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Season 2: Episode 6 - How old are you?

[Theme]

HARVINDER WADHWA: People are curious and that's great.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: But there are some questions you just shouldn't ask or at least not like that.

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm Harvinder Wadhwa

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And this is Inappropriate Questions.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Let's get inappropriate.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Harv, I actually am realizing I don't know the exact answer to this, but how old are you?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Hmm, okay let me tell you a story here, Elena. When I came to Canada many, many years ago, I was told that if you don't want to get into trouble, don't ask anybody about their age or salary, but feel free to talk about their sex life.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: OK, well, I would much rather know your age than about your sex life, to be frank.

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK, so jokes aside, I was very, very comfortable with sharing my age up until quite recently. There are a lot of, a lot of biases associated with it. Which I was quite unaware of it until a few years ago. So, and that's why I've started being a little more circumspect about my age.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, no, that's fair. All of these biases can be described as ageism, which is just quite generally the discrimination that you face based on your age. So this episode we're looking at ageism, and how different communities experience it, so we can get a broader understanding of this question.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Fantastic. So relevant to me.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Good, good. Takeaways for Harv is what we want.

[Music]

VOICE 1: And he was just like, ugh, I'd rather be dead than your age.

VOICE 2: There are social factors that cause Black people to age faster inside.

VOICE 3: I think it's only inappropriate in an ageist culture. It has become so.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Ashton Applewhite is an American author and activist, and her work is all about aging and ageism. She's the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism, and also runs the blog, Yo, Is This Ageist? Where she answers people's questions about whether something is ageist or not. This episode we're talking about the question “How old are you?” Have you had experience being asked this question?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: I usually get in there first and say how old I am as a deliberate act.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: In the book, I mention a very radical friend of mine who refuses to say how old she is. Not because, the usual reason is we want people to think we're younger than we are.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Because we live in a culture that equates youth with all good things.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: And anything non-young with all bad things. So that is why, “How old are you?" is a complicated question.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: She refuses to give people that answer so they cannot pigeonhole her.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Just like withholding your age from the doctor would be to make it harder for the doctor to pigeonhole you as a certain set of possible ailments...

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: For sure.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: ...rather than looking at you yourself.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: I think it's very important to say how old you are, because otherwise it feels like and usually is a sign of age denial. And when we deny our age, that is when ageism starts to sink its little hooks in us. Right? That's when you start to get on the hamster wheel of “I don't want to think about it,” of lying about our age, of fudging our resumes. I completely understand why so many people do those things. You know, dye our hair to cover the gray, especially women. Right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: They are really successful strategies. No judgment.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: But those behaviors, they are not good for us because they are rooted in shame about something that should not be shameful. And from a structural point of view, you know, I'm an activist, they give a pass to the discrimination.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Side comment. You know, normally people tell me, oh I am young at heart.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh.

HARVINDER WADHWA: That's a typical one which you hear when somebody sees you as a older person, whatever their definition of old is.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Can I give you a, can I suggest a response?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Oh certainly.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Say, “What do you mean by that?” Just ask that in a neutral way. Not in a “gotcha,” you know, way, but “What do you mean by that?

HARVINDER WADHWA: OK.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: And then presumably the person will say, “Well, you're so enthusiastic.”

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: “Well, why do you think enthusiasm is a trait of the young?” and let that uncomfortable silence sit there for a minute because then the person has to think about “Why did I use that word?” Because we use young and old, generally positive for youth and negative for old.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: You know, when people say “I don't feel old,” what they really mean is “I don't feel sad.” “I don't feel ugly.” “I don't feel useless.” “I don't feel incompetent.”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: When in fact those ways of feeling, you know, we can feel it anytime. You can feel sexy at 80.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: You can feel incompetent at eight. Use the actual trait, good or bad.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Before you became an expert on ageism, how did you feel about getting older?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: In hindsight, I really, I started thinking, writing on the subject in my mid-50s because I was afraid of getting old. And within a matter of weeks learned that almost everything I thought I knew about late life was way off base or not nuanced enough or flat out wrong. And so I became obsessed with why so few people know those things.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So can we go back one step? Why were you afraid of getting old?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Because like everyone else in the western world, just about, I was bombarded with negative messages about age and aging from childhood on. The dominant narrative is that to age is a narrative of loss certainly and even a narrative of failure. And I thought everything about getting older would be grim and that one of the awful things about it was clearly that as death approached, you would become more preoccupied by that and it would be more scary. I mean I envisioned this, you know, grim reaper shadow, you know, looming over the sad iron bedstead. It turns out that, I mean, and I think most people do. I don't think these are nightmarish fears. I think most of us don't think about it or try not to think about it, but those are dark fears that I think are at the surface for a lot of us. And then I learned that the older people are the less they fear dying. Aging is living. We are aging from the minute we are born, OK? It's not just something annoying that old people do. And dying is a discrete biological event that happens at the end of all that living. Another one of the facts I stumbled across and when I, when I encountered it, I cannot tell you how skeptical I was at the beginning. It's called the U-curve of happiness. And it shows that people are happiest at the beginnings and the ends of their lives. And I thought, well, they must've cornered two 80-year-olds and given them a cookie. Or that must be okay if you're wealthy. That must be the fact if you're healthy. That must be the fact if your spouse is still alive. That curve obtains across class, across marital status, across culture. And the psychological underpinnings of it are that as we become aware that that time is short, we become more able to focus in the moment. You know, I love to point out that even, if aging is so awful, how come no one actually wants to be any younger? Do either of you? Would you roll the clock back?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh, that's a good question. Would you Harv?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Oh that's actually a very good question. Yes and no.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Yeah, you don't get a yes or no. You get a yes or a no.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yeah, because, and you are right. Because a lot of those fears which I had when I was in my 20s, I don't have those fears, but then I have very different fears now. So that's why it's not a binary answer.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Right. There are new fears, of course, always, you know, life is complicated. But we know, I mean the two inevitable bad things about getting older are that people you've known all your life are going to die, which is terrible, and that some part of your body is going to fall apart. I mean, and that sucks too.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: I don't want to sugarcoat the scary stuff, but I want people to have a fact, rather than fear-based attitude towards aging, not least because one of the many things I've learned in the years since is that those fears themselves, that apprehension, is bad for us, cognitively and physically.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Honestly, I never thought about ageism the way you are describing it, and it's...

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: It's new ideas to most people.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Exactly. And when you say it, everything is making so much sense and I'm figuring out, trying to figure out, why did I not think about it? How is that in this age of instant communication and wealth of knowledge everywhere, why are we still having these conversations? These conversations should have finished way back when and all should have been settled.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Yeah. I mean, these are new ideas to people, but once you're really past middle age — and people ask me all the time, “So when is middle age?”

HARVINDER WADHWA: Exactly. That was my question.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: “When does old begin?” I would say if there is pretty obviously more road behind you than ahead, it crosses your mind. And most of us, unless we stop to learn more as I have done, sort of brush it out of the way and don't want to think about it because it has so many negative associations. When in fact, the more you know about aging, the less fear it has for you, and that's not just my theory. And my favorite study is one out of Yale that showed that people with fact- rather than fear-based attitudes towards aging were less likely to get Alzheimer's even if they had the gene that predisposes them to the disease.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Wow.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Huh.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Wow, that is interesting.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That's wild.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right, right.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: As the, given that we're a bit of an intergenerational hosting gig here, as the younger part of that...

HARVINDER WADHWA: Who's the younger?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'd love to ask what ageism is like, because you've said that ageism cuts both ways. What is ageism like? Like what are the ageist assumptions we make about younger people?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Well typically that younger people don't know what they're doing. That they're too inexperienced to, you know, run a podcast.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Ha ha.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Take out my appendix. Have an informed opinion on something. If you're working on a team, that your opinion is as valuable as anyone else's. I don't like any language that privileges old over young or young over old. I mean, ageism is any judgment on the basis of age.

HARVINDER WADHWA: One way or the other, yeah.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Older people do experience a lot more of it because we live in such a youth-obsessed society, but every single individual deserves respect and I don't think you'll catch me saying older people are better at, you know, X, Y, Z. And workplaces is a good example because the best teams are mixed age, right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Agreed.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: The best housing situations are intergenerational for reasons that are intuitively and logistically obvious.

HARVINDER WADHWA: One of the things which Elena mentioned to me earlier was the "ok, boomer" comment.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Yeah.

HARVINDER WADHWA: What do you think of this comment? Is it to do with ageism or is it to do with something else?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: “Ok boomer” is in reference to people who have not troubled to keep up with the times. It's ageist because it references it at an age group of which I am a card-carrying member. I was born in 1952. Dead centre of the baby boom. So if you use "okay boomer" as just a slap at me to say, you're old, you couldn't possibly know anything. I'm young, so I'm better. That's a problem. But I happen to think that it is incumbent on us as we age if we want to play a part in current affairs, to pay attention, to learn. If you don't want to, that's fine. There's no one right way to get old. Of course. But then I do think you forfeit, you know, your right to comment and to have your comments be as respected as if you were learning about new trends, new ideas as they emerged. I think the danger of "ok boomer" is that it pits older people as the enemy and that is the fatal trap we cannot allow ourselves to fall into.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Because then we're divided. We're arguing about whether boomers are bad or good, instead of joining forces.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Would you say asking "How old are you?” is inappropriate? Is that an inappropriate question?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: You know, I think it's only inappropriate in an ageist culture. It has become so.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: It is almost always irrelevant. We think it's really important because we have a habit of needing to know it. A perfect example is newspaper stories. I would like age to be removed from all newspaper stories that are not obituaries or stories about prodigies.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Huh.

HARVINDER WADHWA: And I have always wondered, why the hell do they write the age?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Thank you. They do it out of habit.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Huh.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: And, you know most journalists don't like this idea and they say, well it's part of you know, the who, what, when, where, why and we want people to know. That confusion is a good thing. We used to put race in newspaper stories and we don't do it anymore.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: All of us are biased. Right? If we know the age, if we know the race, we can't help but default, perhaps subconsciously to inner biases. If that information is missing, as it should be, we can't default to those biases. Right?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yeah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So if someone feels like they want to ask someone about their age or feels that curiosity, would your recommendation just be not go there or is there a better way we can open up discussions about age?

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: My recommendation would be to think really hard about why you want to know.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ASHTON APPLEWHITE: Is it because you want to go sailing with them next Sunday and you're wondering if they can climb in and out of the boat, in which case test their, you know, test their grip strength. See how they do going up and down the stairs. Right? Are they old enough to drive? You can figure that out. What's going on between you and them? What you hope they're interested in or what you might want to do with them or whatever, is age really part of that or not? The answer I can pretty much guarantee is no. So then ask a better question tailored to what is more specifically relevant to what you want to know about them.

[Music]

IAN MCKAY: I'm Ian McKay and I am Elena's grandpa. I am 72.

HELEN GRACE: I am Helen Grace and I am Elena's grandma. I am 78.

IAN MCKAY: When people ask me how old I am, I feel very comfortable telling them my age. I have nothing to hide with my age.

HELEN GRACE: I usually upfront my age these days because what I find is people sometimes are too nervous about actually knowing what age us elders are. Most especially women I find. I feel more accepted when people actually know it's not just that I look old, I am old.

IAN MCKAY: I think it would be perfectly okay to ask how old I am. The difficulty is, is that going to get used against me? If you're looking for somebody with a certain skill set and a certain background and I fit that background and I happen to be 72, would you rule me out? A lot of people, I'm sure, would say I think I'd be discriminated against if I, if I gave my age.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Did you ever see the "how hard did aging hit you” Facebook challenge?

HARVINDER WADHWA: You know I never go on Facebook. Facebook is for old people.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh OK, ageist stereotypes up in here. It's this challenge where you post two photos of yourself that are from a decade apart and then you're trying to show people how much you've aged or not.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Very interesting. Very interesting.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Someone who did this challenge is Elizabeth Wellington. She's a journalist and lifestyle columnist. And when she did the challenge, she got a bunch of interesting comments.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: So they'll say, “Oh my God, you don't age,” or “What happened,” like you know, “Are you a vampire?”

HARVINDER WADHWA: She noticed that in all these posts, she and other Black women looked similar to what they looked 10 years ago.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: So then I figured I would write this piece kind of about how people always talk about how dynamic and wonderful Black women look, but there's so many other health problems and things that, it was just one of those like irony things.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: She wrote a piece about this called "Black don't crack on the outside, but it could be cracking on the inside." We connected with her to speak more about perceptions of aging and youth for Black women and how that impacts their health. As someone who gets told how young you look, you must get asked about your age a lot. How does it feel not being seen as your age?

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: I've kind of been that way since I was younger. Like when I was 16, people thought I was 12. When I was 18 people thought I was 16.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: When I was 25 I would get, I still get carded. I'm like 46-years-old now and I still and I still get carded when I go out. It's like, “Oh can I see your card?” And I'm like “Sweet Jesus, you can see my ID here.” And then they look and they look at my face and they look at the numbers again and they look at my face and it's like, “Oh my.” And I'm like, yes. Then you feel really good for like five minutes.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: You know, on one level people kind of, you know as I started doing, working in journalism, then people kind of, when you look like a young woman or especially a young Black woman, people tend to underestimate you a lot.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: So you can really get the information that you need. Like they would send me to high schools and I could walk right through high school and nobody. I was 25-years-old walking through high schools. Like nobody stopped me. I would be on college campuses and nobody would stop me. I could walk through hospitals and emergency rooms. There were murders and stuff.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh my God.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: Like never, ever, ever was I stopped.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So being underestimated was like your kind of superpower almost.

HARVINDER WADHWA: This was great.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: But then on some levels like I couldn't get guys my age to date me because they all thought I was jailbait.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh wow.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: You're 35-years-old and a 22-year-old is hitting on you and you're like "pu-leaze." That might be why I'm still single. So there's coming and goings and plus you know, you never feel confident in negotiations, kind of. Like I probably should be making more money, but you know, how do I negotiate? You know, it's like a give and take, you know.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right. Right. Right. In your piece you talk about the saying "Black don't crack." Is this just something you have been experiencing personally or is this happening to Black women in general?

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: I mean I think generally speaking, Black women tend to look a little bit younger than their white women counterparts. And that has more to do with melanin and the amount of exposure to the sun that you are in. There was a study that was done a couple of, like right after I did that story, there was a study that was done a couple of months later that I wrote about, about how Black people tend to have more dense bone tissue underneath their cheekbones and their jaws and their eyes and that's where people tend to wrinkle. So there's some genetic and there's some biological reasons that Black people as a whole tend to look younger. Just seem more youthful than white people. But then there are also societal pressures, there are social factors that cause Black people to age faster inside because of systematic racism that we've heard that term a lot. So Black people tend to have higher blood pressure. Black people tend to live in, a lot of times, live in food deserts. So they don't have the same access to good food, or you have diabetes runs in our families. It's been proven that Black women tend to be more obese than white women. So weight gain will age you and the stress of living in this world as a Black woman and as a single Black woman. So there are ways that we can physically look younger because of genes, but there are also ways that inside, we may look 10 years younger on the outside, but we may be 30 years older on the inside. And what difference does that you know, what does that make?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Yeah, that complicates a lot of stuff.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: What effect does the idea that black people don't age or age differently, have on the Black community?

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: Well, yeah, I think the Black body in general has been, historically, we've had to be healthy and strong. Right? To do the work that we've had to do.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: Without any maintenance and upkeep.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: The Black body has been beaten, and then the Black body has to continue to work long after its white counterpart bodies don't have to work anymore without the same level of health care and upkeep. And even self-care, because you don't have time to give yourself self-care if you are taking care of someone else's family as well as your own, around the clock, 24 hours a day. But then when health care opened up and you know, somewhat more access, you can go to the doctors. What happens is now Black women are like “Well you know, I don't have time to go to the doctor. I'm not gonna take care of myself. Look, I look good, I feel good.” Not knowing that your blood pressure inside is like 250 over 80 and you're a walking stroke. Right? So I think the detriment is is that there is, there is still detriment. Just because you look fabulous in the eyes of you know, the world, or you have less wrinkles, doesn't mean that you're a walking bill of health.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And I guess because in our society we really conflate like looking youthful and looking beautiful with health, I'm sure that adds to it.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: And also, there's mental health. Like mental health can age you. Being stressed out can age you. You know, when you do a tongue-in-cheek piece about black don't crack, and you look good and this. Which is what I did, right? And then inside, then, I had to go deeper and be like, “You know, we look fantastic, that doesn't mean that we're living longer and we're happier and our bodies are in great shape, and we're doing all the things we need to do to stay alive.”

HARVINDER WADHWA: Wow. See, when we talk about Black Lives Matter, we look at a very small portion of those things. And you have actually illuminated stuff, which I don't think so very many people understand that.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: Child, yes. That's why my inbox gets filled with the crazy emails like “There's no such thing as institutionalized racism and systemic racism, and girl you look good too. There's no racism because you don't have no wrinkles! You okay!”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: Yeah. If you, if every day you are living in this world that doesn't, that treats you like you don't matter then, then it's going to play a toll.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Going to our question, “How old are you?” Would you consider that as an inappropriate question if somebody asked you that question?

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: I don't know. I guess it depends on who's asking it and the tone that someone's asking it in.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: Like I've never had anyone ask me that question like “Well damn, bitch, how old are you?” Like you know, it's never been. Or “You really must be old,” or you know. I've never had that question asked to me in a sense that they're just someone's trying to knock me out of the running for something. But I think, you know, all questions can be inappropriate. Like, and I guess it's funny because I work in fashion, but working as a fashion and lifestyle writer, you have to ask the most inappropriate questions. You have to ask people how old they are. You have to ask people what size they wear. You have to ask people what size of bra are you wearing?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right, right, right.

ELIZABETH WELLINGTON: So it's all, I think all questions can be inappropriate and even the most appropriate questions can be inappropriate if asked in an inappropriate way.

[Music].

SARAH: My name is Sarah.

VOICE: How old are you, Sarah?

SARAH: Five and a half.

VOICE: Have you ever been told you can't do something because you're too young?

SARAH: Yes.

VOICE: What was that?

SARAH: When I grow up I want a boyfriend but they don’t let me get a boyfriend because I'm too young.

BENJAMIN: Hi, my name is Benjamin. I'm nine-years-old. What I like about being nine-years-old is that I get to spend time with my friends and I also get to ride my new bike. An age I would like to be one day is 34 because I would like to be a dad.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: As a queer person, this topic made me think a lot about age in the queer community. Older and younger LGBTQ people don't always understand each other's experiences. I think about how a lot of older people lived through the AIDS crisis, whereas we younger folks have had to seek out that piece of history. That's what got me interested in actor Sam Pancake's story. He had a video go viral where he shares an ageist encounter that he had with another gay person.

SAM PANCAKE: I'm an actor and I was at this sort of industry event and a person that I knew who was a younger gay writer, sort of personality podcaster. I was texting and he was looking over my shoulder. He's just not someone I like very much, and so he said to me, “Why is your text so large? God, you're so old.” It's such like playground third-grade bullshit, like you know?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

SAM PANCAKE: And I said, “Well you know what? It's because, you know, I can't see. I have to, I wear contacts. I have to wear reading glasses and that's what happens with age.” And he said, “How old are you?” And I said, “I'm 54” because I was at the time. And he was like

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah.

SAM PANCAKE: And so we all have that in us. And so I just know in like the gay male culture, specifically speaking of the white gay male culture, which can be so very toxic, it's just that, you know, the idealization of abs and muscles and everything is because people think that that's sexually desirable.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: You said in your, in your rant that went viral, you were talking about respecting gay elders. What can we the younger gays, but also the youngers in general, do to help respect gay elders?

SAM PANCAKE: Well, I think that the first thing you have to do is to remember, you will be that old one day or you'll be dead and you should plan on hopefully being alive. So with that in mind, treat others as you would treat, you know, as you would yourself want to be treated. You know, the golden rule. How can I listen, care, check-in. And reach out. You know, not every, not every older gay person is as amazing as me, obviously, or as open and willing to like listen and respond, but many people are. And there's going to be an aging gay population, which one day you will be a part of. And I'm not saying it's going to look dreary. I think it's going to be fucking fabulous.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm so ready.

SAM PANCAKE: Like you know, and you, not that every, you know, it's just gonna be just like the fun compounds or apartment buildings or, you know retreats. It's going to be, like I said a long time ago when I was having my own struggles with feeling, getting older, looking older. I was another one when I was in my 20s and 30s. “I'll never get old!” You know, “I'm going to die before I, before I have to be that old.” So I kind of understood in a way, the way that guy was talking about, until I almost did die. And then I was like, “Oh shit no, I want to live,” you know? Because I almost drank myself to death. And it was not a great idea. But I was like, I'm going to, once I get sober, I was like “I'm going to age like no one else.” I don't have to age like, certainly not like my straight parents or my straight grandparents. And I know that I can have a romantic and sexual loving life as long as I want to. So I think that the one pearl I can hand over is to each person is like, you will have the opportunity more than any generation before you to age how you want to age and how you want to age. And maybe you do want to get to the, whatever that tomorrow's version of the rocking chair is by 60 or retire in your 50s. Maybe you do want to have a nice, quiet life and go to bed early every night. Maybe you want to party your frikin ass off as long as you can stand. Or you know do yoga or whatever you want to do, but like you can live the way you want. Just, you got to keep your joy going. Like I've been able to continually and on a daily basis access my joy about the world, you know, just no matter what's going on and I think that keeps you young.

[Music]

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Doing this episode made me realize, I guess how deeply ingrained our biases about age can be. I never realized that my, my default assumptions about getting older were that it sucked and my default assumptions about being older were that you get tired and you get sad and you know, your world is grey and life sucks. But that's not true and it doesn't have to be. So, I'm going to try to interrogate and pick apart these ideas and these assumptions a bit more when I notice myself making them.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Elena, the more I think about it now, the more it makes sense to me that age should be taken out of the equation. We ask these questions because we want to pigeonhole people based on their age.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: So I guess I'm just never gonna know your exact age and it's time to make my peace with that.

[Theme]

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm Harvinder Wadhwa.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Thanks for getting inappropriate with us.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Many thanks to Ashton Applewhite, Elizabeth Wellington and Sam Pancake for speaking to us. You also heard voice notes from Ian McKay, Helen Grace, Sarah and Benjamin. Check out cbc.ca/iqpodcast for a full transcript and more resources.

HARVINDER WADHWA: The merry mates behind this podcast are Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long and Elena Hudgins Lyle.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The show is mixed by Andrew Norton. Our digital producers are Judy Ziyi Gu and Sarah Claydon. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer and the executive producer is Arif Noorani.

[Theme out]

HARVINDER WADHWA: An inappropriate question is like being asked for ID or not being asked for one, whichever annoys you more.

TRANSCRIPT: Inappropriate Questions - Season 2, EP 6

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