Latest / The Elsa Kurt Show / Decoding 'You Look Good for Your Age': A Journey from Ageism to Acceptance

Transcript

Decoding 'You Look Good for Your Age': A Journey from Ageism to Acceptance · The Elsa Kurt Show

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello there.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: So I have a question for you.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You ready for it?
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I want to know what you think when you hear this statement.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: You ready for it?
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You look good for your age.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: What do you think about that?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Does it bother you?
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Is it a compliment?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Is it insult?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I bring this up because I was out recently with some friends and a person who was not part of our group, that doesn't know us, asked one of my friends how old they were and she said I'm 56.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: And the other person said Wow, you look really good for your age.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: And that sparked a whole conversation and a mixed bag of opinions and you know I had to really think about it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: I'm like I don't know.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: First of all, I'm pretty unflappable.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: There isn't a lot that you can phase me with or bother me with or certainly not offend me with.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: You know you can take some guesses how I feel about people being offended by, by words and things.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I mean that's.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: You know it's just silly to me.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: So you know I mean.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So I guess, right off the bat I'm like I don't care.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I mean I'm going to take it as a compliment because I want to look good for me.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: My age I want to look good for any age that I'm at.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I want to look, you know, as as good as I can.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I want to look my personal best, which my personal best may be better or worse than somebody else's personal best.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: But you know, I don't really think we should be comparing, even though we do.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: We do, we're just human, we can't help it.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: And if I see a woman that is will will go with older than me, if I see a woman in her 60s, I'm 50.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm turning 52 next month.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So if somebody says to me, hey, you look really good for your age, I'm taking it as a compliment.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's a compliment.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: I don't think it's an insult.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Now there's a.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: You know the actress.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Her name is Angela Bassett.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: She's been around for a long time, long time.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: She has a beautiful, stunning woman.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Again, she's beautiful at any and every age, that.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: So I guess what her point is is that you don't need the, the qualifier, or technically, they're calling it a backhanded insult.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: So do you think it's a backhanded insult?
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I, I guess maybe.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe it is, but it's certainly an unintentional one.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: It's not a malicious one.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I don't think anybody says that with a like a malicious intent, you know, with that snarky for your age Tone in their voice, I think it's like, I think it's a genuine wow.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But here is let's see if I can find it here is what what she had to say about it here.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, I hear that a lot.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I don't like this either.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's a backhanded compliment.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Right right, you look good for your age, you know, with that look in the eye, oh my God, I'm just shocked.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: You just, you just feel like, oh my God, I should look like a troll, a wish, with a quick nose and you know.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: And my face skin should be like dripping off my face and my blood should be as wide as a scout.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: What?
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And you look bad for my age?
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: It's not a compliment.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: He was like thank you, I don't know.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could look at it that way and see it that way and perceive it that way and maybe you wouldn't be wrong.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: But I'm just feeling like I don't know, maybe it's just my personality type, that I'm just like, whatever you just told me, I look good, I'll run with that.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I'll run with that part of it, thank you.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I don't take offense to being told for your age, because I think what people are doing like I know this for myself, so have you ever?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I have, I've seen it a bunch of times, especially recently.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and throw up a few images here.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: But when I personally think about women in their 50s, from when I was a kid, like from the 70s, from the 80s, oh, my God, even from the 90s what years were the Golden Girls on?
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I need to find this out.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna check it out.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So let's use that as a reference, because there is a meme that has gone around of a picture of the Golden Girls with their ages at the time, or at least their character's ages at the time of that show, of that series, and it was a little stunning and I'm gonna show it to you.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna hunt it down, show it to you.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: So here it is.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so when I think about the fact that I'm turning 52 and they were in that age range at that time, I mean we are not the same and I'm not like patting myself on the back, I'm not saying I look great or anything like that at all, just saying we look really different and part of the theory is the hairstyles.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: So you have to check this out.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being a friend.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Travel down the road and back again.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Your heart is true, you're a pal and a convedom, and if you threw a party, you invited everyone to know, you would see, the biggest gift would be from me and the card attached would say thank you for being a friend.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so there's something to that, right, and, of course, a lot of different things.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Way less of us.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Less of us, yeah, our smoking cigarettes, right, we were more conscious of our health and our appearance.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Not just that they didn't care about their appearance, it was just different.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: It was just very different.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Different times, different motivations, different beauty standards too.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Things change over the years.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: So I guess, when some.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I guess my only point being is that we're not the same.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: My only point being is that when somebody says to you, wow, you look really good for your age, they're comparing it to a standard that they remember from their childhood, probably, or from their youth.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: That like, wow, when I thought of you know, and we do stay locked in our young minds in some ways.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Right, I mean, we mature and all those things, but there's certain things I think that we stay locked in on, and I think that's one of them.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Like it's our default setting that when we think about certain ages, we have this automatic picture in our mind.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Usually it's our own grandparents at the same age.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: You know, when I think of gosh, I'm thinking my grandparents.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: They were both in their 60s when they passed, and my grandmother was a young in early 60s, so we think she never actually told us her real age.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: But you know, for example, I look at my husband, who is 60, and it's like, wow, that's what 60 looks like now, interesting, that's very interesting.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: But then you see 60 on somebody else and you're like, whoa, that's a big difference.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: You're 60 and you're 60 are so different, so different.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So, all in all, I think asking the question or making the statement of you look good for your age my personal opinion is not an insult.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: It's the compliment that it's meant to be.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Take it as such, say thank you and move on.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: But I really wanna know do you think it's a compliment or a backhanded insult?
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So let me know.