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Taylor Swift and I inhabit two different worlds, but there was a momentary cross-over when she hit the headlines. No one could miss seeing what was interpreted as her fatphobia in a 2022 video that she had made to accompany her new song Anti-Hero. But there is another sort of fat-shaming that is both highly visible and – yet – so subtle that it stays totally under the public radar.
With all that we hear about dementia, even though only a minority of us will get it, it is – as Canadian doctor Mike Evans said (in The Globe and Mail in 2014) – very normal to be scared of losing your memory, and what that might imply. He has, therefore, provided some useful tips to differentiate what is normal forgetting, from what might be signs of dementia.
On 8 March 2023 Anne was honoured to be named Coogee’s Local Woman of the Year at the NSW Women of the Year Awards.
Recently, I was in a big suburban shopping centre. With a lot of people. And yet, to paraphrase Wordsworth, I wandered lonely in a crowd: the ONLY person wearing a mask.
Anne in conversation with Sue McGrath from the anti-ageism advocacy campaign Every Age Counts.
Recently, I heard the phrase “Stand up and speak out”. And I realised that that is exactly what I’m doing with my book, Engaging with Ageing: What matters as we grow older.
Anne was honoured to be mentioned in parliament on the 13th October 2022 by Dr Marjorie O'Neill MP in a Community Recognition Statement and was later presented with a framed copy of the Statement by Dr O'Neill.
Anne joined presenters Johanna Nicholson and Fauziah Ibrahim on Saturday 1st October for ABC News Weekend Breakfast to discuss the release of Engaging with Ageing: What Matters as we Grow Older.
How many people are – like me – taking for granted all the wondrous things going on inside our bodies to keep us doing all that we do on a daily, and nightly, basis? Unless…. unless something happens to shake us up. Like, for instance, atrial fibrillation.
True story: at our Cremorne Old Girls’ 80th birthday gathering, which I wrote about recently, we had fun sharing our thoughts on which three people we’d want at a dinner party. George Clooney was the man of the moment there, but when it came to my turn, I managed to resist him in favour of one of our old friends who was missing in action, Ronnie Kahn of OzHarvest – and whom, not being a monarchist, I proposed should be Australia’s first president.
I certainly wasn’t planning to follow my review of Elvis with another film review, but I’ve just seen Good luck to you, Leo Grande, and I do have to report that it is well worth seeing, in a much happier and very different way to Elvis.
Last Sunday I was at a celebration to mark the 80th birthdays of a bunch of us from the same school and Leaving Certificate year (1958). A lively, vigorous group with a lot to talk about, comparing notes about our active lives and having – as usual – loads of loud fun.
We were driving across the Harbour Bridge at the time, pleased that we were going to arrive early enough at our destination to have a leisurely cup of coffee, when our education about a serious flaw in our EV car began.
When you’re planning a holiday in an unfamiliar place, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you do a bit of research before arriving. That’s exactly how Dr Anne Ring has approached ageing. She’s a health sociologist and writer who, thankfully for us, has written the travel guide on old age. Engaging With Ageing will be available via her website.
Remember when SBS and then the ABC had film reviewers Margaret (Pomeranz) and David (Stratton) going at it hammer and tongs over their polar opposite views about a movie, and you had to decide which one of them was more you when it came to filmic preferences?
As these two photos show, wrangling a snake for the first time is momentous at any age, whether being helped by your big brother at five, or deciding at 80 that maybe it’s time to be a bit braver about a life-long fear of these legless reptiles.
For a recent edition of The Sydney Morning Herald, Dr Marlene Krasovitsky – the director of the EveryAGE Counts Campaign – wrote an incisive opinion piece about the “sheer power” which is invoked by the societal prejudice against old age that is inherent in ageist jokes. But joking aside, there’s another and more subtle but equally powerful source of ageism…
I fear that there are many of us who literally cannot bear to listen to the news about the horrors that are unfolding in Ukraine, while the protesting world looks on, largely helplessly, sanction-escalation notwithstanding, as the big bear of Russia galumphs destructively and murderously through a country whose population – like most of us – just wants to live in peace.
In my article on the benefits of a home gym, I mentioned the fact that I listen to podcasts as I exercise. What I didn’t reveal then is just how vital these podcasts are to my keeping on with my daily circuit, which otherwise could become pretty boring.
There are some people whose homes are filled with items that they love, inherited from their parents, collected in their own travels, interesting purchases, precious gifts. Just so much stuff.
Who knew that we’d be moving into a third year with waves of super-caution being advocated during ever-evolving forms of the virus? And with increasing numbers of booster shots whose efficacy could be waning as they increased in number? What all of that adds up to is the possibility of recurring times when we are more or less confined to quarters, with reports over the past two years on the negative impact that this has been having on the physical and mental health of some older people. What can help to counter that is keeping up – or starting – an exercise regimen that continues to benefit our wellbeing as effectively as possible within our own homes.
How time flies when you’re having fun as you grow older. That can be said for both the EveryAGE Counts Campaign and me, as well as for our relationship over the past four years. Excitingly, I first heard about the Campaign before it was born, after its conception in the Benevolent Society, which publicly announced its imminent arrival on the basis of a bank of solid research that demonstrated the need for it as well as guiding the development of its key features.
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With so many major problems confronting us these days, should I be getting stirred up by the invisibility of older women in catalogues of clothes for which older women are a substantial part of their market? Ordinarily, probably not. But my reminder of their absence (through finally succumbing to the temptations of online shopping in this latest lockdown) came, coincidentally, with the publication of a much-needed set of guidelines for the media, “for portraying people who are older”.
In the late 1990s, the business end of Australian medical practice was – finally – given the same rights as other businesses, to advertise. And almost instantly, some cosmetic surgery practitioners were using all the manipulative and misleading tricks of their cousins in the beauty industry – from photoshopped models to artificially enhanced before-and-after photographs – to “show” what cosmetic surgery could “do” for those who were encouraged to be unhappy with how they looked.
I keep a watchful eye out for the ways in which old age and issues about ageing are portrayed in the variety of media that I have access to. When I see a portrayal that is praiseworthily positive or realistic, I send a letter to congratulate them. This is something that the legendary Val French and OPSO (Older People Speak Out) did successfully for many years on a national scale through their Media Awards. And it is also something that we can do as individuals.
Join Mayor Cr Libby Stapleton and CEO Robyn Seymour to launch Positive Ageing Month, a series of events held throughout October.
Featuring Mayor Cr Libby Stapleton, CEO Robyn Seymour and keynote speaker Anne Ring, a 79-year-old health sociologist who will focus on the need to destigmatize the word “old” and the recent WHO finding that it’s those who hold positive views about their own ageing who live longer.
How many of us take our friends for granted? In a good way, I mean. That they are there for us and with us in so many ways, with many of those heightened in these pandemic times, when we are asking about each other’s welfare, entertaining each other with items that make us laugh, or think, or both, staying connected through phone calls, Facetime or Zoom, and then – eventually – being able, if we live close enough, to get together in real rather than reel time.
In a beautiful article in which a daughter has written lovingly about her parents, what is wrong with these touching and family-minded sentences (from the 23 July Big Issue)?
Dad’s nudging 80 and shouldn’t be pushing around a lawnmower..… Not that he’ll accept help. It’s one step closer to admitting he’s getting old.
Let me count the ways. Read More →
Radio interview on ABC WA Afternoons with Christine Layton, 9 Aug 2021
"I don't take for granted the fact that I'm lucky enough to be old... and I'm certainly not going to whitewash that by saying 'hey, I feel really young!'"
Reading about a remarkable woman who had recently died, I came across a description of her in old age as “a most youthful elderly person”. I am putting my obituary writers on notice: please do not use any such term to describe me.