Ashton Applewhite

My first interview was with eighty-eight-year-old folk artist Marcia Muth_ __our life does change as you get older,_ she told me. __ou get into what__ important and what__ not_.

Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it__very time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging.

Discrimination on the basis of age is as unacceptable as discrimination on the basis of any other aspect of ourselves that we cannot change.

The myth of self-sufficiency demands optimism without end, downplays life__ challenges, and shames us when, inevitably, we fall short.

We don__ ask when people age out of singing, or eating ice cream; why would we stop making love?

Nowhere is ageism more sexist, and vicious, than in the domain of sexuality.

The sooner growing older is stripped of reflexive dread, the better equipped we are to benefit from the countless ways in which it can enrich us.

It__ not loving a man that makes life harder for gay guys, it__ homophobia. It__ not the color of their skin that makes life harder for people of color; it__ racism. It__ not having vaginas that makes life harder for women, it__ sexism. And it__ ageism, far more than the passage of time, that makes growing older harder for all of us.