Women and Aging

1. WOMEN AND AGING

2. Let’s make a list
What are the common cultural assumptions of
aging/old women? Think aboutt what women
are valued for from previous discussions. Then
think about how this affects our views of aging
women. Are they valued? When? Does this
change from culture to culture? How? Are
there good old women? What do you identify
with them?
Are there bad old women? What do you
identify as their characteristics?

3. “On Being an Aging Woman”
In groups, summarize main points of this essay for
about 10 minutes. Then we can share them and add
more to the discussion of the cultural views of aging
and what it means and how we treat old people in this
society. Why do we marginalize and isolate ourselves
from them. When do we become old?

4. http://www.tillieolsen.net/life.php
• Tillie Lerner was born on a tenant farm in Nebraska, the
second of six children of Samuel and Ida Lerner, Russian
Jewish immigrants who left their homeland after their
involvement in the failed 1905 revolution. She grew up in
Omaha where her father worked as a painter and
paperhanger and served as State Secretary in the Nebraska
Socialist Party. Tillie was strongly influenced by her parents'
revolutionary heritage and by their humanistic and socialist
beliefs. From a young age Tillie was a voracious reader, and
though she dropped out of high school after the 11th grade
ending her "formal" education, in her words, "public libraries
were my sustenance and my college."

5. In 1929, Tillie embarked on what would be a lifetime odyssey of
low-paying jobs (hotel maid, packinghouse worker, linen
checker, waitress, laundry worker, factory worker, secretary,
etc.) in Kansas, Missouri, and Minnesota, eventually finding her
way to California. An activist and a member of the Young
Communist League, Tillie was jailed for organizing
packinghouse workers in Omaha and Kansas City, and became
involved in labor, social and political causes of the depression-
era. It was while recovering from pleurisy and tuberculosis
contracted as a result of factory conditions and weeks in jail,
that she began to write her novel, Yonnondio: From the Thirties,
which would not be published until forty years later. In 1932,
her first daughter, Karla, was born, and the next year they
moved to San Francisco.

6. The conditions of working class life, raising a family and activism did
not permit Olsen to pursue her writing for many years, although she
continued to keep notebooks and to write on tiny slips of paper,
"capturing voices, words, thoughts" in the small moments she could.
Throughout the years of child rearing and maintaining a family with
few resources while working on "everyday jobs" Tillie organized in
her neighborhoods for parks and playgrounds, was a founder of the
city's first Parent Cooperative Nursery school, fought for quality child
care programs, became a leader in the PTA, served as director of the
California CIO War Relief and President of the Women's Auxiliary of
the CIO during the second world war.
During the McCarthy era, Olsen was accused of being an "agent of
Stalin working to infiltrate the city's schools through the PTA" - and
though she was never charged, Jack, her lifelong partner, was
subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities
Commission for his labor organizing activities - which lost him his job
and ushered in years of financial difficulty for the family.

7. Carrie Fisher Fires Back at 'Star Wars' Age-Shamers: 'My
Body Hasn't Aged as Well as I Have’ (2015)
The 59-year-old actress’ looks have been the topic of much scrutiny
in the wake of the latest installment in the legendary space saga,
because the world is an ugly place and most Internet trolls would
rather harass her for getting older than question why Harrison Ford
continues to wear a single stud earring well into his seventies. The
actress made headlines earlier this year when she revealed she was
asked to lose weight to play her part in The Force Awakens,
something she attributes to Hollywood’s obsession with aging and
appearance.
“They might as well say ‘get younger,’ because that’s how easy it
is,” she told Good Housekeeping of losing weight for the film. “We
treat beauty like an accomplishment, and that is insane. Everyone in
L.A. says, ‘Oh, you look good,’ and you listen for them to say you’ve
lost weight. It’s never ‘How are you?’ or ‘You seem happy!’”