Vânia de la Fuente-Núñez: "Why do you want to know my age?"

BarcelonaA physician and anthropologist, Dr. Vânia de la Fuente-Núñez led the WHO's campaign against ageism and in 2021 was one of the authors of the UN's first state of the art report. She has written The age trap (Ediciones B) and runs a consultancy to advise governments and entities in the fight against age stereotypes and encourage them to promote policies to healthy aging.

I haven't found any reference to your age. Is this a political act?

— When people ask me how old I am, I answer: Why are you asking my age? Why do you want to know? What does it bring you? Age is a weapon that can be used against me. And, in fact, it has been used against me, and it will probably get worse as I get older.

What do you think about this? dialectal struggle against the boomers?

— Ageism is also found in the use of this manipulation of discourse to generate a supposed generational confrontation over pensions or housing. Young people must understand that going against pensions is going against their own interests tomorrow. It's a victory for the individual. But it also causes other harm.

Which is it?

— It creates a stigma against old age that prevents people from planning for this stage. It's a mistake that we're living longer and longer and not even dreaming about old age. We don't plan for it, and then people rush into old age because they've tried by every means possible not to think about this stage, partly because they don't want to be associated with it. You don't give yourself the option to generate a plan for this stage, which can be just as beautiful as all the others. I think this does us a disservice because it has prevented greater mobilization for policies that allow us to age with dignity. Obviously, if people don't consider themselves old, they won't demand rights for old age. But old age should be demanded by all ages. Pensions aren't just for pensioners.

Maybe I should have started there: when does ageism affect us?

— Throughout life, because it's the ageism that categorizes and creates disadvantages based on our age. But we have seen that it tends to concentrate in two moments: in youth, and then again later in life, in old age. Therefore, allowing ageism to continue is shooting ourselves in the foot, in the sense that if we are young today, we suffer from it today, but we will be discriminated against again later.

Are women even more discriminated against for being too young, too old, and for fitting into the age-specific norms?

— Yes, ageism can intersect with other forms of disadvantage, clearly intersecting with sexism. And then women end up worse off, especially when we reach old age. But ageism is the only discrimination that affects white cis men, to a lesser extent than women, but it's the only bias they will ever experience in their lives.

How normalized is ageism?

— We could say that in this regard, we're like back in the 1980s with machismo. Ageism is socially accepted and internalized by those who suffer from it as much as by those who practice it. It's justified as a joke, that it's part of life, and anyone who complains is told not to exaggerate. You congratulate someone on a postcard that mocks their age; on TV, older people are mostly a cliché; or you tell someone that "for their age, they look great."

You've probably heard that in the end, nothing can be said or done without causing offense.

— It's not about being a language policeman. But just as if you explain a sexist joke or make fun of a disabled person and it's no longer funny, we'll have made progress against ageism when certain jokes are rejected. The problem is that the damage of ageism isn't felt.

What damages are these?

— We know it affects every facet of our physical and mental health, leading to death, which is the most irreversible impact. A study in the United States determined that people who have positive attitudes toward the aging process live on average 7.5 years longer than people who have negative attitudes toward their own aging. In other words, what we think today can affect us tomorrow. The perceptions and stereotypes a 20-year-old holds today can affect them when they're 70. We also know it impacts our physical health.

How does he do it?

— One of the reasons, obviously, is that if there is age discrimination in the healthcare environment, we will have less access to certain things. But, in addition, self-inflicted ageism can also affect many of these health processes, as well as our health behaviors. There is a very common stereotype that associates old age with illness, so if you reach 80, it's easy to adopt risky behaviors for your own health or avoid going to the doctor because you believe it's just a matter of age. This is how self-fulfilling prophecies are created.

Was medical care for the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic a sign of savage ageism?

— Today I still can't believe all of that and the problem is that many people also think that this It only occurs in emergency situations, with scarce resourcesThe truth is that it shouldn't happen even in an emergency situation, and even less so in the context of a disease that was already showing higher complications and a higher probability of death in the elderly population.

What responsibility does the cosmetics industry have in the desire for impossible eternal youth?

— It's undeniable that there has been enormous pressure on women, however, I sincerely believe that diversity is now beginning to be appreciated a little more when talking about older people. It's true that it's possible to go to the opposite extreme by portraying a very active, healthy, attractive, and vacationing older person, and no, not all older people will be like that.

When should we start preparing or thinking about how we will spend the last 30 years of our lives?

— It's always a thought that evolves throughout life. The image I perhaps had of my 30-year-old self, at 15, is of course not the same as the one I had at 25 or 20. But it's very sad, and I think it's a huge lack of imagination, that when someone asks you what you want to be when you grow up, your imagination takes you at most to your 30-year-old self: 3. And that's because no one asks you how you see yourself at 80. And today, that question is increasingly necessary.