In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead

by Susan J. Douglas

Overview

“[A] galvanizing manifesto.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice

With a sharp sense of justice and wit, Susan J. Douglas raises the alarm about ageist attacks against women, whether pushed out of jobs, caricatured in the media, or preyed upon by the anti-aging industry. Douglas celebrates women defying stereotypes and embracing activism and puts forward a plan for a brighter future for all women. Entertaining and smart, you’ll want to share this book with your best friend.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393541359
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Susan J. Douglas is Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan. The author most recently of In Our Prime as well as the groundbreaking works Where the Girls Are, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism, and The Mommy Myth, she lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Women Coming of Age 1

Chapter 2 Why the Seventies Mattered 29

Chapter 3 The Rise of Aspirational Aging 55

Chapter 4 The Anti-Aging Industrial Complex 82

Chapter 5 Visibility Revolts 110

Chapter 6 The War on Older Women 147

Chapter 7 Lifespan Feminism, Bridge Groups, and the Road Ahead 172

Acknowledgments 209

Notes 213

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

"Susan Douglas’s fierce, funny, engaging book sent me off to Google Maggie Kuhn, the over-fifty warrior who challenged negative ideas about older women at the dawn of Second Wave feminism. Douglas thinks older women are due to rise up again—arm in arm with sisters across the generational divide—and I am ready to storm the barricades with them. I was alarmed by Douglas’s startling-yet-nonhyperbolic depictions of gendered ageism—as well as real threats to Medicare and Social Security. In Our Prime is not just for older women—or exclusively for women. In droll, lively, exhaustively documented prose, it exposes the threat that market fundamentalism poses to people across the economic spectrum."

M. G. Lord

"Read this book, ladies, and let’s get very, very busy."

Katha Pollitt

"A clarion call for older women to ‘rip off the invisibility cloak’ and reinvent the world they live in so it stops cheating them."— Leslie Bennetts New York Times Book Review

"A masterful takedown of gendered ageism."— Molly Sprayregen Associated Press

"A feminist intervention… to reclaim women’s aging as a social movement and harness their voices, experience, and wisdom toward social change."— Andi Zeisler Bitch magazine

"Read this book, ladies, and let’s get very, very busy."— Katha Pollitt, author of Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights

"A skilled and stirring call… to confront the ‘double helix of ageism and sexism.’"— Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

"In Our Prime is a highly evocative—and necessary—work that exposes the invasive roots of ageism in today’s world. A call-to-action for wise women of all ages, it demands that no woman be viewed as an irrelevant ‘has-been.’ With unassailable documentation, Douglas invites women into an honest, stark review of historical and current issues that affect every female’s optimal well-being. Douglas illuminates the need for today’s women to intensify their engagement in creating standards that rise above sexism and ageism."— Carla Marie Manly, PhD, author of Aging Joyfully

"Susan Douglas’s fierce, funny, engaging book sent me off to Google Maggie Kuhn, the over-fifty warrior who challenged negative ideas about older women at the dawn of Second Wave feminism. Douglas thinks older women are due to rise up again—arm in arm with sisters across the generational divide—and I am ready to storm the barricades with them. I was alarmed by Douglas’s startling-yet-nonhyperbolic depictions of gendered ageism—as well as real threats to Medicare and Social Security. In Our Prime is not just for older women—or exclusively for women. In droll, lively, exhaustively documented prose, it exposes the threat that market fundamentalism poses to people across the economic spectrum."— M. G. Lord, author of The Accidental Feminist and Forever Barbie

"Susan J. Douglas’s hilarious and deeply intelligent book chronicles how older women are rejecting sexist ageism. Required reading for those of us who are fifty or older—and everyone who (with any luck) someday will be. An informative and sharp call to arms, In Our Prime just may help bring the revolution we all need."— Liza Featherstone, author of Divining Desire

From the Publisher

2019-11-05
A feminist scholar rallies the troops in the battle against injustices to older women.

Douglas (Communication Studies/Univ. of Michigan; Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done, 2010, etc.) melds history, advocacy, and media criticism as she calls for a counteroffensive against America's "war on older women." With alternately insightful and overfamiliar arguments, the author makes the case for a new wave of feminist activism to challenge the "gendered ageism" that sidelines women of her boomer cohort or implies that they're all "supposed to go plant peonies and play peekaboo" with grandchildren. In the book's best sections, Douglas smartly analyzes portrayals of older women in popular culture, including movies and TV shows like Book Club and The Golden Girls. While images have diversified, the media often depict older women only to exploit them as sales targets or foster what marketers call "aspirational aging." Even AARP magazine has been "moving down the age chain" and once featured then-49-year-old Brad Pitt saying, "Personally, I like aging." As the author notes, "come back to me in thirty years, buster. And as a woman, with no health insurance." Douglas also lands well-placed jabs at "anti-aging" cosmetics and diseasemongering pharmaceutical ads built on the "infantilizing strategy of using cartoons." Unfortunately, the author gives too little attention, too late in the book, to the issue that polls repeatedly have identified as the No. 1 concern of older women—health care—and claims as feminist issues some concerns that don't affect women exclusively, such as Medicare. Elsewhere, she offers a to-do list with timeworn tasks such as forming discussion groups, "kind of an update on [1970s] consciousness-raising," and holds up, as a model of engagement, the late Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn, who in her 70s successfully lobbied Congress against the mandatory retirement age of 65. Women of any age can learn from trailblazers like Kuhn, but those seeking a fresher and more urgent battle cry will find it in books like Jennifer Block's recent Everything Below the Waist (2019).

Your mother's feminism, sent back to the front lines with refurbished weapons.

Kirkus Reviews