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Sounds like Mona is just projecting, insofar as she is no spring chicken.

Seems that Charin wants us all to act like our great-grandparents, sit in a rocking chair all day long and try to ring the spitoon spitting snuff.

I look at pictures of my grandparents, and at age 55 they looked like today's 80-year-olds. Chalk it up to the better nutrition, better medicine, or whatever, today's boomers look and act younger than our predecessors.

My question to Mona is....So What?

Her assessment amounts to "profiling" people over 65. "Old people ain't acting like old people" seems to be her rant.

Well gosh darn, I'm going to run right out and buy me a pack of Depends and a walking cane so I can live up to the vision of yet, another "journalist" on how America should be.

Maybe I'll trade my cellphone in for a "Jitterbug" and have my son build me a "ramp" to get out my front door.

I look at pictures of my grandparents, and at age 55 they looked like today's 80-year-olds. Chalk it up to the better nutrition, better medicine, or whatever, today's boomers look and act younger than our predecessors.

I look at photos of my relatives taken back in the 1950s-1960s, and the 30somethings look as if they're pushing 50, the 40- and 50somethings are indistinguishable from the ones in their 60s and 70s. It's partly due to the fashions they chose, which look matronly to later eyes : All women at age 30 (or 25, if they're married with children) choosing to have their hair chopped off into hideously unflattering, frizzy "cap of curl" mushroom shapes a la Edith Bunker, mid calf skirts, flat pancake heels, cardigans as a uniform...It is likely that if you took an average middle or upperclass woman in her 40s of today and teleported her back in time , she'd probably be perceived as 30-34 by those around her. Less smoking (which causes and worsens facial lines) knowledge that tanning damages skin (when my mom was in college in the early 1960s, she was REQUIRED to sunbathe-seriously!), easier lives for most...Much of what was thought to be intrinsic ageing is now known to be preventable or at least delayed, and we should all be glad it's so.

I agree with you that people should dress and act as they feel, not according to other people's stereotypes and attitudes about what's "appropriate" for people who have X number of birthdays.