Ashton Applewhite (born 1952) is a writer and activist based in Brooklyn, New York.
She is the author of This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism [1] and at the forefront of the emerging movement to raise awareness of ageism and to dismantle it. A co-founder of the Old School Hub [2] , she has been recognized by The New York Times , The New Yorker, National Public Radio, and the American Society on Aging as an expert on ageism. She speaks widely at venues that have included the TED talks mainstage [3] and the United Nations, has written for Harper's , The Guardian [4] [5] , and The New York Times, [6] and is the voice of "Yo, Is This Ageist?" She has been named as a fellow by The New York Times, Yale Law School, and the Royal Society for the Arts.
In 2016, Applewhite joined the PBS site Next Avenue's annual list of "50 Influencers in Aging" as their Influencer of the Year. [7] In 2022, she appeared on HelpAgeUSA's inaugural "60 Over 60" list [8] and on Fe:maleOneZero's first international edition of "40 over 40 – The World's Most Inspiring Women", [9] and received the Maggie Kuhn Award from Presbyterian Senior Services. [10]
In 2022 the United Nations named Ashton one of the Healthy Aging 50: "fifty leaders transforming the world to be a better place to grow older." [11]
Applewhite is also the author of Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, [12] described by Ms. magazine as "rocket fuel for launching new lives." As the pseudonymous author of the Truly Tasteless Jokes series, she was the first person to have four books on The New York Times best-seller list and was a clue on Jeopardy!.
The Gray Panthers are a series of multi-generational local advocacy networks in the United States which confront ageism and many other social justice issues. The organization was formed by Maggie Kuhn in response to her forced retirement from the Presbyterian Church at the age of 65 in 1970. The Gray Panthers are named in reference to the Black Panthers.
Margaret Eliza "Maggie" Kuhn was an American activist known for founding the Gray Panthers movement, after she was forced to retire from her job at the then-mandatory retirement age of 65. The Gray Panthers became known for advocating nursing home reform and fighting ageism, claiming that "old people and women constitute America's biggest untapped and undervalued human energy source." She dedicated her life to fighting for human rights, social and economic justice, global peace, integration, and an understanding of mental health issues. For decades, she combined her activism with caring for her disabled mother and a brother who suffered from mental illness.
SCUM Manifesto is a radical feminist manifesto by Valerie Solanas, published in 1967. It argues that men have ruined the world, and that it is up to women to fix it. To achieve this goal, it suggests the formation of SCUM, an organization dedicated to overthrowing society and eliminating the male sex. The SCUM Manifesto has been described as a satire or parody, especially due to its parallels with Freud's theory of femininity, though this has been disputed, even by Solanas herself.
Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr., also known as Do, among other names, was an American religious leader who founded and led the Heaven's Gate new religious movement, and organized their mass suicide in 1997. The suicide is the largest mass suicide to occur inside the U.S.
Margaret Gallagher is an American writer, socially conservative commentator, and activist. She wrote a syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate from 1995 to 2013 and has written several books. Gallagher founded the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a small, socially conservative think tank. She is also a co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), an advocacy group which opposes same-sex marriage and other legal recognition of same-sex partnerships; she has served as president and as chairman of the board of NOM.
Fay Weldon was an English author, essayist and playwright.
National Cathedral School (NCS) is an independent Episcopal private day school for girls in grades 4–12 located on the grounds of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by philanthropist and suffragist Phoebe Apperson Hearst and Bishop Henry Yates Satterlee in 1900, NCS is the oldest of the institutions constituting the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation.
Gemze de Lappe was an American dancer who worked very closely with Agnes de Mille and was frequently partnered by de Mille's favorite male dancer, James Mitchell.
Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Maggie Nelson is an American writer. She has been described as a genre-busting writer defying classification, working in autobiography, art criticism, theory, feminism, queerness, sexual violence, the history of the avant-garde, aesthetic theory, philosophy, scholarship, and poetry. Nelson has been the recipient of a 2016 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2012 Creative Capital Literature Fellowship, a 2011 NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction. Other honors include the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and a 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation/Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant.
Ageism is a type of discrimination based on one's age, generally used to refer to age based discrimination against the elderly. The term was coined in 1969 by Robert Neil Butler to describe this discrimination, building on the terminology of sexism and racism. Butler defined ageism as a combination of three connected elements: negative attitudes towards old age and the ageing process, discriminatory practices against older people, and institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about elderly people.
Franziska Katharina Brantner is a German politician of the Green Party who has been serving as a member of the German Parliament since 2013.
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works. Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.
Rose Wylie is a British painter. She is an artist known for creating large paintings on unprimed canvas.
Elder rights are the rights of older adults, who in various countries are not recognized as a constitutionally protected class, yet face discrimination across many aspects of society due to their age.
Truly Tasteless Jokes is a book of off-color humor by Ashton Applewhite, first published in 1982 under the pen name "Blanche Knott." The book was a cultural phenomenon and spawned dozens of sequels, including the best-sellers Truly Tasteless Jokes Two (1983) and Truly Tasteless Jokes Three (1984) and a stand-up comedy special.
The Curly Girl Method is an approach to hair care designed by author Lorraine Massey for textured hair in its natural state that has not been chemically relaxed. This method discourages the daily use of sulfate shampoo, which is considered too harsh for curly hair. Among other things, it calls for the use of a cleansing conditioner in place of shampoo, no silicones, the use of a diffuser when blowdrying, and no combs, brushes, or terrycloth towels. It also includes tips for using hair gel and other styling products. The aim in general is to treat naturally curly hair gently, minimizing damage to the hair cuticle; to keep it moisturized, since curly hair is more prone to dryness than straight hair; and to accentuate rather than interfere with the hair's natural curl pattern.
Eleanor Mills is a British journalist formerly associated with The Sunday Times and The Times. She was the editorial director of The Sunday Times and editor of its magazine until March 2020. Mills was employed by Times Newspapers for 22 years.
"OK boomer" or "okay boomer" is a catchphrase and internet meme used to dismiss or mock attitudes typically associated with baby boomers – people born in the two decades following World War II. The phrase first drew widespread attention due to a November 2019 TikTok video in response to an older man, though the phrase had been coined years before that. It is used mostly by those of the Millennial generation and Generation Z. The phrase has developed into a retort for resistance to technological change, climate change denial, marginalization of members of minority groups, or opposition to younger generations' values more generally. Critics of the term perceive it as ageist. It has been noted as a marker of intergenerational conflict.
Linda Joan Waite is a sociologist and social demographer. She is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. Waite is also a Senior Fellow at the NORC at the University of Chicago and Principal Investigator on the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). In 2018, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.