Curation for Longevity 🧬🛍 9 - “And Just Like That…” killed us with ageism.
Hello 👋 and welcome to Curation for Longevity by Laura Minquini. I am the founder of MYKIGAI - a new type of community to experience longevity.
In this newsletter, I look into what could help make longevity the next big DTC (Direct To Consumer) category. 🚀
Some friends asked my opinion on the very talked about “And Just like That…”, the new chapter of “Sex and the City”. Does it relate to longevity? Well, yes. Read on on how this pop culture moment is in my opinion bad both for our perception of age and health.
Spoiler Alert - Plot
An open letter to SJP 👩🏻💻
Dear SJP,
Aka Carrie, maven, savy businesswomen, the purveyor of style, star, and executive producer of one of the most iconic shows on television for a generation, and as per your recent Vogue story, an ageism advocate.
Why, oh why, did your show revival have to perpetuate the worst cliches about aging? That basically when you are over 50 all you have is money but you are lost and have no sense of anything that is going in the world.
How is this empowering women or changing the conversation?
I won’t get on about the “could Carrie have called 911 and saved Big” bandwagon, I get it, it’s TV, things are dramatized and exaggerated. My dismay is over the pandering and one of the worst portrayals I have seen of women in midlife; it has done a great disservice to us all. Want to see examples of a positive uplifting storyline, please check out Grace and Frankie, and those ladies are 80+.
Psychological age / Subjective age; our self-perception of how we feel in our age impacts our health outcomes. Feeling good or younger leads to better health outcomes, bad or old is the inverse. The message the show gave us was clear with almost every single character taking a jab at lamenting in one way or other how “old” they are. How can you ask people to change how they perceive aging, as you did recently, if the plotline of the show did everything to say you are “old”? “Sex and the City” was funny and revolutionary in tackling taboos about sex, I was hoping this iteration would do the same for aging but instead we got 50-year-olds going on 100.
Let’s break down some of the most jarring, non-believable cliches.
Cliche #1
Podcasts and IG are for“young” people, or so insinuates Miranda. Hmm…there are plenty of 50, 60, and even 70 year old influencers that are using the platform better than even myself. Plenty of popular podcasts are run by older people. Pivot with Kara Swisher & Professor Scott Galloway come to mind. Love them or hate, they live rent-free on a lot of young people’s minds and are very much part of the culture and tech business zeitgeist, both are over 50.
If you wanted to make the ladies seem clueless then they should have been talking crypto or NFTs, something that would be more realistic in terms of a high barrier to entry for non-digital natives. IG+ podcasts being too advanced is just a lazy assumption of what some younger people think it’s difficult for older people.
Cliche #2
Miranda, a corporate lawyer becomes a bag lady and “old school” and is completely clueless as to how to navigate a setting with younger generations. No law firm in this day and age would have left out an inclusivity training. How are we to believe that a high-powered lawyer negotiating on behalf of corporations would not know how to “read the room” or be so cringe? Honestly, even the “Golden Girls” tackled homosexuality and racial issues with panache, and these ladies were working class and living in the 80s.
This storyline perpetuates for younger and older generations the message that experience is not valuable and when you get to 50, you become a Boomer Karen, and you just don’t know what’s up with the world, no matter the amount of expertise and wisdom you accumulated over the years.
With the problem of women being unemployed but too young to retire, this is an irresponsible portrayal and bad for working women. Being able to wear our hair gray - (as Miranda celebrates) is not what empowers us as much as accumulating wealth for our longer lives.
Cliche #3
50s is so old you will need hearing aids. What a way to turbocharge the fear of aging with 50+-year-old Steve being at the point of near deafness. We got lucky on having an outlier character being one of the 8% of the population that loses their hearing…
As you are all New Yorkers, could one of the husbands not have become a health optimizer and be obsessed with taking NAD+ infusions to stay young? This to me seems more plausible and realistic.
I won’t get into some of the other cringy things that were thrown at us; including the way the Samantha character was dragged, the shitty podcast that was supposed to highlight how prudish Carrie had become, or Che Diaz who came straight off the Mad Max set as a cartoon characterization of what we are supposed to imagine non-binary people are like. I also have nothing to say about how you aged, which it seems is the biggest concern the cast has with the critique of the show.
The BIGgest sin
North Americans have the shortest life expectancy and spend the most time with disease towards end of life compared to other high-income countries. This has to do with lifestyle choices: bad diet, no exercise, and health care being a luxury, not a right. Killing Big after exercising on his Peleton is bad signaling for a population that is already not doing well overall with their health. Some saw Peleton getting dragged as a brand, all I wondered is how many people are going to find more excuses to not exercise or practice a healthy lifestyle. I am sure prventive health, like the stock price of Peleton, took a bit of a nosedive too.
I hope Peleton was in the fix for a reverse marketing story. I mean they are being talked about everywhere, and quickly came up with the genius Big revival commercial. If they were not, there were a million other ways to write him off. Right after practicing a healthy lifestyle choice, should not have been it.
Yes, this is supposed to be just fun entertainment, great fashion, and some laughs but images and messages matter, no matter what people internalize these narratives they see conveyed on social media, TV, and film. I am not 50 but when I think of my future self “Just like that…” is not what I want to imagine. Perhaps as a girlfriend said, the show will be about them finding their new voice, how else would they have a show if there wasn’t conflict. I keep thinking of Jennifer Lopez at 52 being as hot and as vibrant as ever, she is in the same range as all of your characters. Choose your fighter.
Alas, congratulations are in place because and just like that, we are all talking about you again!
Laura Minquini
Longevity Advocate and “Sex and the City” junky.
Friendly reminder of the BENEFITS OF EXERCISE for LONGEVITY:
Makes your heart and cardiovascular system stronger
Reduces your risk of heart disease by lowering blood pressure
Helps you reach and stay at a healthy weight
Improves your circulation and the way your body uses oxygen
Gives you more energy, which lets you be more active without getting tired or short of breath
Makes your muscles stronger and more toned
Improves your balance and flexibility
Reduces joint pain
Makes your bones stronger
Gets rid of body fat
Reduces stress, tension, anxiety and depression
Helps you sleep better
Improves your self-esteem and body image because you will look and feel better