Useless, depressed and ugly? Let’s hear it for Kurt Cobain!

 I came across a somewhat depressing little piece on Google’s highly commendable Ageism Alert. According to a blogger called Julian of ‘The Tattler’ (sic), ‘there are nine known major stereotypes that reflect prejudice towards senior citizens: Illness, impotency, ugliness, mental decline, mental illness, uselessness, isolation, poverty, depression’. I don’t want to be accused of ageism in reverse but I know a good many young people to whom those labels would fit very well.

Like so many other prejudices in life, the antipathy towards older folk is mostly born out of fear. Young people know they will inevitably have to face the negative features of growing old at some stage (completely overlooking the positives) but by ridiculing those who have already arrived at that time of life they can pretend it will never happen to them.

There is also the element of difference which is at the root of so many human prejudices I liked a story from another blogger who said that when he turned 60 he had more time to focus on his passion for rock music. He wanted to go to a live gig but fearing the trendy young things would poke fun at him, he had a T-shirt made bearing one of Kurt Cobain’s more memorable sayings: ‘You laugh because I’m different. I laugh because you’re all the same’. Says it all, really.

Bums up for sexy Sian Lloyd

A big thumbs up for Sian Lloyd, the BBC weather girl, who frequently provides Britain’s mature males (and probably the less mature ones as well) with a ridge of high pressure, not to mention the occasional warm front. Ms Lloyd gets my personal accolade not just for being voted Rear of the Year at the age of 49 but also for her confident assertion that ‘Fifty is the new 30′.

In winning the top bottom award, Sian joins such posterial luminaries as Felicity Kendall, Lulu and Anneka Rice. After revealing she is a keen skier, swimmer and walker, she gave a dash of hope to the rest of us mere mortals by adding: ‘I eat like a pig and can’t stand the gym but I do look after myself – I’d be groomed even if I worked in a supermarket’. Which goes to prove yet again that this ageing lark really is just a case of mind over matter. So don’t let the bottom drop out of your world; give the bums down to ageist doom-mongers wherever they rear their miserable heads.