This Chair Rocks

People are happiest at the beginnings and the ends of their lives. The vast majority of Americans over 65 live independently. The older people get, the less afraid they are of dying. Aging is a natural, powerful, lifelong process. So how come so many of us unthinkingly assume that depression, diapers, and dementia lie ahead? That the 20th century’s astonishing leap in life expectancy is a disaster-in-the making? Underlying all the hand-wringing is ageism: discrimination that sidelines and silences older people. So I’ve written a book. I blog about it. I led the team that developed Old School, a clearinghouse of anti-ageism resources. I am the voice of Yo, Is This Ageist? (Go ahead, ask me.) I’ve written a consciousness-raising booklet. And I speak widely. All tools to help catalyze a movement to make discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind.

From childhood on, we’re barraged by messages that it’s sad to be old. That wrinkles are embarrassing, and old people useless. Author and activist Ashton Applewhite believed them too—until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. Lively, funny, and deeply researched, This Chair Rocks traces Applewhite’s journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. The book explains the roots of ageism—in history and in our own age denial—and how it divides and debases, examines how ageist myths and stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function, looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of olders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and concludes with a rousing call to action. Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride!

One of The 100 best books to read at every age —Washington Post

One of 10 Books to Help You Foster a More Diverse and Inclusive Workplace —Forbes

Wow. This book totally rocks. It arrived on a day when I was in deep confusion and sadness about my age—62. Everything about it, from my invisibility to my neck. Within four or five wise, passionate pages, I had found insight, illumination and inspiration. I never use the word empower, but this book has empowered me.

ANNE LAMOTT, New York Times best-selling author

Along comes Ashton Applewhite with a book we have been waiting for. Anti-ageism now boasts a popular champion, activist, and epigrammatist in the lineage of Martial and Dorothy Parker. Until This Chair Rocks we haven’t had a single compact book that blows up myths seven to a page like fireworks.

LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS

Vibrant, energetic, fact-filled and funny, This Chair Rocks is a call to arms not just for older people but for our whole society.

KATHA POLLITT, poet, essayist, and Nation columnist

Sometimes a writer does us all a great favor and switches on a light. Snap! The darkness vanishes and, in its place we find an electric vision of new ways of living. I want to live in a world where ageism is just a memory, and This Chair Rocks illuminates the path.

DR. BILL THOMAS, founder of Changing Aging

This Chair Rocks is radical, exuberant, and full of all sorts of facts that erase many of the myths and beliefs about late life. As Applewhite defines and describes ageism, new ways of seeing and being in the world emerge, empowering everyone to see things as they really are.

LAURIE ANDERSON, artist

A knowledgeable, straight-talking, and witty book that briskly explains to anyone how-wrong-we-are-about-aging. There’s radical news here to enlighten the most “done” starlet, and tart turns of phrase to captivate the most expert age critic: ‘All aging is “successful”—not just the sporty version—otherwise you’re dead.’ This pithy primer ought ideally to be given to every American adolescent—to inoculate them against the lies and stereotypes that can spoil the long life course they will all want.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette, author of Aged by Culture and the prize-winning Agewise and Declining to Decline

Ashton Applewhite is a visionary whose time has come, tackling one of the most persistent biases of our day with originality, verve, and humor. Her magic formula of naming and shaming may just shake all of us out of complacency and it into action. Whether you relate through being older now or recognize that aging is in your future, this is one of the most important books you’ll ever read.

Marc Freedman, CEO of Encore.org and author of The Big Shift: Navigating the New Life Stage Before Midlife

A smart and stirring call to add ageism to the list of ‘isms’ that divide us, and to mobilize against it. Applewhite shows how ageism distorts our view of old age, and urges us to challenge age- based prejudices in ourselves and in society. An important wake-up call for any baby boomer who’s apprehensive about growing old.

Pepper Schwartz, Professor of Sociology, University of Washington and AARP’s Official Love & Relationship Ambassador

This Chair Rocks is a 2016 Foreword INDIES Winnerin Adult Nonfiction!

Smart, sassy and oh so wise.

AARP

Finally, a take-down of the last acceptable prejudice. Applewhite eloquently and expertly exposes the structural discrimination that makes growing older so much harder than it should be—not just for the white, affluent, healthy, and able-bodied, but for women, people of color, people with disabilities, and poor people. Full of treasures, This Chair Rocks should be required reading for everyone in aging services, to help us confront ageism in our personal and professional lives and join forces against it. As Applewhite writes, ‘It’s time for Age Pride.’

Donna Corrado, Commissioner, NYC Department for the Aging

An eloquent and well-researched exposé of the prejudice that feeds age bias, and a passionate argument to mobilize against it. This must-read book is also a fun-read for every age.

Stephanie Coontz, author, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

To live agefully – what a wonderful word! With warmth, wit and clarity, Ashton Applewhite explains what it means, while never falling into age-denial or age-shame. This is a book packed with provocative and liberating ideas, to make you leap into the air with pleasure – even if your knees, like mine, are a little dodgy.

Anne Karpf, author of How to Age

Blog

Readers are encouraged to distribute, remix, and tweak this material! Please credit This Chair Rocks/
Ashton Applewhite

The Fruits of Ageism

Posted on Tuesday, November 5, 2019 by Ashton Applewhite

This guest post is by Barbara Lynn Kail, Associate Professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. She has taught social welfare policy for over 20 years there. She also currently collaborates with Perre Tarres Faculty of Social Education and Social Work in Barcelona. This permits her to follow another passion, the antiageism movement and current developments in Spain. Please send any questions or comments to her at kail@fordham.edu.

Generation Z’ers, could I please have a few minutes of your time.

I’ve only recently become aware of the term “OK Boomer,” after reading an article in the Style section of the New York Times.

Both our generations seem to be engaging in the worst aspects of ageism. In fact, “ok boomer” seems to have polarized us even further. One radio host compared it to the n-word, while the New York Post asks why Gen Z hates Boomers. Is this, as the New York Times says, a declaration of war?

You rightly protest that members of my generation are :

Destroying the world as we know it with our environmental policies.
Using money and power to maintain the status quo and a privileged position.
Hurting future generations through selfishness and short-sightedness.
Not to be trusted.

In short, we Boomers just don’t “get it.”

Well, these accusations sound really familiar. As a Boomer, I vividly recall charging my parents’ generation with :

Destroying the world with nuclear bombs and our foreign policy in Viet Nam. We are on the eve of destruction!
Using blatant racism and sexism to ensure those who had money and power held on to it…
at the expense of our generation and future generations – the Greatest Generation was not so great.
Breaking our trust… anyone over thirty!

I too engaged in gross generalizations, and Mom and Dad were never going to “get it.”

Boomers, at least some of us, may honestly “get” where you Gen Z'ers are coming from. In many respects your concerns are my concerns and have been since I was a teenager. Engaging in wholesale characterizations of each generation causes us to miss an opportunity to join forces. Just for starters – we can offer experience in grass roots organizing and building a social movement; you have honed the use of social media to a fine art. Recognizing the destructiveness of ageism could go a long way. Together, we could focus our efforts far more effectively and fight those of any generation who are afraid of change and revel in a status quo that is truly not sustainable.

Please tell me, ok boomer!

a progressive falls into the trap of scapegoating "the old"

Posted on Thursday, October 24, 2019 by Ashton Applewhite

The New York Times devoted much of this
week’s Sunday Opinion section to a staggeringly ageist article, “Out With the Old, In With the Young” by Astra Taylor, which blames “young
people’s inability to effect change” on a “hoary establishment.” As I’ve explained
in the Guardian (How did old people become political
enemies of the young?),
pitting old against young is wrong-headed for countless reasons.

Seeing the New York Times embrace this line of thinking is distressing; seeing a progressive activist like Taylor fall into the trap is even more so. Most younger lefties, of whom Taylor is among the most eloquent, don’t seem to take ageism seriously, perhaps because they have yet to acknowledge their own internalized bias. As I see it, hitching age to the intersectional sled, so to speak, is critically important if we are to join forces against all the problems facing the planet today. I'd love to have a public conversation about it.

Here’s my Letter to the Editor:

It’s true that older people have more power and millennials too little. Likewise, men have more power than women, and white people more than people of color. The driver of this inequity, however, is not age, or race, or gender. The fundamental driver is capitalism, which perpetuates itself by privileging one group over another.

Those in power are mostly older, male, and white because they benefit from racism, sexism, patriarchy, and all the other mechanisms that disempower the rest of us. It is not because they’re old. Likewise, their priorities are a function of their privilege and the ideology that sustains it—not their age. Class, gender, and race all predict voting behavior better than age does.

Yes, we should absolutely lower the voting age and further enfranchise younger people, but frame these measures as pro-equity, not anti-old. Prejudice pits us against each other, and ageism is no exception. In a world riven by deep divisions of class, race, and gender, we cannot afford to add age to the mix.

* * *

For a more detailed analysis of Taylor's "logically flawed and stunningly ageist article," read this post in Yo, Is This Ageist? by my very smart colleague and policy wonk, Paul Kleyman,

ageism takes center stage on the International Day of Older Persons

Posted on Tuesday, October 8, 2019 by Ashton Applewhite

Three years ago I had the honor of addressing the United Nations on the International Day of Older Persons, which is celebrated annually around the world on October 1. In my talk, which I called End Ageism - Or the Rest is Noise, I made a passionate case for confronting ageism in every domain — health, education, employment, and human rights, to name just a few — as a prerequisite to making the most of longer lives.

Three years later, it's been incredibly exciting to witness individuals and organizations around the world doing exactly that, and see #ExposeAgeism trending on Twitter. Here are just a few examples:

The evidence is everywhere: a global movement to #ExposeAgeism is underway. Australia is leading the way with its EveryAGE Counts campaign, which is bringing me over for a national, three-week tour in November. You'll find more initiatives in the CAMPAIGNS section of Old School, a clearinghouse of free, vetted anti-ageism resources. YESSSS!

There’s more

Other Writing by
Ashton Applewhite

Beating age discrimination

May 1, 2019

Article in The Big Issue

An Essay by Ashton Applewhite

March 14, 2019

Article on Books Inc.

Eight surprising facts about getting old in America

March 10, 2019

Article in the New York Post

If you care about equality, fight ageism – just as you fight sexism and racism

March 4, 2019

Article in the Independent

Age of distinction: Don’t believe the ageist myths. We only get better in our golden years.

March 3, 2019

Article in The Globe and Mail

There’s more

Yo, Is This Ageist?

(Go ahead, ask me.)

Ageism and transphobia
How can it be ageism if the majority of older people refuse to acknowledge trans people as human beings?
When we olders were growing up, trans people were largely closeted. Thankfully, this is no longer the case, and many of us have embraced the idea of gender fluidity. Others have not, just as many young people are racist, sexist, and transphobic. It’s a question of ideology, not age.
11/12/19
Boomer is now an insult
On TikTok, the hashtag #OkBoomer has received over 10.3 million views. It features memes making fun of boomers for being behind the times, closed-minded, rude to baristas, and more. Many of these videos include a song called “ok boomer” by peter kuli & jedwill, which has lyrics that savagely dunk on Baby Boomers.

Submitted by Rich at the Don’t Act Your Age podcast.
Yep, they’re ageist, and they’re hateful.
10/26/19
“Our democracy today is dominated by the old, And young people are getting a bad deal."
from Paul Kleyman, editor of the Generations Beat Online newsletter:
What’s so odd about Astra Taylor’s screed against the old in the New York Times (Oct. 20, 2019) is that, aside from its blatant and unjustified ageism, this old, white male would otherwise heartily agree with many of her policy prescriptions, from ending gerrymandering to fighting climate change to her plea for “universal access to college and medical care.” Yet, in promoting reduction of voting age to 16, she strangely assigns blame for the disenfranchisement of youth to “a hoary establishment [that] hoards influence, curtailing young people’s ability to effect change.”

Rather than identifying reasons for intergenerational common cause, Taylor riddles her tale with exactly the kinds of contradictions observers of old-age politics would expect from an argument based strictly on vilifying a broad demographic bogie.

Taylor indicts even “liberal” elders, notably centrist Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-CA, as being “dangerously blasé about the future.” But only later invokes the youth appeal of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT. At one point Taylor, age 40, sidelines her disdain the presumably undue political sway of “people not long for this earth.” Then later she dons an editorial gray wig, calling on “those of us who are older, if not wiser” to joining young activists “to support forward-looking policies, and we also need to protest.” Is she completely unaware of elder activists like the Raging Grannies protest groups or, say, Medea Benjamin, 67, relentless leader of Code Pink?

More significant, though, is that for all of Taylor’s apparent research on such areas as youth economics, she has failed to dig into the looming retirement crisis facing the United States. She lacks knowledge that the proportion of ethnic/racial elders will double by 2040 to four in 10 seniors in the U.S. Gerontology experts have shown that while the sorely outdated federal poverty line sets elder impoverishment, at 9.7%, lower than the rest of the U.S. population, the official level fails to include exploding expenses elders need to make ends meet, such as out-of-pocket health care costs, the growing rent burden for seniors, and the price of maintaining older family homes on fixed incomes (especially for older women). Using the Elder Economic Security Index, UCLA’s Health Policy Center, for instance, has shown that half of those 65-plus in California are either in poverty or struggling in some ways to meet their needs.

For all of Taylor’s anger over elder “affluence,” her age-based opprobrium is woefully deficient of areas with cross-generational impacts, such as persistent age discrimination for older workers, the rising homelessness among those over 50, or the massive hit on homeownership across age groups, detailed in the book, Homewreckers, due to the exploitation of Great Recession foreclosures by, yes, older billionaire investors—some now heading key financial Trump cabinet posts. Most egregiously, though, Taylor seems oblivious to the quiet crisis of unaffordable senior housing and related lack of long-term eldercare coverage in the United States.

What’s even more dismaying is that the editors of the New York Times “Sunday Review” so eagerly enlarged Taylor’s logically flawed and stunningly ageist article as the week’s top story, covering almost three illustrated broadside pages. Why did the paper abandon their usually prudent editorial judgment? Well, the news media do love the provocateur, and even in the steely glass tower of the Times, provocation does drive readership.

For a different viewpoint, read the recent Boston Globe essay, “Contrived Generational Wars Disguise the Failure of the American Dream,” byMargaret Morganroth Gullette.

Other recommended reading: The Generation Gambit: The Right’s Imaginary Rift between Young and Old (FAIR, March, 1977). It describes how right-wing individuals and organizations created the myth of intergenerational conflict in order to justify and give cover to their reactionary agenda – thirty years ago.
10/24/19

There’s more

Appearances

My We Are All Aging talk explains the roots of ageism – in society and in our own age denial – how it divides and diminishes us, and ends with a rousing call to mobilize against it. This Chair Rocks: How Ageism Warps Our View of Long Life charts my journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical and proposes an alternative to all the hand-wringing: wake up, cheer up, and push back. Aging While Female, Reimagined describes how the double whammy of ageism and sexism makes aging different for women, and what we can do about it. I also speak about the medicalization of old age, ageism and elder abuse, and how to reframe the new longevity in order to make the most of longer lives. To book me for your event, please contact the Lavin Agency.

What People Are Saying:

I was encouraged by the statistics you quoted, forced to acknowledge my own ageist thoughts, and ultimately fired up to fight them in myself and others. You are on to something big!

Sarah Meredith, painter

Why can’t we stop ageism? Good question. For some answers, start looking in the mirror and look around you. For a good dialogue on the subject, visit Ashton Applewhite’s website, This Chair Rocks.

Harry R. Moody, Director of Academic Affairs, AARP

Consciousness-raising at its sharpest and most useful.

David Watts Barton, journalist and playwright

This Chair Rocks confirms our knowledge that emotional well being is abundant in later life, challenges us to face our own internalized ageism, and inspires us to envision a future in which our society is released from age-related prejudice and discrimination. And it’s fun, too!

Geriatric Mental Health Alliance of New York

Holistic, deep, urgent, and also fun.

Lenelle Moise, playwright and performer

All practitioners working with older adults need to be informed about the pernicious influences of ageism. Nobody does this better than Ashton Applewhite. Her thinking is deep, her passion infectious, and her cogent message is spot on: we urgently need to have a national conversation about ageism to raise awareness about it and to stop it.

Risa Breckman, LCSW, Executive Director, NYC Elder Abuse Center

You have found a fantastic mission: raising consciousness that older is far better than the stereotype that enslaves us all.

Jennifer Siebens, producer, CBS News

Ashton Applewhite’s plenary address at the 2013 New York State Adult Abuse Training Institute was compelling and original, and really resonated with our 400 participants. She is an articulate and committed voice for an important cause: challenging the demoralizing shadow that ageism casts across society.

Jean Callahan, Director, Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging

Octogenarians are the fastest-growing segment of our population, yet most Americans are scared stiff at the prospect of growing old. [Applewhite’s work] is a welcome and important tonic.

Dr. Robert Butler, founding director of the National Institute on Aging, coiner of the term “ageism”

We need an anti-ageist movement, for sure. Ashton is already in it.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette, author of Agewise and Aged by Culture

A beautifully delivered, provocative description of how ageism clouds our vision of what life holds in store.

Sabrina Hamilton, director, Ko Festival for the Arts

Ashton Applewhite is on a crusade. A journalist and author, her mission is to raise awareness of ageism in America and get people young and old to join her in speaking out against it.

Senior Planet

Thank you again for your terrific keynote yesterday. I heard from so many attendees that it affected them deeply. You are wise, funny, and provocative – a great combination!

Teresa Bonner, Program Director, Aroha Philanthropies

Upcoming Appearances

keynote, Griffith University

Where: Queensland Conservatorium 140 Grey Street, South Brisbane, QLD, Australia

When: November 19, 2019 06:30 pm

More info: Register here.

keynote, Age Friendly Australia National Forum

Where: Esplanade Hotel Fremantle, WA, Perth

When: November 20, 2019 03:30 pm

More info: Details here.

keynote, Seasons Retirement 2019 Conference

Where: Whistler, British Columbia

When: November 26, 2019 12:00 am

More info: Details here

talk, Future of Ageing conference, International Longevity Centre UK

Where: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd, London NW1 2BE

When: December 5, 2019 09:30 am

More info: Details here.

talk + panel, Rancho Mirage Writers Festival

Where: Rancho Mirage Library and Observatory, 71-100 Highway 111, Rancho Mirage, CA

When: January 29, 2020 12:00 am

More info: Tickets are sold out.

keynote, Workplace Summit

Where: San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA

When: February 11, 2020 01:00 pm

More info: Details here.

Boston Public Library

Where: 700 Boylston Street (at Exeter), Commonwealth Salon

When: June 17, 2020 02:00 pm

More info: in collaboration with Beacon Hill Village; free and open to the public

talk, 2Life Communities

Where: Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward St, Newton, MA

When: June 18, 2020 12:00 am

More info: Details here.

keynote, American Alliance of Museums Creative Aging Convening

Where: High Museum, Atlanta, GA

When: November 5, 2020 12:00 am

More info:

public talk, High Museum

Where: High Museum, Atlanta, GA

When: November 7, 2020 12:00 am

More info: Free and open to the public. Details here

Past Appearances

Media

Twisting the Plot podcast

November 11, 2019

Link here.

interview, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

November 7, 2019

Link here.

National Press Club of Australia

November 6, 2019

Link accessible until December 6, 2019 here.

article, The Sydney Morning Herald

November 6, 2019

Link here.

podcast, Brave Your Day – Your Way

October 31, 2019

Link here.

There’s more

Resources

Who me, ageist? How to start a consciousness-raising group

download PDF here

Watch my TED Talk, “Let’s End Ageism”

This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism—A Study Guide

download PDF here

You’ll find many more resources on Old School, a clearinghouse of free and carefully vetted blogs, books, articles, videos, speakers, and other tools (workshops, handouts, curricula etc.) to educate people about ageism and help dismantle it.

Video

Keynote address at the United Nations
6 October 2016

Talk at Future Trends Forum in Madrid
1 December 2017

Talk at the Library of Congress
25 October 2016

On Vimeo

What Is Ageism?

Ageism is stereotyping and discrimination on the basis of a person’s age. We experience it any time someone assumes that we’re “too old” for something—a task, a haircut, a relationship—instead of finding out who we are and what we’re capable of. Or “too young;” ageism cuts both ways, although in a youth-obsessed society olders bear the brunt of it.

Like racism and sexism, ageism serves a social and economic purpose: to legitimize and sustain inequalities between groups. It’s not about how we look. It’s about how people in power assign meaning to how we look.

Stereotyping—the assumption that all members of a group are the same—underlies ageism (as it does all “isms”). Stereotyping is always a mistake, but especially when it comes to age, because the older we get, the more different from one another we become.

Attitudes about age—as well as race and gender—start to form in early childhood. Over a lifetime they harden into a set of truths: “just the way it is.” Unless we challenge ageist stereotypes—Old people are incompetent. Wrinkles are ugly. It’s sad to be old—we feel shame and embarrassment instead of taking pride in the accomplishment of aging. That’s internalized ageism.

By blinding us to the benefits of aging and heightening our fears, ageism makes growing older far harder than it has to be. It damages our sense of self, segregates us, diminishes our prospects, and actually shortens lives.

What are the antidotes?

¶ Awareness: the critical starting point is to acknowledge our own prejudices about age and aging. (Download a copy of Who me, Ageist? How to Start a Consciousness Raising Group.) Then we can start to see that “personal problems”—such as not being able to get a job or being belittled or feeling patronized—are actually widely shared social problems that require collective action.
¶ Integration: connect with people of all ages. An equitable society for all ages requires intergenerational collaboration.
¶ Activism: watch for ageist behaviors and attitudes in and around us, challenge them, and create language and models that support every stage of life.

Bio

I didn’t set out to become a writer. I went into publishing because I loved to read and didn’t have any better ideas. I had a weakness for the kind of jokes that make you cringe and guffaw at the same time, my boss kept telling me to write them down, and the collection turned into the best-selling paperback of 1982. I was a clue on “Jeopardy” (“Who is the author of Truly Tasteless Jokes?” Answer: “Blanche Knott.”), and as Blanche made publishing history by occupying four of the fifteen spots on the New York Times bestseller list.

My first serious book, Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, was published by HarperCollins in 1997. Ms. magazine called it “rocket fuel for launching new lives,” and it landed me on Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum enemies list. It also got me invited to join the board of the nascent Council on Contemporary Families, a group of distinguished family scholars. I belonged to the Artist’s Network of Refuse & Resist group that originated the anti-Iraq-invasion slogan and performance pieces titled “Our Grief is Not a Cry for War.” As a contributing editor of IEEE Spectrum magazine, I went to Laos to cover a village getting internet access via a bicycle-powered computer. I was on staff at the American Museum of Natural History for 17 years, where I wrote about everything under the Sun, quitting in 2017 to become a full-time activist.

The catalyst for Cutting Loose was puzzlement: why was our notion of women’s lives after divorce (visualize depressed dame on barstool) so different from the happy and energized reality? A similar question gave rise to This Chair Rocks: why is our view of late life so unrelievedly grim when the lived reality is so different? I began blogging about aging and ageism in 2007 and started speaking on the subject in July, 2012, which is also when I started the Yo, Is This Ageist? blog. During that time I’ve been recognized by the New York Times, National Public Radio, the New Yorker, and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism and named as a Fellow by the Knight Foundation, the New York Times, Yale Law School, and the Royal Society for the Arts; I’ve written for Harper’s, the Guardian, and the New York Times, and I speak widely, at venues that have ranged from universities and community centers to the Library of Congress and the United Nations. In 2017 I received a standing ovation for my talk at TED 2017, their mainstage event in Vancouver.

My book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, was self-published in March, 2016 and will be published on the inaugural list of Celadon Books, a new division of Macmillan, Inc. in March, 2019.

HONORS & RECOGNITION

Member of the 2018 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 100
2018 Game Changer Award, Lifetime Arts
Fifth Annual Forbes list of Forty Women to Watch over 40 (2017)
PBS site Next Avenue’s annual list of 50 Influencers in Aging — Influencer of the Year (2016)
Salt magazine’s list of The World’s 100 Most Inspiring Women (2015)

Contact

Contact information

¶ Email: ashton@thischairrocks.com
¶ Twitter: @thischairrocks
¶ Facebook: www.facebook.com/ThisChairRocks
¶ Instagram: www.instagram.com/thischairrocks
¶ RSS: https://thischairrocks.com/feed/

This Chair Rocks

Beating age discrimination

An Essay by Ashton Applewhite

Eight surprising facts about getting old in America

If you care about equality, fight ageism – just as you fight sexism and racism

Age of distinction: Don’t believe the ageist myths. We only get better in our golden years.

What People Are Saying:

Upcoming Appearances

Past Appearances

Twisting the Plot podcast

interview, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

National Press Club of Australia

article, The Sydney Morning Herald

podcast, Brave Your Day – Your Way

Keynote address at the United Nations 6 October 2016

Talk at Future Trends Forum in Madrid 1 December 2017

Talk at the Library of Congress 25 October 2016

On Vimeo

HONORS & RECOGNITION

Contact information

Mailing list

Keynote address at the United Nations
6 October 2016

Talk at Future Trends Forum in Madrid
1 December 2017

Talk at the Library of Congress
25 October 2016