An empowering manifesto, examining and disassembling age discrimination with wit and energy, calling for us to embrace and celebrate ageing. In our youth-obsessed culture, we're bombarded by media images and messages about the despair and decline of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Grey hair should be coloured and bald heads hidden. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world and elders should just step aside for the new generation. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too, until she realised where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. Lively, funny, and deeply researched, “This Chair Rocks” traces her journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-ageing radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. Explaining the roots of ageism and how it divides and debases, Applewhite examines how ageist stereotypes cripple the way our brains and body’s function. She looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of elders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and offers a rousing call to action...
