2009-05-14People are dying
older, but their obit pictures are getting younger.
That's what Ohio State University
gerontologist Keith Anderson discovered when he
examined 400 obituary photos from the years 1967,
'77, '87 and '97. Poring over microfilm copies of a
Cleveland newspaper's gloomiest pages, he and his
colleague Jina Han tried to estimate the ages of the
deceased from their pictures. They labeled any
photos in which the people looked at least 15 years
younger than their actual ages as "age
inappropriate."
"Inappropriate" being
today's preferred word for totally, utterly
wrong
. (Usually when dealing with
kids' behavior, as in, "Stabbing your brother is
inappropriate, sweetie." But that's another story.)
Anyway, while 17 percent of the
obit photos were "age inappropriate" in 1967, the
number has been going up, decade by decade, until
finally, by 1997, it had more than doubled, to 36
percent.
And by the way, if the
dearly departed was female, she was
twice
as likely to have an "age
inappropriate" photo.
Clearly, Anderson says, "We were
less accepting of aging in the 1990s than we were
back in the 1960s." Ageism has been on the rise,
along with, well, age. And sexism? It never seems to
die. Even among the dead.
Of course, it is not usually the
dead who choose their obit photos. When my dad died,
we sent a picture of him to the paper not as an
87-year-old with heart failure, but as a 65-year-old
with a tennis racket. Old enough to still be "old,"
but young enough to still look vital.
Which leads to the question: At
what age are we most representative of our "real"
selves? In fact, when ARE we most ourselves? As
giddy young folk? As middle-aged achievers? As folks
grown older and wider?
Er, wiser?
"I thought the obit picture The
Associated Press used of Bea Arthur was so wan and
haggard it was disrespectful," says Susan Toepfer, a
blogger for True/Slant and former editor of OK!
magazine. "The least we owe the dead is a glamorous
exit!"
But that depends on whether we
see age as triumph or travesty. Wan and haggard —
that's what Bea was at the end. To remember her in
her "heyday" may be a nice way to honor her memory.
But it's also a way of saying, "You used to be
someone important (or beautiful), and that is how we
will remember you." The corollary being: "Not the
horrible way you looked when you were old and
unimportant. Feh!"
The obit page might look
very different if we chose our own pictures, because
I doubt we feel less important to
ourselves
just because we're older.
Researcher Anderson says he asked his own aging
pops, "Dad, if you ever pass away, would you want a
picture of yourself at the height of your career or
when you were a high-school baseball player?" Dad
replied, "I'd rather have just a picture of myself
now because that's who I am."
As I near 50 (and my picture on
this column stays a pert 44), I wonder whether I'd
prefer my obit picture to be the one you see here or
the one that I will — someday, just possibly —
replace it with. Or maybe I'd like my kin to use
that really great photo from college. (We all have
one.)
But maybe it makes sense to show
the true ending to the story that an obit is: Born
in year x, married or not, successful or not,
survived by or not, and then — you close with a
final picture. The one that shows you as the credits
roll.
More and more, that's not how
it's done. As if it's a shame to be old, even when
you die. As if that's not the happiest ending
around.
◊◊
Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at Advertising Age.
She is the founder of FreeRangeKids.com and the
author of the upcoming book "Free-Range Kids: Giving
Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts
with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy
(lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit
the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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