Take a look at
this from the online Daily Telegraph today. Viagra is the most widely dispensed medication on Saga cruises. OK, just stop sniggering there at the back. Aside from the widely publicised medical risks for anyone with high blood pressure or heart problems taking Viagra, this story perhaps illustrates the outlook of a generation who grew up in such a rapidly changing world after the somewhat staid post-war fifties. We are the generation who broke the mould in many ways, as we were the ones who were launching ourselves on an unsuspecting society in the magic sixties. This was the age of the 'Pill' which, in itself, heralded fundamental changes in attitude and morality. Granted, the much trumpeted 'Swinging Sixties' complete with drugs, free sex and continuous partying was perhaps more in the mind than in reality throughout much of the country, but changes were afoot. For women, particularly, there were choices available in their lives and certainly, the argument can be made that these choices were the forerunner of women trying to 'have it all' and ending up exhausted and unfulfilled but at least they were no longer expected to assume the role of the little woman at home. We are the ones who have consistently pushed back the age boundaries over the years. 'Fifty is the new forty' soon became 'sixty is the new fifty' and we'll keep on doing it.
We refused to disappear into the invisibility of grey-haired middle age, we'll keep dying our hair, sporting our jeans and being just as outrageous as we want to be and we'll keep on doing it into the old age that we refuse to acknowledge.
And when the unthinkable does catch up with us, we'll be the ones organising chariot races in our wheelchairs - so there!
5 comments:
Oh yes, we will! I have a small group of friends who all plan on getting a retirement complex together and hiring handsome young men to do all the necessary tasks - and some unnecessary ones as well! Tee hee.
Those people at the back are still sniggering. I meant organising entertainment and stuff. Massage maybe. Oh, forget it. The hole's getting deeper.
Every generation thinks they're the ones who invented sex, don't they? Which is odd - you'd think the younger ones would work out that someone must have thought of it first, wouldn't you? Anyway, I like the idea of all these men of Mature Years persuading other body parts to join their stiff joints - - good luck to them!
Jay, you paint a wonderful picture!
Daphne, I agree but I think the whole issue of sex began to change with the advent of the pill. It brought a freedom that had not been there before and of course, that led on to many other things...So, in a way, we were the first to regard it a little differently, I think.
When I was a boy in East Yorkshire, anyone over forty definitely seemed old - it's like they had all signed up for "The Wrinklies Club" in terms of their clothes, hairstyles and above all their attitudes. You're right - nowadays we try to stretch youth tothe absolute limit which is usually a good thing but not always. To every time there is a season.
I suppose, YP I am thinking more of a zest for life and a youthful (in the best sense) outlook, which I think the post-war generation seems to embrace more enthusiastically than previous generations. As you say, before that people were generally regarded as, and portrayed the image of being 'over the hill' after 40.
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