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Jane Glenn Haas writes about new wrinkles in aging By Valerie Takahama The Orange County Register  She isn't an advice columnist a la Dear Abby or Ann Landers, but mature adults could do worse than consider, ''What would Jane do'' when they confront knotty dilemmas both big and small.Jane -- that's Jane Glenn Haas for those who aren't regular readers of the ''Our Time'' column or her articles on aging issues in The Orange County Register -- writes in an honest, straightforward style about a range of subjects from retirement to elder abuse to sex after 60 to old friendships that don't last. Notably, she has shared her own experiences with breast cancer, cosmetic surgery and reuniting with a son she'd been estranged from for years. She got tons of mail when she wrote about couples sleeping in separate beds, and about a short, rude man she had a brush with in Las Vegas. ''She's the kind of person you want to confide in,'' says Paul Kleyman, founder of the Journalists Exchange on Aging, a 600-member association of writers and editors who cover aging issues. ''She writes in a wonderful, personal way that gives people an unvarnished look at things, and she has a personality that is accessible.'' Writing about people 50 and older was a new field when Haas started a decade ago. And while it's now recognized as an important specialty, she's still among a select group of about 15 or so reporters who cover the aging beat full time at major newspapers. She has continually reinvented herself on the job. She developed her own television show, she started her own Web site -- http://www.womensage.com/ -- and now she's published her first book, ''Time of Your Life: Why Almost Everything Gets Better After Fifty,'' a compilation of her columns and stories. She sat down long enough the other day to talk about some of the issues she writes about in the book. Q. What do we call older people these days? Senior citizens? Mature Americans? Late middle-agers? Retirees? Why do we have so much trouble finding the right term? A. We have a hard time finding the right term because there are more people alive over 65 today than ever have lived that long in the whole history of the world. Two-thirds of all the people who ever reached that age are alive today. We used to admire older people. We used to wear powdered wigs to look older. That was when the head of the family owned the land. They were in charge of things. Then we came into the old-fogey era, the late 19th century. Then we came to this idea that older people have no value. They don't contribute anything. Then people started to live longer after the war, so they started to figure out things to make these people feel better, so they could interact and not be isolated. So you had the Older Americans Act. Then you had senior centers, and you had senior citizens. The ''new'' old are saying that they don't want to be senior citizens because in their minds, a senior citizen is someone who needs meals and is living on the edge of poverty. So here we are now with my generation, the Eisenhower generation, which is smaller than the boomers, we don't want to be senior citizens. We're the new-old. We're mature adults. We don't want to be elderly because elderly is people in wheelchairs. It's a health thing, not an age thing. It's OK to be 60, but oh, gosh, I don't want to be 70. So there is no name for us. Q. Many of your columns deal with baby boomers and aging. It seems like a time of incredible promise in redefining our attitudes toward the aging process. How well do you think boomers will do at that? A. I think baby boomers will take credit for all the things that the Eisenhower generation did. Somebody's already hit the shore, somebody's already marching up the road. They've already established the beachhead for new aging, if you will, a new type of aging where we're much more active, much more involved, healthier, more vigorous than any other generation that has ever come along. By the time the baby boomers arrive, they'll claim it. They'll do more facelifts, more of all this type of thing. Of course, they're more physically active. So they'll live even longer. Boomers will never get old. They will never age. There was a survey recently and people said middle age ends at 74. So that gives me 11 more years of being middle age. Q. You've written about ''aging naturally'' -- women and men who want to grow old without cosmetic surgery and hair color. What'd you find? A. I think a lot of women are defiant about it. I think the boomers are going to be defiant about it. I think that most of the women who are being defiant about it are in their early 50s and they need to come back and see me when they're in their late 60s and let me know if they still feel the same way I think it's a fashion thing, just like leather is the big thing in fashion this year. It's fashionable to have gray hair. Tomorrow it could be something else. I don't think you see a lot of society women with gray hair. Q. Why not? A. They want to keep their husbands and not lose them to trophy wives. But I think some women don't give a darn about these images. They're perfectly happy. One of the things that happens when you get older or you go through a life-threatening illness is you re-establish your values. You realize that you want to do what makes you happy. You don't have time for boring situations so much. Q. It seems like we get very few media images of aging in this culture. We get very few realistic portrayals of older people in film. Older women are virtually nonexistent in fashion magazines, despite the fact that few 20-somethings can afford the clothes featured in Vogue. What do you think is going on here? A. As a culture we value youth. We value women who are younger. We don't know what to do with older women. The whole point of my Web site and the women whom I'm researching right now is that we are the pioneers of the women's movement. You didn't have to burn a bra, more women worked in my generation -- therefore we have money. And money gives you a sense of independence. I don't think the media has caught on with that. The fashion magazines, films and television, I don't think they've caught up to that. These are women who are traveling alone, who are living independently. If they're widowed, they don't necessarily remarry. Q. How do people feel about getting older themselves? A. One of the questions that I ask women in this survey that's on my Web site is, ''What word would you use to describe how you feel about aging?'' Women tell me they're apprehensive. Most women tell me they're anticipating it because unless you have something staring you in the face, such as ''you have to provide care for someone'' or ''you have your own major health worry,'' you're looking forward to a time when you can flourish. It's really wonderful. I raised three kids. It takes all your time. And all your money and all your energy. And when the last one left home, I really did go through empty-nest syndrome -- ''What am I going to do with my time?'' All of a sudden I realized that my time was my own and if I wanted to buy ice cream I could buy the flavor I like, put it in the freezer and it would still be there. It's wonderful. Right now I'm in a good space. |
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