Ageism should be against Talk Guidelines

[Somethingbland]

In the past there has been a lot of disquiet about the blatant ageism on MN.

Today I have been extremely annoyed by a blatantly and unashamedly ageist thread in AIBU about dressing " like an old lady"
I reported the thread and of course was told by MN the thread is allowed to stand because it doesn't contravene Talk guidelines.
But why doesn't it? Why does MN see ageism as perfectly acceptable? It's a total disgrace in my eyes.

I was amongst the first women who were affected by the change in retirement law and was so unable to retire at 60 as had been the norm previously. The discrimination I experienced as an older woman amongst predominantly younger staff was extremely upsetting . To be a figure of fun and contempt because of your age is no joke. And yet MN is apoarently happy to enable such views on this site

This

It's not the job of moderation to censor wrongthink. I agree with you that ageism is rife on MN, and i feel increasingly frustrated by it as I grow older. But the relevant talk guideline is, I think, 'no hate speech', and plenty of examples of ageism, including this one, are simply not hate speech. They are just stupid and lacking in empathy and wisdom.

Annoying as it is, we haven't got any right not to see stupid and unkind posts.

EDIT: Actually it sounds like this example wasn't even stupid or unkind. I'm in my sixties now and I don't think I'd be offended by someone speaking of 'old lady dressing styles'. I'd know what they were getting at.

OP, I suspect everyone reading that thread new exactly what the poster of it meant - she didn’t want to look like Miss Marple, or a granny when she’s in her thirties, or however you choose to express it. I’m a retired DGM, and I don’t find it in the least offensive. I fear you are conflating your poor treatment at the hands of younger people at work with the idea that any reference to being old in terms of style or anything else is ageist. I’m very sorry you were badly treated at work, but to refer to something as “granny” or “old lady” is simply shorthand. And yes, grannies do matter, but I think my people (particularly my DD’s) would be a bit startled to see me wear skirts as short as some young girls do - if I wanted to, I would, but with age it is to be hoped comes a little discernment and realism over the fact that one no longer has the legs one had at twenty. It’s not ageist to point that out: it’s just a fact of life.

It's ageism when it's implicit that the 'preferred by older people' style is uglier, frumpier, dowdier than that 'preferred by younger people'.

The dress in today's thread was an unremarkable sun dress, could be worn by any woman who doesn't mind long skirts and bare arms. Yet the OP's friend said it was an old lady dress, the OP was unhappy about that, and replies agreed it was frumpy, dowdy - like old ladies.

Use your eyes. It’s how they dress.

This is a sense check.

I don’t want to wear walking sandals while on holiday because they look like something a Jew would wear.

Offensive? Think about it.

So you're saying we dress in ugly, dowdy, frumpy clothes.

All of us. At what age does one suddenly start choosing ugly clothes?

That’s not true, the responses are irs dowdy frumpy but not like an old lady. You can’t just make stuff up.

Rarely called out?
You must be joking!!

well-it kind of is. It quite rightly moderates racism, disablism, homophobia for example. Why is agism different?

Oh, we shouldn't concern ourselves with commonplace trivia. Right, got it.

So it's fine & harmless to tell boys not to cry like a girl, to ridicule them if they run like a girl or throw like a girl, to sneer at a man for doing women's work. It's just words, everyone knows what they mean.

You’re right OP that thread is very ageist.

But if MNHQ banned ageism they’d also have to ban sexism.

And that would cause outrage amongst those who regularly state they hate all men.

If the OP had said ‘I bought these dungarees and my friend says I dress like a toddler, is she right?’ would you have been so offended?

To me, 'dressing like an old lady' means dressing in the styles worn by the women I viewed as 'old' when I was a child. It means something like 'looking like my nana'. That's why we can still use the phrase as we get older: we are referencing whatever styles were common amongst older people in the decades of our childhood and adolescence. Even when I'm 110 years old, I'm not going to be dressed like the old women of the 1970s, so I can still be sniffy about [my image of] old lady dressing

Also, it feels like quite an ironic, self-deprecatory way of talking because it deliberately invokes this sort of childish parody image of an 'old person'. It doesn't feel genuinely hostile or pigeon-holing.

What would dressing like you're 70 mean? Explain, please.

Today the local 20-ish women were wearing wide, loose plissé trousers with little crop tops. Every one of them looked fantastic. I also have a pair of these - they don't look like this on me, because I have an out-of-shape, 70-year-old body. I don't wear mine slung low on the hip; they do because they have smooth, flat stomachs.

A toned, fit 70-year-old could wear them like that to good effect. Or couldn't she? What do you think?

How about an overweight 20-something with diastasis recti? If she wears her plissé trousers on the waist, is she dressing like a 70-year-old?

Older people moaning and sneering? Oh come on. You do realise attributing negative characteristics to one particular group is the very definition of discrimination?

You have to be an old lady to look like an old lady.

When you are an old lady (all being well), no outfit will make you look like a teenager.

The idea's ridiculous, isn't it? Kitting myself out in the latest from Asos won't make me look like you and your friends. So how could something from Patra make you look like me and my friends? (We don't wear Patra either, I'm going for the most stereotyped brand I could think of.) Clearly, you don't mean 'like an old lady'. You mean ... well, what exactly? Care to elaborate?

Ageism is rife on here and completely tolerated by @mnhq

Does it though? I don't think MN is moderated properly at all.

They are all for sending teen girls naked pictures to them ffs.

@MyThreeWords interesting but my grandmother probably wore jodhpurs most days. When she'd finished with the horses, she'd put on a dress. She worked until she was 72 - helping to run a farm and the family business.

Mother, at 80, was wearing leather trousers, silk blouses and heels. At almost 90, she's very frail but still has her own style.

Agree OP.

How the terms < dressing like an old lady > is ageist. Do old ladies walk around with bum cheeks and half boobs showing

I don’t want to look like I’ve borrowed my clothes from a teenager, or from my mum! Even when I have!

Styles vary. Not many people succeed in wearing the clothes more typically worn by a different generation. Helen Mirren absolutely does. My friend who wears very similar outfits absolutely doesn’t.

I think it’s unreasonable to try to stop people generalising. As long as no one is being nasty about another group, I don’t see the issue. It’s not nasty to say that older women tend to wear more sensible shoes that work for sore, older, feet! If you are a granny and are able to wear stilettos, then I envy you.

Hush Puppies? I am nearly 70 and haven’t seen a pair of those for at least 30 years. Do they even still exist?

She didn’t say that. She said she was discriminated because of her age. Not the same thing at all.