Challenging age bias to reclaim healthy aging
Age bias can begin long before society labels someone old. Gendron examines how stereotypes shape language, healthcare, work, media, family roles, and the expectations people internalize about their own future. Healthy aging is not the performance of permanent youth; it includes development, disability, dependence, purpose, pleasure, and contribution across the lifespan. Within the MHS library, the book helps name both external discrimination and self-directed ageism. Challenging it means noticing jokes, assumptions, hiring practices, beauty standards, and medical dismissal while refusing to describe one’s changing body as social disappearance. Aging is universal, but its opportunities and burdens are not distributed equally.
About Tracey Gendron
Tracey Gendron has spent nearly thirty years studying aging and now describes it as a universal, lifelong process—biological, psychological, social, and spiritual. Her work moved beyond protecting “older people” toward challenging the age hierarchies everyone learns to internalize.
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