Don't forget 12 oz. curls too.
Today is a good day to die.
I didn't say for whom.
Posted on 02/11/2011 7:09:36 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Companies are quietly redesigning their products to accommodate the needs of (shh, don’t say it aloud) aging baby boomers. So reports the Wall Street Journal. “The generation that sent diaper sales soaring in the 1960s, bought power suits in the 1980s and indulged in luxury cars in the 2000s is getting ready to retire: The oldest boomers turn 65 this year. . . . But there’s a catch: Baby boomers, famously demanding and rebellious, don’t want anyone suggesting they’re old.”
Marketers, always alert to the sensitivities of this most self-absorbed of cohorts, are developing products and shopping environments that will appeal to the needs of, let us say, ripening baby boomers without ever using the “o” word. “Surreptitiously, companies are making typefaces larger, lowering store shelves to make them more accessible and avoiding yellows and blues in packaging — two colors that don’t appear as sharply distinct to older eyes.”
It may be autumn for the boomers, but it’s springtime for the marketing euphemists. Bathroom-fixture maker Kohler, the WSJ reports, set its wizards the task of renaming the “grab bar” — a shower fixture for, shall we say, experienced bathers. They came up with “belay” (after the mountaineering term), and designed it to blend unobtrusively into the tile wall. Whether Kohler considered that mature eyes might not be able to find the subtle “belay” in an emergency we don’t know.
Maybe we should be grateful for euphemisms in a culture that is otherwise awash in vulgarity. But really — “Low T”? You’ve seen the commercials, I’m sure. “Millions of men 45 and older just don’t feel like they used to,” it begins. “Remember when you had more energy for 18 holes with your buddies? More passion for the one you love?” Well, “don’t blame it on aging,” Abbott Laboratories advises. “Call your doctor,” because what in other times and places was considered normal is now “a treatable condition called low testosterone or low T.” If at 55 you don’t feel 19, call your doctor and get a drug to fix it.
More-tempered women present even greater challenges for marketers. Boomer women, a business website reminds readers, constitute 37 percent of those online, and women in general make 80 percent of household purchasing decisions. In order not to offend these potential customers, the site advises avoiding the words “senior,” “older women,” “silver surfers or silver anything,” and particularly “grandma, grandmother, grandparents, grannies.” Boomer gals, we learn, “are happy to lipo, pull, tighten, and do just about anything on earth to avoid being asked that dreaded question, ‘Would you like the senior discount?’”
Maybe it’s the plastic surgery, or maybe it’s just denial, but boomers seem a tad unrealistic about where they fit into the life cycle. “When casting for recent Depend ads,” the Journal reports, “the brand looked for actors who appeared to be in their early 50s . . .Despite concerns inside the company that the actors were too young to be believable, focus groups of boomers didn’t mind a bit.” Which may explain why the actors in denture commercials are all in their 50s too.
For an entire cohort to go through life tagged as “babies” may have had some infantilizing effects over the years. An AARP commercial aimed at baby boomers uses the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” trope for people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. One says he wants to work with children, another that he wants to fix up old houses. She wants to run a marathon. He’s going to start a band. AARP believes “you’re never done growing.”
Actually, yes you are. You’re a grownup at 21. People continue to change and improve (some go in the other direction), but they are no longer “growing.” Boomers need to get a grip — or a belay — on the facts of life. Run your marathon if you want to, but you’ve been grown up for decades!
Yet why single out boomers? No one these days is encouraged to act his age. The Vermont Teddy Bear Company recommends sending stuffed animals to grown women for Valentine’s Day. There are also ads for “hoodie/footie” pajamas for people who haven’t waited up for Santa in well over a decade. The sexual innuendo in the ads doesn’t counteract the fact that they are peddling gifts more appropriate for six-year-olds.
The styles that are marketed to “tween” girls — those between 10 and 12 — on the other hand, are all about premature sexuality. Why is it so hard to get this right?
Age matters. What’s right at 20 is not right at 60 — or 10. The only dignified way to navigate through life’s stages is not to deny that.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
hahhhh!!! and thanks for your service !!!
Okay, I have to ask. Which one did you get?
I got me a wifey...my childbook sweetheart. I had been looking for her for 10 years on the internet, and I finally found her on Facebook.
That's a line to remember.
One thing I've noticed is that I wake up stiff as a board and now its just my joints.
We are, and we're about to set diaper sales soaring once again!
I’m a pre-boomer (1943). Still play rec b’ball a couple of times a week (those 40 year old kids are killin’ me!), run for fitness and a few 5k - 5 mile recreational races a year.
God has been better to me than I deserve!
I must admit I have to resist feeling the same way. However, the more history I read the more aware I become that the decline has be a long time coming.
It just seems to have started withthe Boomers because there were/are so damn many of them. But remember who were egging them on in the 60s.
I look at photos of my relatives taken back in the 1950s-1960s, and the 30somethings look as if they're pushing 50, the 40- and 50somethings are indistinguishable from the ones in their 60s and 70s. It's partly due to the fashions they chose, which look matronly to later eyes : All women at age 30 (or 25, if they're married with children) choosing to have their hair chopped off into hideously unflattering, frizzy "cap of curl" mushroom shapes a la Edith Bunker, mid calf skirts, flat pancake heels, cardigans as a uniform...It is likely that if you took an average middle or upperclass woman in her 40s of today and teleported her back in time , she'd probably be perceived as 30-34 by those around her. Less smoking (which causes and worsens facial lines) knowledge that tanning damages skin (when my mom was in college in the early 1960s, she was REQUIRED to sunbathe-seriously!), easier lives for most...Much of what was thought to be intrinsic ageing is now known to be preventable or at least delayed, and we should all be glad it's so.
I agree with you that people should dress and act as they feel, not according to other people's stereotypes and attitudes about what's "appropriate" for people who have X number of birthdays.
10) Men who haven’ t hit the gym in a decade attempting to bench their weigh and blow out a pec muscle instead.
Yep it’s a problem that’s why the only exersise I do is walking and mood swings.
Please don’t always put your comment in the title box!
Titles in the title box, comments in the comment box.
This trend toward more and more editorial parentheticals in the title box clutters to forum and also makes it unclear what the title of the article actually is.
Thank you!
Don't forget 12 oz. curls too.
My grandmother is 90 and other than being a little shrunken, she looks, dresses and acts exactly the way she did when she was 47 (the youngest I remember her and the age I am now). Last year I went out on a quick, fun 10 mile run with some friends, got lost and we ended up running a soggy, cold 15 miles. It was a funny story that I told my mom who in turn shared it with grandma. Grandma had a fit! "Why, you tell her to stop running! She is TOO OLD to run."
Looking back at grandma at this age, I don't doubt she WAS too old to run at 47. But my 47 isn't her 47 or even my mom's 47 - whole different mindset these days and I don't think that is a bad thing at all!
My grandmother is 90 and other than being a little shrunken, she looks, dresses and acts exactly the way she did when she was 47 (the youngest I remember her and the age I am now). Last year I went out on a quick, fun 10 mile run with some friends, got lost and we ended up running a soggy, cold 15 miles. It was a funny story that I told my mom who in turn shared it with grandma. Grandma had a fit! "Why, you tell her to stop running! She is TOO OLD to run."
Looking back at grandma at this age, I don't doubt she WAS too old to run at 47. But my 47 isn't her 47 or even my mom's 47 - whole different mindset these days and I don't think that is a bad thing at all!
My grandmother is 90 and other than being a little shrunken, she looks, dresses and acts exactly the way she did when she was 47 (the youngest I remember her and the age I am now). Last year I went out on a quick, fun 10 mile run with some friends, got lost and we ended up running a soggy, cold 15 miles. It was a funny story that I told my mom who in turn shared it with grandma. Grandma had a fit! "Why, you tell her to stop running! She is TOO OLD to run."
Looking back at grandma at this age, I don't doubt she WAS too old to run at 47. But my 47 isn't her 47 or even my mom's 47 - whole different mindset these days and I don't think that is a bad thing at all!
Crap - how did I manage posting 3 times? Must be getting old...
Wholehearted agreement! :-)
As recently as a few short years ago, I was benching WELL over my body weight (and I’m 55). Still, since I plan on getting back into lifting after a few years’ hiatus, I’m also smart enough to know that you start all over; take baby steps and work back up to it.
That’s where too many make such idiotic mistakes: not realizing or acknowledging that they have to work back up to where they were before. Not this old man. :)
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