How a Brandeis scholar turned the mirror on our youth-obsessed culture—and found us wanting
There’s something deliciously subversive about a woman in her seventies declaring war on an entire culture. Margaret Morganroth Gullette, resident scholar at Brandeis and self-appointed scourge of American ageism, has spent the better part of two decades lobbing intellectual grenades at our youth-obsessed society with the precision of a literary sniper and the righteous fury of a prophet in sensible shoes.
Her twin manifestos—”Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America” (2011 “Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People” (2017) arrive like a bucket of ice water thrown at a culture drunk on the fantasy of eternal youth. Both books bristle with the kind of uncomfortable truths that make you hesitate when googling the price of an anti-aging serum you’re eager to try. Nothing else has worked but hey keep trying.
The Epiphany in the Shower
Gullette’s famous “epiphany in the shower” passage om Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America captures something most of us have felt but never articulated: that moment when you catch yourself in an unguarded reflection and think, with a jolt of genuine surprise, “When did I start looking like my mother?” But where most of us reach for concealer, Gullette reaches for her laptop. Her central revelation is that “much of what we dread about aging is actually the result of ageism—which we can, and should, battle as strongly as we do racism, sexism, and other forms of bigotry.”
It’s a thesis that cuts through our cultural mythology like a cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel Consider the absurdity: we live in a society where “rampant ageism causes society to discount, and at times completely discard, the wisdom and experience acquired by people over the course of adulthood” while simultaneously worshipping at the altar of “disruption” delivered by twenty-something tech bros whose greatest life achievement is figuring out how to monetize our loneliness.
The Decline Narrative vs. The Progress Narrative
Gullette’s genius lies in her recognition that aging, like everything else in American culture, is fundamentally a story we tell ourselves. She distinguishes between “decline narratives” and “progress narratives,” Book Review / Margaret Morganroth Gullette. Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America. – Narrative Works and once you see the distinction, you can’t unsee it. Turn on any television commercial break and count the decline narratives: the woman clutching her back in apparent agony until she discovers the miracle of Aspercreme; the man shamefully hiding his “embarrassing” baldness; the couple whose romance has apparently died along with their ability to achieve spontaneous erection.
As Virginia Woolf observed, “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman”—but Gullette might add that for most of contemporary culture, Invisible is anyone over fifty. She documents how “the sudden onset of age-related shaming can occur anywhere—the shove in the street, the cold shoulder at the party, the deaf ear at the meeting, the shut-out by the personnel office.” Ending Ageism – Rutgers University Press It’s discrimination hiding in plain sight, so normalized we barely notice it.
The Art of Not Shooting Old People
The provocative title of Gullette’s 2017 book proves to be a masterclass in double entendre. “How Not to Shoot Old People” refers both to cameras (the power of portrayal) and to guns (the very real risks of growing old in an ageist world). AmazonGoodreads It’s a pun that would make Oscar Wilde proud: simultaneously clever and deadly serious.
The book confronts “the incitement to commit suicide for those with early signs of ‘dementia'” Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People – Rutgers University Press—a cultural pressure so pervasive that we’ve made a cottage industry of “dignified death” narratives that often sound suspiciously like polite suggestions that the old should hurry up and get out of the way. When did we become a society that treats cognitive decline like a moral failing rather than a medical condition?
The Last Acceptable Prejudice
Gullette argues that “ageism is the least censured, the most acceptable and unnoticed of the cruel prejudices.” Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America by Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® She’s not wrong. Try substituting any other demographic group for “old people” in the casual cruelties we accept without question. “OK, Boomer” became a cultural phenomenon precisely because it allowed younger generations to dismiss entire swaths of experience and wisdom with a sneer. Imagine the outcry if we casually dismissed the perspectives of any other group with similar abandon.
The irony, of course, is that ageism is the one prejudice that targets its practitioners as much as its victims. As Maya Angelou noted, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”—but what happens when the story being untold is the one about growing older with grace, wisdom, and continued relevance?
The Gullette Method
What makes Gullette unusual among age researchers is her role as a “self-described independent scholar” who “writes for the well-educated general reader, working to raise age awareness in the larger public.” AcademiaErudit She’s not content to publish in academic journals read by dozens; she wants to change minds and culture. Critics note that “readers looking for a buildup of scholarly references will find little” as she “leans toward literature and popular media to support her points,” Book Review / Margaret Morganroth Gullette. Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America. – Narrative Works but this is precisely her strength. She speaks the language of culture, not statistics.
Her method is part cultural criticism, part memoir, part manifesto. She “demonstrates a well-honed ability to tell stories” and “claims that narratives can effect personal and social change.” Book Review / Margaret Morganroth Gullette. Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America. – Narrative Works In an age of data-driven everything, Gullette remembers that humans are fundamentally storytelling creatures, and the stories we tell about aging shape the reality we create.
The Wisdom of Experience
There’s something beautifully subversive about a culture critic in her seventies refusing to go gentle into that good night of cultural irrelevance. Both books won prestigious awards—the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars and the APA’s Florence L. Denmark Award for Contributions to Women and Aging Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People – Rutgers University Press—proving that sometimes wisdom does triumph over youth worship.
Gullette’s vision extends beyond complaint to solution, offering “ambitious plans for the whole life course, from teaching children anti-ageism to fortifying the social safety nets.” Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America, Gullette She envisions “an epistemic shift—a new conception of life’s course, a fresh understanding of words like ‘age,’ ‘youth,’ ‘decline,’ and much more.” Ending Ageism – Rutgers University Press
The Mirror Crack’d
Perhaps Gullette’s greatest achievement is holding up a mirror to a culture that has forgotten how to value its elders. In a society that treats aging like a disease to be cured rather than a natural process to be honored, her books arrive like a much-needed intervention. As Tennyson wrote, “Old age hath yet his honour and his toil”—but you wouldn’t know it from scrolling through Instagram or watching prime-time television.
Her call to “turn intimate suffering into public grievances” Ending Ageism – Rutgers University Press transforms personal experience into political action. It’s a move that recalls the feminist consciousness-raising of the 1970s, when women discovered that the personal was indeed political. Now Gullette suggests that aging, too, is political—and it’s time we started acting like it.
In the end, Gullette’s books serve as both diagnosis and cure for a culture that has lost its way. They remind us that in a society obsessed with disruption, perhaps the most radical act is simply refusing to disappear on schedule. After all, as she might say, “Good stuff happens not because we are still young, but because we are not.” Agewise: Fighting the New Ageism in America by Margaret Morganroth Gullette, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®
Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s “Agewise” and “Ending Ageism” are available in paperback. She is currently a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.
