A bit of a boob.

It’s been a while since I blogged….actually sorry, I’ll start again as it’s not called that anymore… It’s been a while since I “newslettered” and as it used to be (for the longest time) a safety valve in my head, I thought I’d bung my thoughts down on something that’s irritating me.

It’s the same thing that’s irritated me for quite a few years and in 2018 it irritated me so bloody much that I launched a campaign about it. This irritated other people but happily makes many more women glad that I did start campaigning because I campaign against ageism, especially ageism targeting women.

My campaigning takes several forms, campaign films, comedy shorts, vlogs, open letters etc and it features online on a couple of social media platforms.

I have had some success & lots of high-profile supporters but as the issue is about the exclusion of older women from the UK media and as I’m an older woman trying to write about the exclusion of older women by the UK media - in the UK media – well, commissioning editors tend to find my pitches quite easy to politely decline.

“Not one for us on this occasion” they say, on every occasion that I pitch.

There’s irony.

Anyway, the UK media loves women as long as they’re young or famous, or old & famous and so today they picked up on an interview by Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and particularly the paragraph where she talked about her breasts.

So far, so media.

The reason for this she said, was that after losing a significant amount of weight her breasts did what breasts to do, (when they’re not feeding a baby and the body housing them loses weight) they shrank, along with the rest of her.

So Angela decided to get some chemical modifications and buy some better ones, aged just 30.

I’m not judging what Angela does with her disposable income,or indeed her breasts.

I have to say I’ve done similar myself, albeit with kettles…..

The part that caused me a problem, was the way that the Deputy Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition decided to describe the driver of this particular, decision making process.

As part of a wider thought she said “You know, like basset hound ears. You can’t be 30 and have a chest like an 84 year old granny.”

Well you can Angela because women come in all shapes and sizes these days except seemingly, older women. Age shaming women’s bodies is just like fat shaming, it’s just that young women object to fat shaming & have a platform to discuss it, a sympathetic media & support for their feelings. But older women have to just put up with age shaming of their bodies, no platform to discuss it and a media that thinks it’s fine “because yucky olds”.

As we all know the breasts of any & all 84-year-old grannys are only slightly less bad than war, plague and the climate crisis. In fact, within many demographics of the UK population the mammary glands of 84-year-old women edge all of those awful things and take pole position.

And here’s the thing, to resurrect the words of Neil Kinnock, this is the Labour Party.

A party which embraces all versions of people and all versions of women, finds itself erring on the side of “Hah, hah did you hear the one about the 84 year old granny’s tits”

And it’s not the only incidence of “Old people do the stupidest things” we’ve seen from the party (of my previous membership) this week. Wes Streeting the Shadow Health and social Care Secretary could also be found using older people as a go-to rib rattling funny take, with his joke about Corbyn being “senile”.

Now I’m not mortally offended that it was Corbyn because I’m not Owen Jones.

My point isn’t that Corbyn deserved an apology which he got incidentally as that particular manhole cover enthusiast isn’t my concern. My point is that whilst Corbyn was the target of the joke, the subject was the problematic part because it was dementia.

Dementia killed my mum so it can go fuck itself, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t think it cares if you joke about it or not. But I do care about the people who live with societal stigma of the disease alongside the heart-breaking aspects of the disease itself.

Wes Streeting & Angela Rayner rightly have huge compassion & empathy for other protected characteristics & demographics of people, but both have their blinkers on when it comes to ageism.

Many people do.

We’re just so used to laughing at anyone over the age of 45 now (along with learning disabled people) that the really, offensive thing is apparently to point out that this should probably be avoided alongside all the other discriminatory shit, that used to have them rolling in the aisles.

Also, I think people over 45 are expected to laugh along and laugh at ourselves because we’re all just twats anyway so who cares right?

I like Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner hugely. Wes worked this summer to get Learning Disabled people prioritised for Autumn Covid boosters and seems like a genuinely caring man to me. Angela is a fantastic example to young women who want to get into politics that anything is and more importantly should be possible for talented, capable women whatever their background.

But women in every sphere of public life shouldn’t just be valued when young or talking about issues which exclusively impact young women only.

Increasingly the notion of the talented older woman is proving to be just that, a notion not a reality. Our lives have equal value and our concerns matter just as much.

Age is a protected characteristic. Age is part of diversity. Older people particularly women see greater inequality in health & social care than younger women, greater incidence of mental health issues & suicide, higher levels of domestic violence and in all eating disorders except for anorexia. In terms of representation onscreen women over the age of 45 are at higher population numbers yet stand at roughly a third of the representation of young women and middle-aged men.

Across every single metric anything that happens to young women happens to older women too and usually at a higher rate, but we don’t hear about that because the media, very like the Labour Party, are youth obsessed.

But it’s worth remembering that younger people are also less likely to vote than older people, particularly women.

We need an overhaul of the ageist narrative that makes comments like these, from two prominent and talented Labour front bench shadow cabinet ministers, acceptable.

Older people matter and saying so shouldn’t be a revolutionary act.

Any government in waiting needs to remember, it’s a government for everyone. We’ve all had quite enough of elites.

Working only in the interests of younger people is simply elitism of a different kind.