Madonna cops a lot of flak for not 'acting her age' when it comes to her racy fashion choices. Is this fair? Photo / AP
When Madonna fell (or rather, was pulled) down the stairs on stage at the 2015 Brit Awards, the social media world poked fun viciously at her old, brittle bones.
The reigning Queen of Pop, who has been a fixture of our ear buds and video screens since before I was born, has been slated as "too old" to be a sexually-suggestive pop star for ten years now. Since she donned a leotard for 2005's Hung Up, haters have been cat-calling Madonna with vile judgments. "Put it away, grandma!" they've lambasted, somehow thinking they're righteous and doing some kind of social good in making such a statement.
This sentiment has nothing to do with Madonna's physical appearance - the woman has a body most 25-year-olds envy. It is ageism, pure and simple.
Ageism is something most do without acknowledging it as prejudice. It's the socially-accepted tendency to implicitly or explicitly discriminate against someone because of their age, or - at an even more basic level - to just regard them as debilitated and unworthy of attention. Madonna gets it every time she releases a new album. Sylvester Stallone receives it with every new action film. Even the loath-him-or-love-him Winston Peters sees it every election he continues to run in.
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We tend to think of ageism as something that only happens in issues pertaining to employment. Those attempting to return to the workforce after decades off will be met with eliminating but unsaid bias, because they're "overqualified for the role" and presumed to be "a digital dinosaur". But this hurtful - and illegal - discrimination isn't the only place ageism happens in the 21st Century.
If we think you're too old to be in a certain bar, you'll struggle to get attention from the server to buy your drink. If we think you're too old to be at the gym, we'll joke about your hips if you're doing anything more strenuous than a brisk treadmill walk. If you're trying on skinny jeans at Superette, we'll wonder why you're not down the road at Jean Jones.
How is it we've become so unaccepting of those of a certain age? Does something happen at, say, 55-years-old when a person stops being a human, and starts being a walking, talking nuisance? Do their contributions to society stop being relevant? Their knowledge begin to be inapplicable to modern society?
Of course not, because there is much we can learn from those older than us. Likewise, there is much we can learn from those younger than us, because ageism happens both ways.
If you're a 30-year-old partner in a law firm, your high-profile court cases won't be seen equally valuable to clients and colleagues as decades of mid-level practising. If you're getting married at 21, you'll be judged as too young to make that kind of commitment. If you're a 17-year-old, you'll be excluded from conversations with adults because they believe they're talking about something "you wouldn't understand".
Those who perpetuate this reverse age discrimination do so on grounds of experience, as in, "you're not experienced enough to represent this client/commit yourself fully to another person/comprehend intellectual conversation". This may be true in certain cases, but is too often the scapegoat for ageism that is used to conceal often-misappropriated preconceptions about young people.
Why does age matter so much in our society? Why it is used as the litmus test for one's presumed capabilities, skills, and proficiency? Why is it that we're only "competent" human beings when we're somewhere between 30 and 50?
It's because society believes we reach the bell curve of life in our fourth and fifth decades, whereby we are "able" simultaneously in both knowledge and ability. Outside of that age bracket, we are allegedly "unable" in at least one of those categories. Supposedly, we're either still climbing up, or we're already falling down.
Proactively addressing our internalised ageism is the only way we, as individuals acting as a society, will ensure we placate, include, and benefit from two strong demographics in our joint future.
We are about to reach an era when we have more older people (as the Baby Boomer generation ages), and more younger people (as the Homeland generation grows up), than have ever existed in parallel in human history. If we continue to be an ageist society we're going to have a very angry world in the coming decades, as we'll isolate two skilled groups because nobody thinks they have anything to offer.