Wrinkles are Meaningless in the Face of Female Beauty

Senior women are powerful and capable and strong and YES - BEAUTIFUL!!! 

Last month I was teaching a class at a local assisted living community and the topic was female beauty and aging.   My students were 15 women ages 76 - 94.  I have taught this class many times and I know that for the most part senior women do NOT generally identify themselves as beautiful.   What I keep hoping is that my seniors should know that beauty is more than physical attributes.  These are accomplished, experienced, wise, funny, intelligent, educated, beautiful women.  They have nurtured families, survived personal loss, overcome illness, stood strong in the face of adversity and paved the way for the rest of us.  

Here's my favorite definition of beauty - the combination of ALL qualities of a person or thing that delight the senses and please the mind.  What could that possibly have to do with being tall, thin and blonde?  And by the way, if you are tall, thin and blonde, I'm not mad at you.  That's not the point.  Here's the point - I have personally never been any of those things and you can't tell me I'm not beautiful.  Beauty is deeper than that.  And one more thing, if we don't understand the real depth or our own beauty, how can we expect our children or grandchildren or great grandchildren to understand it or claim their beauty.  

So for all my senior women who tell me they can no longer stand to look in the mirror, I want you to know you are breaking my heart and I am begging you to think long and hard about the consequences of that perspective.  We are counting on you to claim your voices and lead the way like you have in days gone by.  The wrinkles on your face are proof of your strength and without you we would not be allowed to own property or vote or attend college or run for office or own our own businesses.  Without you we would not understand the importance of the stay at home mom or the importance of balancing work and family. YOU are beautiful!  You are MORE than beautiful. You are awesome.  And we are not gonna let you forget it.  

Please listen to this edition of Senior Agenda for the complete commentary.

Seniors Have Already Funded their Own Social Security & Medicare

The cartoon above is shameful and indicative of the popular perspective of many young professionals and soon to be professionals in the workplace and at the university today.  It is an absolute misrepresentation of reality and pushes the misconception that seniors are a burden standing on the backs of others who carry the load while seniors get a free ride.  Those poor pitiful college graduates of this new millennium who took out student loans, can't get the salaries they believe they deserve and have been unfairly impacted by the great recession.  Research has it that those born between 1980 and 2000 or "Generation Y" are marked by an inflated sense of entitlement and lack work ethic.  They also reportedly hate criticism and suffer from higher levels of depression and chronic disenchantment.  In short, they are unhappy. Just a friendly reminder that seniors made those student loans possible, suffer from disproportionate poverty despite years of service and lived through the Great Depression.  Moreover, they have already paid to have their social security and Medicare funded.  In addition to being highly offensive, the cartoon also fails to depict the generation gap in any meaningful way.