Lower Manhattan, 3 p.m. I duck into a CVS and am confronted by a range of products that might feel like an assault on my identity as a 55-year-old woman if I stopped to think about it. Neutrogena offers “anti-aging perfector.” Maybelline sells “Instant Age Rewind Eraser” in various skin tones. Oil of Olay and L’Oreal both suggest that the problem begins earlier, with skin care, which I can ostensibly correct with “Age-Defying Anti-Wrinkle Day Lotion” or “Revitalift Triple Power Anti-Aging Moisturizer.” By the time I step back outside into the sweltering mid-September day, who could blame me for checking my reflection in the next building for grays, or feeling bad about the fact that I’ve managed to stay alive for so darn long?
I know, I know — I’m in the cosmetics aisle; brands make bank promoting the “battle” against aging. But ageist language at CVS — and basically everywhere else — creates a negative inner monologue that combines with the internalized ageism of everyone else to create an ageist society. One result of that? A paucity of much-needed aging policy. At least that’s the theory behind the Reframing Aging Initiative, a collaborative of aging organizations supported by a group of funders working together to do a makeover of our national epidemic of ageism.
Let’s talk about how we talk about aging
Our society is aging, as we read all the time. In a much-cited stat from the 2020 census, 10,000 Americans turn 65 every single day. And yet, policymakers are surprisingly sluggish about taking action to support Americans as they age. The Reframing Aging Initiative (RAI), currently housed at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), began in 2012 when leaders of 10 national organizations, including GSA, AARP, Grantmakers in Aging, the American Federation for Aging Research, and the National Hispanic Council on Aging, among others, got together to find out why. These leaders asked each other two questions: “Why don’t policymakers understand the importance of aging programs and policies?” And also, “What can we do about it?”
In 2015, The John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF) stepped in with $516,000. This made it the lead grantmaker in a group of nine funders dedicated to supporting the quest to improve policies for aging. The other initial funders included AARP, the Atlantic Philanthropies (back before it was shuttered), Archstone Foundation, the Endowment for Health, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Retirement Research Foundation and Rose Community Foundation. The SCAN Foundation came onboard in 2019. Grantmakers in Aging agreed to receive the funds on behalf of the new nonprofit collaboration.
The initiative hired Washington, D.C.-based social science research firm FrameWorks Institute to conduct a deep dive into current beliefs. How do Americans think about aging, really, and how could we be swayed to change our views?
Well, it turns out Americans have a pretty negative view of aging. (No surprise there, CVS shoppers.) And that’s when we bother to think about aging at all, which we generally prefer not to do.
This research certainly dovetailed with the experience of JAHF. A leader in aging philanthropy, JAHF typically gives $25 million each year, focusing on the health and wellbeing of older adults and their family caregivers. “When we were in the field trying to convince policymakers and health system leaders of the importance of these programs, we kept running into this real lack of interest, this denial,” said Marcus Escobedo, vice president of communications and senior program officer at JAHF. “No one wants to talk about aging. No one sees themselves as an older adult. A 75- or 80-year-old in this country? Not old. No one wants to be old. All of that creates barriers to our work. That’s why we invested in this project.”
Grantees voiced a similar experience, Escobedo said. “We heard from these major national organizations in the field that the primary barrier they saw to advancing their work was ageism, along with the public’s lack of interest and concern for the needs of our growing aging population.”
The Frameworks Institute’s research further showed that this pessimism about growing old, and outright dismissal of the fact of aging, is out of sync with how older people feel about themselves and their lives. It also diverges from the body of research on the benefits and varied experiences of growing older.
Change your words, change others’ lives
The reframing aging movement operates on the theory that how we talk influences how we feel and act. A similar belief in the power of narrative underlies cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), the most widespread form of therapy in the world. If CBT had a tagline, it might be: “Change your language; change your life.” The Reframing Aging Initiative takes CBT’s single-person, brain-bound approach to mental health and maps it onto society. It’s a kind of philanthropy-supported mass intervention against unconscious bias and the unthinking dismissal of our value as we age.
The FrameWorks Institute identified seven overarching themes that proved effective for taking back the talk about aging, and specific word swaps that help. These include:
Replace scary metaphors like “tidal wave” and “silver tsunami” with more affirming language to describe our changing demographics. An example from the RAI’s online quick start guide: Instead of talking in catastrophic terms about our changing demographics, reframe this trend more positively, like, “As Americans live longer and healthier lives…”
Avoid words that are “othering” and negative, such as “seniors” and “elderly.” RAI recommends using the phrases “older people” or “older Americans,” as well as more inclusive language like “as we age,” a phrase that recognizes that aging happens to all of us (if we’re lucky).
Be specific about our national language problem. Rather than just using the word “ageism” and leaving people with no clear idea of what that means, define it as discrimination against older people due to negative, inaccurate stereotypes. And give examples: “Did you see the name of that concealer at CVS? How insulting!”
Well, that’s nice, you might think. But shouldn’t we be doing something a little more concrete, like, I don’t know, shoring up Social Security?
Ageist language gets in the way of that, said Patricia D’Antonio, executive director of the National Center to Reframe Aging. RAI launched the center this past July as a “central hub for the movement to reframe aging,” building on the initiative’s past decade of work. “Each of these 10 organizations have different mission statements, but the one thing that was holding all of us back was lack of support for aging in policy initiatives,” D’Antonio said. “What we learned was that in our communications, we were driving people away. We started to look at the traps we fall into when we communicate about aging, things that don’t get us to support for policy or for programs. Take ‘the silver tsunami.’ When you hear about a tsunami coming, it’s destructive. Why would you support anything there? You can’t do anything about it except run away.”
As a FrameWorks Institute Frame Brief puts it, however, positioning older adults as an untapped resource, and aging itself as a type of forward momentum, can positively influence policy. Similarly, shifting to inclusive language helps policymakers see that they have a personal stake in better policies around aging.
Round two and three: walk the walk
In 2019, JAHF provided another $600,000 to promote new ways of framing aging within the world of aging organizations and to establish a temporary home at GSA to facilitate the effort. Three of RAI’s other original funders also contributed to this round – Archstone Foundation, Retirement Research Foundation, and SCAN Foundation. These funders also encourage their own grantees to adopt reframing aging language in their work.
In 2022, JAHF put up another $1.1 million for the next three years. This support, combined with backing from the other three funders, is currently helping RAI staff build out the new National Center to Reframe Aging, including by hiring more people and continuing to develop capacity.
The team also continues to work with local and regional partners to amplify impact. The San Antonio Area Foundation, for example, has created and funded the collective impact program SALSA — Successful Aging and Living in San Antonio — to disseminate these messages. Other programs are moving forward in Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York. “We’re probably in six or seven communities now and are starting to hear from more people,” D’Antonio said.
So what are they saying at CVS?
Progress in the philanthrosphere is all well and good, but when will everyday citizens and consumers of coverup be looped into the new language?
That’s coming, said Escobedo. “With this 2022 grant, [RAI/National Center to Reframe Aging] will have the capacity to reach out to aging-adjacent organizations and the broader public,” he said. Meanwhile, the network of organizations and individuals involved has been responding to ageism in the world such as by writing letters to the editor and op-eds, and commenting on social media.
Some people are also teaching the new language to students. I completed a master’s degree in social work in August at The Ohio State University, focused on aging. The Reframing Aging Initiative was part of the curriculum.
Learning about reframing in college counts as a communication success, said Hannah Albers, program director at the National Center to Reframe Aging. “It’s important to remember that we’re all communicating all the time. Whenever you send an email, do a presentation, have a one-on-one conversation or train someone — how you’re thinking and presenting information is really important.”
D'Antonio agrees that casual conversation matters. “When we’re speaking in a well-framed way, people start to model that language,” she said. “The modeling starts to make the difference. It’s not just someone who has a communications title, but all of us working in policy and practice around aging.”
Getting the message out to the world of product creation, marketers and advertisers? “That is in the very early stages,” Escobedo said. “It’s starting to happen, but it will take more time.”