Aging is not a scandal

On the strange cultural panic around doing the one thing we all do if we’re lucky

Welcome to Pushing Ink, where we navigate the broken world of work, detour into pop culture, and occasionally embark on whimsy-filled sidequests… among other hot topics

Let’s talk about something fun today.

Ageism.

Fun, right?

Ageism is one of those problems you don’t really notice until you’re standing hip-deep in it. And suddenly all that irrational fear of quicksand in the 80s feels less random.

It was training.

OK, so the Swamp of Sadness is not quite quicksand. But the 80s obsession with quicksand (and its many variations) wasn’t just cinematic drama!

Quicksand is the perfect metaphor for aging. It sneaks up on you. You look down one day and think, huh. That wasn’t there yesterday.

But what’s the alternative? If not aging, then what? A dramatic slingshot straight into the grave? Perhaps launched by trebuchet for flair?

Exactly.

Here’s what I actually mean.

I am not a “respect your elders no matter what” person. Respect is earned. The number of candles on a cake does not grant sainthood. Refer to any empty-suit discussion you’ve ever heard me make.

What bothers me isn’t aging itself. It’s the cultural reaction to it.

The invisibility.

The dismissal.

The strange offense people take at a number.

And it swings both ways. Too young. Too old. Rarely “just right.” I teach financial literacy to teens, and we talk about this. Employers will pass on you because you’re too young. Then one day, without warning, you’ll be too old.

There is apparently a mythical Goldilocks Age. No one knows what it is. We’re all just hoping to stumble into it before we expire.

I genuinely do not know what the “perfect” age is. I don’t even like numbers. Which is ironic, given what I teach. I have dyscalculia. My youngest does too. My mother laughs about it, the same way she laughed when I worked in a call center for four years.

Me? On phones? All day?

Miracles occur.

What troubles me most isn’t that my knees occasionally protest or that it takes a full committee meeting in my brain to retrieve the word quicksand. It’s how society treats aging like a scandal. Reveal your age and you’d think you’d confessed to tax fraud.

I once had a would-be employer ask my age outright. I answered. A sigh of relief escaped their lips.

Maybe it was relief. I still don’t know what that sigh meant. Was 40 good? Was it bad? Did I barely clear some invisible bar?

Another time, a group of younger colleagues reacted to my age with a dramatic “NO WAY!”

Again, unclear. Was I supposed to be flattered? Offended? Dust myself off?

Then there are the people who get genuinely angry if you don’t perform age correctly. I won’t dye my hair. (I’m about a quarter gray and fine with it). I refuse to participate in the latest diet crusade.

Apparently that is highly unacceptable.

Beth, that’s what women of any age endlessly do.

No, it isn’t.

Not for me!

There’s this persistent cultural panic around aging. As though it’s a lurking threat that might ambush you if you’re not vigilant enough with serums and spin classes. But aging is simply what happens when you continue to exist.

That’s it.

It’s not a trap. It’s not a moral failing. It’s not a betrayal of your younger self or society as a whole.

It’s what happens if you’re lucky.

The media loves to package aging like it’s a fall from grace. How dare your favorite celebrity develop a forehead that moves! But we are all doing the same thing. Every minute. Every second. We are aging!

So why the shock? The humiliation? The outrage?

If the 80s taught me anything, it’s this: Quicksand doesn’t pull you under because you’re aging. It pulls you under because you panic.

What do you think?

Until next time, my friends—take your breaks, chase a sidequest or two, breathe, and be ready to lead with a little whimsy.

Beth aka The Pushing Ink

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Now for some humor

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About me

I’ve been fascinated by the broken world of work (and other random hot topics) for as long as I can remember. My first job was at 12, delivering newspapers—an early lesson in unpredictability, absurdity, and the occasional human weirdness. Since then, it’s been one head-scratching employment adventure after another.

I initially went back to school late-ish to become a divorce counselor, but life nudged me toward what actually excites me: poking at the quirks, snobbery, and chaos of work itself. I earned a bachelor’s in Applied Psychology (work psych) in 2014 and a master’s in Organizational Leadership in 2018.

I’ve spent decades bouncing in and out of newspapers (city beats, courtrooms, the whole nine yards) and wandering through the nonprofit world’s strange corridors. Now, with Pushing Ink (a former newspaper column turned passion project), I write about leadership, people-pleasing and the tyranny of niceness, pop culture, humor, the occasional absurd sidequest and more.

Still very much a work-in-progress like myself, you can find me online under The Pushing Ink on YouTube and other social channels (minus the former bird app), where I keep experimenting with whimsy, insights, and chaos.