Women are breaking through the tired and hurtful stereotypes of aging to better reflect who they are, how they live, and what they want as they age.

Who hasn't heard the stereotypes about women of a "certain age?" That's the age when women become invisible, irrelevant, undesirable, asexual, unhinged, dried-up, hormonal messes. It's when women quickly slide into fragility and become forgetful, passive, weak, feeble, debilitated, disabled, dependent and depressed. Or so the story goes. Not only are those outdated narratives sexist and ageist, they are also damaging to women's physical, emotional, financial, romantic and sexual health. It's time to change them.

In Not too Old for That, Vicki Larson helps change the narrative about being a woman at midlife and older. She questions what we've been told aging would be like and encourages us to instead ask ourselves, What do we want it to be like? And how can we get there? She says the key is to be curious, open-minded, and intentional about the ways we are becoming our future selves. We have an opportunity to create new narratives of aging as a woman, ones that value women at all stages of life, not just youth, and it starts with us.

Once the stereotypes that have held women back are broken down, she says women can move past them and rather than feel helpless as the years add up, they can discover and tap into just how much agency they have. She believes that not only will her approach help to create a less ageist, less sexist, more-inclusive future, it will release our daughters and all young women from a similar future.

About the Speaker

Vicki Larson is a longtime award-winning editor, writer and columnist at the Marin Independent Journal. She is author of Not Too Old for That: How Women are Changing the Story of Aging and co-author of The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels, named a Best Book of 2014 by PopSugar. A resident of Marin County, her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Aeon and AARP's The Ethel, among other publications.

MLF ORGANIZER

Denise Michaud

NOTES

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Speaker photo by Penni Gladstone.