“Sexism on its own is so ugly. When you pair it with ageism, it is devastating.”
“Why is our view of late life so unrelievedly grim when the lived reality is so different?” Writer and activist Ashton Applewhite, 65, set out to answer that question almost a decade ago. What she discovered is at the heart of her successful blogs, This Chair Rocks and Yo, Is This Ageist? and her recent her book, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, a must-read for old and young. Today, Ashton continues to blog and speak with passion and unshakeable determination to mobilize more of us in the fight to make discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind. Her recent TED talk has already garnered over 1 million viewers. Not surprising, since Ashton makes her case not just with facts but humor. She’s a funny woman! In fact, her first book, Truly Tasteless Jokes, and its three sequels reveal “a weakness for the kind of jokes that make you cringe and guffaw at the same time.” They also made publishing history by occupying four of fifteen spots on the New York Times bestseller list. Ashton is also the author of another stereotype-busting book: Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, which Ms. magazine described as “rocket fuel for launching new lives.” Ashton is a kindred spirit who shares our goal to explode myths about gender and aging and re-define what it means to be a woman at any age.