Age discrimination is an unfortunate part of life in the United States. There are many parts of our culture that contribute to ageist views. One part is our emphasis on youth and beauty. America has extremely high beauty standards, that places significance on being young and vibrant. One way this is prominent is through the variety of wrinkle creams offered. There are hundreds of types of creams that claim to help you reduce or completely get rid of wrinkles. While wrinkles pose no health risks, and are a common part of aging, we still have an aversion to them. We think wrinkles make us look old and being old doesn’t align with our beauty standards.
Additionally, Americans associate getting older with cognitive and physical deficiencies. While this may be true for some older adults, it is not true for everyone. However, on many television shows and movies we see older adults portrayed as frail, forgetful people who need to be taken care of like kids. The help older adults may need varies greatly and while some may need a significant amount of help, the others who are functioning the same as all adults are not represented, and so people don’t associate that level of functioning with older adults.
I believe that we can do a number of things to reduce age discrimination in our society. For one, we can make sure that a range of ability levels in older adults are represented in the media. This would help break the stereotype that is associated with older adults. People would be more likely to recognize that there is a range of ability in older adult, as there is in any age group. They would be more likely to judge the person based on their specific set of abilities, rather than assuming what they are capable of. We can also hold each other accountable to reducing ageist views. For example, if someone says it’s “okay” that someone has passed away because they “lived a good life”, we can remind them that it is sad when anyone of any age dies, because a human life has been lost.
Conversations on Healthy Aging 
You raise a good point about how our culture contributes to age discrimination. I never thought to think about how our culture associates youth with beauty and how that itself is contributing to ageism. Making a bunch of wrinkle creams to keep you “beautiful” does make getting wrinkles seem frowned upon, and I agree our culture has made us like this as well. You also raised a good point how people only think about the older adults who need significant help, and don’t mention the adults that are functioning the same. If society started to mention this as well I feel like this could lead to a decline in age discrimination because people will realize that its not only negative things associated with aging. I also agree if we all started to hold each other accountable for ageism this will make more people aware of what they are saying because some people don’t even realize that they are discriminating against others, this too would lead to a decline in ageism. Overall you brought up many good points and I really enjoyed reading your post.
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