{"id":7197,"date":"2023-02-03T06:59:04","date_gmt":"2023-02-03T11:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=7197"},"modified":"2023-02-03T06:59:04","modified_gmt":"2023-02-03T11:59:04","slug":"ravages-of-age-really-that-phrase-has-got-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2023\/02\/ravages-of-age-really-that-phrase-has-got-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Ravages of Age,\u2019 Really? That Phrase Has Got to Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Last October] the <\/span>New York Times Magazine<\/span><\/i> opened with an <\/span>essay by Elizabeth Nelson<\/span><\/a> about whether we\u2019re missing out on [something] when elite athletes\u2014Roger Federer and Serena Williams in this case\u2014retire from their sports.<\/span><\/p>\n

This sentence in the first paragraph made me groan:  \u201cThe ravages of age, culminating with a recent knee surgery, finally persuaded [Federer] to retire.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This sentence in the second paragraph\u2014\u201cSportswriters are required to use phrases like \u2018ravages of age\u2019 when discussing an athlete in decline\u201d\u2014made me howl. The hell they are! It\u2019s a lazy habit journalists need to break. It\u2019s also bigoted and misleading.<\/span><\/p>\n

The following sentence did nothing to calm me down: \u201cTruth be told, it\u2019s a bit of a reach when describing Federer\u2019s goodbye. Trim and suave . . . he scarcely gave the appearance of a man facing down senescence\u2014just a man acknowledging the fact he can\u2019t go five sets deep with Novak Djokovic.\u201d Indeed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Humans lose speed and strength as we move into midlife. This loss is more acute for athletes, whose careers are built on physical capacity. Federer is making this transition with grace and skill, not \u201cfacing down senescence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

We age well by adapting to the way our bodies change over time, not by pretending it\u2019ll never happen to us or by experiencing these changes as betrayal. It\u2019s ageist and ableist to describe them as \u201cravaging.\u201d Synonyms for \u201cravaged\u201d include \u201cdestroyed,\u201c \u201cdevastated\u201d and \u201cruined.\u201d Federer likely has decades of active, meaningful life ahead of him, not to mention countless lucrative opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Disease ravages. Grief ravages. Fear ravages. These experiences are part of being human, from childhood on. To blame them on aging is to blame them on living.<\/span><\/p>\n

Language matters. Journalists need to stop relying on offensive, misleading phrases like \u201cravages of age,\u201d and we need to keep calling them out until they do.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Last October] the New York Times Magazine opened with an essay by Elizabeth Nelson about whether we\u2019re missing out on [something] when elite athletes\u2014Roger Federer and Serena Williams in this case\u2014retire from their sports. This sentence in the first paragraph made me…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more \u2018Ravages of Age,\u2019 Really? That Phrase Has Got to Go<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7198,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7199,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7197\/revisions\/7199"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}