BarbaraRose Brooker
San Francisco, CA
I am an author/teacher/speaker. My themes are ageism. I am the founder of the first AGE MARCH in history. The March is to celebrate age pride for ALL ages, race, sexuality, gender, and to end age discrimination.
Ageism motivated me to become involved in this work. Ageism is a disease. People, including myself, have been segregated and identified by my age. I call it age segregation. I am 80 and I want to be a movie star. I perform and publish novels and currently have TV options. One of my books The Viagra Diaries is being made into a TV series. I teach writing workshops at San Francisco State University in a program for adults over sixty. But I have been refused jobs because of my age. People are even evicted because of age. The list goes on and on.
My books and columns emphasize the theme of ageism, sociologically and psychologically. We need to delete the term ‘older.’ At any age, people especially with experience, who have been let go, or retired, are the best workers. Not only do they have experience, purpose and insight, but they want to work and many can’t.
Because of our culture’s stigma on age numbers, many people become invisible. Because of that I am out there-on national TV – from The Today Show, The Talk to local shows. I’m not bragging, I’m trying to inspire those over sixty to write their books, scripts, set goals. Not to give into our culture’s negative picture of AGE! I’m not some little old lady, or the stigmatized visual the number 80 produces in our media society, I’m just someone who loves my work, to work, and to inspire others to do the same.