“Some guy said to me: Don’t you think you’re too old to sing rock n’ roll? I said “You’d better check with Mick Jagger.”…. Cher

Last September, at age 72, Cher began her seventh solo tour in support of her twenty-sixth album Dancing Queen.

At age 97, Iris Apfel, businesswoman, interior designer and fashion icon, is amongst the latest faces to sign a major modelling contract with global modeling agency IMG.

At age 86, Elaine May, American screenwriter, film director, actress and comedienne stepped on the Broadway stage for the first time in 50 years, and just received a Tony Award nomination for her role in The Waverly Gallery.

Our own Hazel McCallion, mayor of Mississauga from age 57 until she stepped down in 2014 at age 93, recently commented that, “Some of my most productive years came after I turned 65.”

Retirement is so last century.

We need a new narrative around age.

I recently was in touch via email with Jonathan Collie, co-founder of The Age of No Retirement (TAONR), the world’s leading authority on intergenerational thinking, and he is on a mission to create a world where age does not define how we see ourselves or how other people should see us.

“Traditional ideas of retirement lead to rich and productive lives cauterized by an arbitrary age line for both women and men.”

“We are finding that people need that continued purpose, that sense of fulfillment, that sense of reward that work brings. People want to continue to learn to do things. They want to keep building their social networks, they want to continue to be challenged. We find more and more that in the age of no retirement, work is indeed becoming a much more important element of people’s lives beyond the 50, 60, 70 year-old timeframe.”

Unfortunately, you can’t talk about working longer without bringing up the topic of ageism.

Of course, ageism cuts both ways, but most of the time it’s discrimination against the elderly, and in my experience it appears to be one of the last acceptable prejudices

Most advertising geared to my age group is pretty much end of life and physical decline: stair lifts, funeral plans and hearing aids; as if our post 60 life is framed  by a “narrative of decline” characterized by “isolation, poverty, dementia and technological illiteracy."

The anti-aging rhetoric of the beauty industry has long dealt in battlefield metaphors. Brands talk of “fighting” age and the “war on wrinkles”. Women are encouraged to resist the signs of aging in a fight that must be won at all costs.

Ashton Applewhite, age 66, and author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, writes as she set out on a quest to better understanding her own ageing:

“…something did surprise me: the discrepancy between what I’d simply assumed it was like to be 80 or 90 and what I was encountering firsthand. The more I read and the more experts I talked to, the clearer it became that these older workers were typical of a large and fast-growing cohort of older people, more of whom are working – and working longer hours – than at any time since the turn of the century.”

Other surprises Ms Applewhite came across – 92% of men and women aged 65 and over in Canada live at home. Even as the population ages, dementia rates are dropping. In her TED TALK she comments that the real epidemic is anxiety about memory loss. Even as age strips us of things we cherished – physical strength, beloved friends, toned flesh – we grow more content.

RALLYING CRY- Unless we challenge stigma, we reproduce it.

Ms Applewhite goes on to write, “Ageism is not about how we look. It’s about what people in power want our appearance to mean… when a group, whether politicians or marketers or employers, use that power to oppress or exploit or silence or simply ignore people who are much younger or significantly older.”

“We know that diversity means including people of different races, genders, abilities and sexual orientations; why is age typically omitted? Racist and sexist comments no longer get a pass; why do eyebrows barely raise when older people are described as worthless, or “out of it,” or even repulsive? As age bias bleeps onto the cultural radar, this is beginning to change.

It’s time to combat the bias of ageism. So in the spirit of Katy Perry’s Roar:

♫♫“ I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter

Dancing through the fire

Cause I am a champion and you’re going to hear me roar”♫♫

MY NAME IS SANDRA PIERCE, I'M LOUD AND PROUD AND 62! AND I AM A PRO AGEING ACTIVIST.