Identity- Elderly

Insensitive attitudes and assumptions treating older people as less important or less capable than others. Examples: emplyers reluctant to hire them or young people calling them offensive names such as 'sencile'

As a society that celebrates youth, there is a markert of products and treatments to help us stay young. Old age is both feared and pities and thus attempts are made to delay it. The mass media fuels this stigma by circulating images of the elderly as pshyically unattractive, sexually inactive and chronically ill.

Many older people are forced to wear the 'mask' of old age, expected to act in terms of ageist stereotypes.

But increasing numbers of old people are refusing to conform to these steroetypes; instead experessing their identities in lively and exciting ways. However, older people and their lifestyle choices are shaped by social charactertistics such as: class.