Blog Posts by Author

Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s newest book is Ending Ageism or How Not to Shoot Old People (2017). A Resident Scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis, she has written several prize-winning books in age studies, including Declining to Decline (chosen “best feminist book in American popular culture” by the American Culture/Popular Culture Associations) and Agewise, which won the Eric Hoffer Book Prize. Her essays are often cited as notable in Best American Essays.

Ageist Trolls on Social Media and in the New Yorker Too

Ageist Trolls on Social Media and in the <em>New Yorker</em> Too

October 04, 2017 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
The Internet is notorious for commenters who feel grossly entitled to dismiss vulnerable others. This past summer, Harvard University hit hard against racist and sexist speech on Facebook, rescinding admissions to some potential first-year students. Read more...

The Violence of Ageism

May 12, 2017 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
As the entire world now knows, Dr. David Dao is the passenger who was dragged off a United Airlines flight on April 9th by Chicago police, who broke his nose, gave him a concussion and smashed two of his teeth. He may need restorative surgery. Some media have treated this as a horror perpetrated by a single airline that bullies passengers or by a business model that forces overbooking. It is a mistake to look so narrowly at the sources of harm. A few reports, and many Asian American social media users, have mentioned the possibility of racism. As I write, no mainstream news source or commentary has mentioned ageism. Read more...

Oh. America. How Obamacare Finished Off Breaking Bad

Oh.<em> America</em>. How Obamacare Finished Off <em>Breaking Bad</em>

June 10, 2016 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Any just society must reduce the despair occasioned by dire medical conditions.

This was one lesson, oddly, that could be drawn from the TV series, Breaking Bad. Read more...

Caitlyn Jenner: the Messages in the Image

Photo by Annie Leibowitz

June 22, 2015 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
What the commentators fail to say about Caitlyn Jenner is that when she came out as a woman publicly in Vanity Fair recently, she did not come out as an older woman. Read more...

Chastizing the Old Dolls

March 16, 2015 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Poor Roz Chast unburdened herself of her dislike of her mother and her pity for her father by describing their slow decline and dying, and doing it in the most public possible way, in a graphic narrative called Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir (2014). Read more...

The Love of Her Life

September 30, 2014 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
I guard my dear mother’s privacy as if she were still alive, but I have decided to rescue this particular part of her story from her secret archives because there are so few narratives about romance in late life. My mother met the love of her life when she was in her mid-70s. Fred (as I will call him) was three years older. They fell in love. Their affair lasted years and years; they were deep into their eighties before it suddenly ended. Read more...

Fifty Years of Shopping with My Mother

May 19, 2014 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
Not just in childhood, but deep into my middle years, my mother and I shopped together. I got most of my clothes on those expeditions, and she paid for a great many of them. It didn’t occur to me that any of this was unusual until a former roommate of mine, now with a daughter in her 20s, said that she had long admired my mother’s example and was “still” buying clothes for her delighted progeny. Read more...

The Art of Dressing, According to the Woman Who Wasn’t Born Yesterday
Gifts of Aging, Part 1

The Art of Dressing, According to the Woman Who Wasn’t Born Yesterday <br>Gifts of Aging, Part 1

February 09, 2014 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
1 comment When I was young, I used to be so anxious about what to wear that, in the morning or before a party, my room would be strewn with discarded outfits. The mess outside exposed the mess inside–how inadequate I felt, how competitive, how miserable that I wasn’t pretty enough or rich enough to meet the day ahead. And often I was wrongly got up—overdressed, mainly. Read more...

The Art of Shopping, According to the Woman Who Wasn’t Born Yesterday
Gifts of Aging, Part 2

The Art of Shopping, According to the Woman Who Wasn’t Born Yesterday <br>Gifts of Aging, Part 2

February 09, 2014 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
When I was young, everyone I knew felt some dissatisfaction when trying on clothes. Some of us found it excruciating. I used to say, “The scream came from the dressing room.” Read more...

Passion Is Contagious, Part 1

October 09, 2013 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
The sex scene in the film Still Mine (2013) made me want to get in the sack with my husband. We haven’t been married as long as the fictional couple in question, who have racked up over 60 years together. They are awfully attractive— Genevieve Bujold as the petite, witty wife, Irene Morrison; James Cromwell as her husband Craig, 6 foot 7 of upright, craggy manhood. Read more...

Passion Is Contagious, Part 2

October 07, 2013 By Margaret Morganroth Gullette
I try to see current movies featuring old actors whenever the actors are famous for their art, or the writing and direction promise to offer us real news about later life. Sometimes—often—I am disappointed. Producers choose sentimental, implausible or burlesque scripts; old actors accept the roles because there are so few available. But since 2006, stellar cinematic culture is suddenly waking us to the deep, universal themes of illness in the context of lifelong marriages. I am thinking of four absorbing films. Read more...

Blogs by Author

Alix Kates Shulman

Ashton Applewhite

Bob Bostock

Flora Davis

Liz Seegert

Maggie Sullivan

Margaret Cruikshank

Margaret Morganroth Gullette

Megan Kearns

Pepper Evans

Pete Croatto

Victoria Robinson

Blogs by Date

2017
- December (2)
- November (3)
- October (2)
- September (2)
- August (5)
- July (3)
- June (6)
- May (5)
- April (5)
- March (6)
- February (4)
- January (3)

2016
- December (4)
- November (3)
- October (5)
- September (5)
- August (5)
- July (5)
- June (5)
- May (5)
- April (4)
- March (6)
- February (6)
- January (2)

2015
- December (3)
- November (7)
- October (6)
- September (5)
- August (4)
- July (6)
- June (7)
- May (5)
- April (6)
- March (6)
- February (3)
- January (6)

2014
- December (4)
- November (1)
- October (6)
- September (1)
- August (3)
- July (5)
- June (3)
- May (2)
- April (4)
- March (4)
- February (2)
- January (1)

2013
- October (3)
- September (4)
- May (1)
- February (1)

2012
- December (2)
- September (2)
- January (1)

<< Back to Blogs

Change font size

Our Mission

The Silver Century Foundation promotes a positive view of aging. The Foundation challenges entrenched and harmful stereotypes, encourages dialogue between generations, advocates planning for the second half of life, and raises awareness to educate and inspire everyone to live long, healthy, empowered lives.

"It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment; in these qualities old age is usually not poorer, but is even richer."

Cicero (106-43 BC)

Designed and Hosted by Princeton Online