The media, advertising and
marketing use of “baby boomer” as a synonym for “old”
has become irritating in the extreme. Most of the time they are speaking to the
oldest boomers who have little in common with younger boomers and almost everything
in common with their elders. Yet people my age and older are excluded from the
discourse as though we are already dead.
These headlines, part of a longer list collected during the
past two weeks, ought to target anyone older than about 50 or 60, but they are
aimed at boomers by name, half of whom are under 50:
New Electric Trike For Baby Boomers
(Do they card you before purchase?)
Baby Boomers Rethink Funerals, Go Green
(Of course, no one older ever thought of this.)
Boomers Targeted in New Waistline Scare
(Celebrate. If you’re older, fat’s not a problem.)
Skin care for natural, radiant baby boomers
(Formulated to work only on people 42 to 60.)
For baby boomers, joint replacement hip surgery
(I wonder what that surgery was my mother had 30 years ago?)
Baby Boomers Need to Care for Shoulders
(Everyone knows people born before 1946 have excellent shoulders.)
Baby boomers are big targets for fraud
(Older people, however, are too smart to be taken in by con men.)
Boomers’ past sunburns could mean present cancer
(You already knew that sunburns weren’t possible before the depletion
of the ozone layer. Right?)
New, tiny hearing aid helps baby boomers
(To hell with older folks; they can just live with being deaf.)
That is not to say there aren’t stories legitimately specific
to baby boomers, such as these:
* Nursing Shortage Reaches New Heights as Baby Boomers Retire
* Baby boomers scoop up products that promise to help turn back time
* Museum exhibit caters to memories of Baby Boomers
* Baby Boomers Brace for Retirement
* Gen X dads more involved than baby boomers before them
But more often than not, media writers and marketers substitute
the phrase “baby boomers” when they mean “elders” (I
would even settle for “seniors”), effectively rendering 46 million
Americans older than 60 invisible. It is a form of ageism and whenever one of
those headlines turns up, I think, “What am I? Chopped liver? Is there
something wrong with my money?”
And that’s what baffles me: that corporations would cut
out 46 million people from their potential revenue pie. I may be more extreme
than some, but I don’t buy the products of companies that target only
baby boomers in their advertising.
Words are the stock in trade of the people who create these
stories and marketing materials and they are failing at their jobs. I don’t
believe it’s deliberate. It’s laziness; easier to use that cute
phrase someone thought up for the post-World War II generation than actually
think about what they are writing. But the results are as insidious as intentional
ageism.
As we frequently repeat here, language is a powerful tool. Every
time it is used to demean, belittle or in this case, exclude a person or group,
someone loses. It reinforces acceptance of prejudice and bigotry, and nothing
gets better from that.
From : http://www.timegoesby.net
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