The Guardian newspaper editors recently summarized the media’s message to older women: “To age is to fail.” Being past 50, the editorial suggested, without having made the rounds at cosmetics clinics, was to have neglected some unspoken duty not to appear aged. The editors appealed to the marketing and media industries to give older women a break.

“Stop basing everything you do on the assumption that we’re all embittered old hags, spending every waking moment yearning for lost youth. Do not think for a moment that we believe the manufactured myth that aging is a problem to be solved, and please stop treating the entirely natural process of aging as though it is a crime, a personal failing or a disease with a cure – it isn’t.”

Longtime Portland broadcaster and journalist Margie Boulé couldn’t agree more. “It’s really true what they say: when you are an older woman in our culture, you become invisible.”

Margie paid a visit to the PRP.fm studio recently, where she and Rebecca Webb talked about aging, agism and the particular prejudice against aging women in broadcasting.

Listen as Rebecca and Margie catch up on their lives,  discuss their shared joy in mentoring younger people and what Margie says the young’uns ought to do in return.

Margie stars as Tallulah Bankhead in Triangle Productions’ “Looped” in September.

 

 

Rebecca Webb
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