What I'm Reading: Ashton Applewhite's "This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism"

I had the pleasure of meeting political activist Ashton Applewhite not too long ago, the even greater pleasure of receiving a signed copy of her book, and the even greater pleasure of reading it! This Chair Rocks was an eye-opener for me: it’s about ageism and how we measure the value of older lives. I’ve read texts on racism, sexism, transphobia, and almost every kind of bigotry, but never ageism - bizarrely, as it’s a form of discrimination that will affect us all someday if we only live long enough!

As well as giving the stats, breakdown, and testimony on how ageism shakes out in arenas like healthcare, policy, and the media, Applewhite takes a dig into where ageism comes from and the changing roles of older people in societies since the Industrial Revolution. This was the one section I wished there was more of: it flew by quite quickly with some neat suggestions but I could have done with more detail. I suppose that topic could be a whole book on its own. She acknowledges later on that there’s more work to be done on the political economics of ageism and I’m curious about the possibilities there.

I’m very grateful to have been given this book: before reading it I hadn’t realised just how many of my attitudes about ageing and older people I had accepted uncritically. For various personal reasons my mind has been on ageing, loss, and death recently so it came at the perfect time: I’ve learned just how many ageist assumptions I had internalised and realised that I have some lovely opportunities to grow and become more compassionate! It also strengthened my understanding of class and solidarity: for instance, I’ve seen people (including me!) in the past share the idea that Boomers wrecked the economy/politics and sold Millennials up the creek. What clicked for me reading this was that that’s an ageist stereotype that prevents intergenerational class solidarity: a tiny minority of people tanked the economy for reasons quite apart from how old they were with repercussions (and ill-gotten gains) for people of all sorts of ages. Seems obvious when I think about it, but this book helped me realise how much I was using age as a lazy and inaccurate shorthand for class even without meaning to!

The book isn’t just about cultivating a more compassionate attitude, but also myth-busting, centring the agency of older people, and some truly surprising data, especially in a later chapter about attitudes towards death. There’s some fantastic overlaps with discussions about ableism too. Applewhite advises readers of the book to become ‘Older People in Training,’ to realise that ageing is the same thing as living, and to move towards a fact-based, not fear-based, conception of what it is to age. I have a lot of internal work to do, clearly, on this topic, but I’m a little prouder of my grey hairs now having read this book!