicated than that and have been thinking about different type of people and their relationship to work as they age.

True Believers – They love their jobs and can’t wait to tell you about it.

Worker Bees – People who simply want to work, even at what many of us would call crappy jobs, but they are still jobs that matter, and these dedicated souls are proud to do them without much fanfare.

The Walking Wounded – Maybe they like their jobs OK, but maybe they don’t. Either way, they aren’t particularly happy or unhappy, but they can’t quite let go. What else is there? They will be there to turn off the lights.

Endurance Athletes – Those who keep working partially because their careers are gratifying but partly because they don’t have the financial resources to survive without a job. They do what they have to do.

Happy Retirees – We left the workforce hopefully on our terms and hopefully with enough money to make it to the end. Some of us will find other work because we want to or because we need supplemental income, but some of us are done with paying gigs.

While these archetypes are just simple generalizations, and I don’t claim to have captured everyone’s relationship to work, there’s a broad spectrum of people getting older and thinking about retirement. We all have different resources, different expectations and different personal demands. There’s no magic bullet.

And that is my long way of saying how much it annoys me when people proselytize about working or staying busy or whatever it is they think we need to do with our time.

Busy is not the gold standard of retirement happiness. As an official ambassador for the Happy Retirees, I enjoy a peaceful pace of life that engages my brain and body without a boatload of stress.

I win! No reinvention required.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

 

My wife, Penney, and I were returning from an outing to the Antler’s Bar and Grill on a bitter winter night. But, wouldn’t you know it, on the road home my car stuttered, yammered and then stalled next to a snowbank.

Now what? I thought. Penney simply stared straight ahead as if waiting for me to tear open the hood and fiddle and poke till the only thing I got going was a bad case of the chilblains. And I just knew that when I got back in the car she would calmly say, “Why don’t we just let it rest.” But not this time. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.

She always says that. When the toaster doesn’t toast. ‘Let it rest.’ When the garbage disposal seizes up—‘let it rest.’ Penney doesn’t know from thermal relays and reset buttons. But every time I start to tell her about those things she smiles like a mountain-top guru with the answer to life: ‘let it rest.’ And, of course, she’s right part of the time but she doesn’t know why. And could care less.

Maybe she gets her attitude from gardening. There’s a rhythm to it all: the time for planning and the time for planting; the time for growing and the time for harvesting. Then she cans the vegetables and fruit, lines them on a shelf where, of course, they wait. Or maybe she gets her outlook from having babies. You can’t rush babies. It’s a long ride so you might as well relax. She has taken a lot of trips.

So, maybe after all these years of marriage, I can admit that she is right. This night, in this snowdrift, I’m going to let it rest.

Penney looked over at me. “Well, aren’t you going to do something?” she asked. “You know, like look under the hood, jump the carburetor or goose the battery or whatever it is that you do?”

“No,” I replied in a level voice. “I thought I would just let it rest for a while.”

“Are you nuts?” she screamed. “We could freeze to death out here.”

Then I watched her in the dimming lights of our fading battery as she flagged down a trucker and left me to rest a while.

A former corporate trainer and writing instructor, Joe Novara and his wife live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, anthologies and articles. Check them out here.

Could there be a more patronizing way to dismiss us? I’m talking about the OK BOOMER  meme/viral sensation that seems to be everywhere in the last few weeks. Generation Z’s response to baby boomers who don’t “get” them is OK BOOMER. They are fed up with us and anything that appears to be condescending about them or the issues that matter to them.

It’s become so prevalent that the meme has morphed into merch. One of the big sellers is a hooded sweatshirt that says “OK BOOMER – Have a terrible day.”

Where is the anger coming from? Ask a Gen Zer and they will tell you it’s about inequality, political polarization and climate change ignorance, all of which foment into anti-boomer sentiment. They are fed up and angry. Just because they have tattoos and green hair does not mean they are irrelevant, and that’s how they believe boomers make them feel.

There’s always been pushback by younger generations. Remember when boomers were the anti-war, give peace a chance generation that could not understand how irrelevant their parents were. It’s kind of like that, only with more anger and frustration.

Some teens honestly believe that boomers are actively hurting them. When boomers and those in power make choices that adversely affect Gen Z, it becomes personal. Choices such as ignoring climate change or the rising college and health care expenses come across as active dissing to teens and young adults.

To be fair, Gen Zers say they are not just angry with boomers, but they are frustrated with any older adults that are putting them or their attitudes down. If you don’t like change or understand new technology, you are a target for their hostility. So ultimately, boomer is just a state of mind.

Describing it as the digital equivalent of an eye roll, teens describe “ok boomer” as the ideal response to the way they are treated. It’s their cool way of insulting us for the way we treat them and the issues they care about.

For a generation that’s often put down as snowflakes, “ok boomer” is a passive-aggressive way to let us know they are tired of being ignored and harmed by our indifference.

So a word to the wise. Stop criticizing and marginalizing your favorite Gen Zers. Ok, boomers?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.