ABSTRACT
It is almost impossible nowadays to read the literature of ageing without coming across some reference to the stigmatisation of ageing. The most recent published attack on prejudice against age in the United Kingdom can be found in Bornat, Phillipson and Ward’s Manifesto for Old Age. In this they draw attention to the necessity of challenging the negative images of ageing in our society in order to help lift the burden of prejudice from the shoulders of many of our ageing men and women. They argue, for example, that there is:
prejudice in the language we use about older people, in the way they are portrayed in the media, in our adoption of myths and fallacies about ageing (for instance, that the elderly are sexually inactive; or that they are unable to learn as well as the young; or that senility is an inevitable part of growing old). (Bornat et al., 1985, p.11) (our emphasis)
