Tag Archives: Facebook

Don’t Patronize Products that Patronize You

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At a time of life when my income is increasingly limited, with a set monthly amount from Social Security, a small pension from my years as a newspaper journalist and whatever I can scratch up from contract work, everyone is pitching me to spend money on stuff I neither want nor need.

The neighborhood newspaper I subscribe to invariably has advertising inserts for pricey senior living buildings that deliver less than what they promise, if my late mother’s experience is any example. The spam calls from people wanting to sell me burial insurance have morphed from being a joke (talk about feeling old!) to merely an annoyance, especially after I’ve told the caller that I plan to be cremated.

But the most egregious examples of unwanted sales pitches are the omnipresent ads in my personal Gmail account. Every time I check email, which is multiple times a day from my iPhone, at least two new “sponsored” emails pop up, many advertising products or experiences I have never purchased or even searched for online.

Recent examples include:

  • An ad for a women’s “three-wheel e-bike” by a manufacturer that clearly views the word “tricycle” as a turnoff, though that’s what it is;
  • A promise of “$5,000 off any trip” from Overseas Adventure Travel, which specializes in expensive luxury group tours, including for solo (read: widowed and well-heeled) travelers;
  • Ads for Eileen Fisher’s “responsibly made” tops that offer “the right mix of comfort and style” — flattering, just-below-the-waist designs meant to hide the thicker midsections women develop after menopause; and
  • Skechers slip-in shoes, all flats, with catchy names like “Classy Cruiser” and “Reggae Slim.” This may be the most practical example of all, given that no woman I know in her 60s wears high heels for any but the most special occasion, and even then, she likely packs her walking shoes in a discreet cloth bag.

Despite living in an Amazon-influenced era, I don’t like to shop online. Plus, I’ve grown increasingly impatient with advertising now that I record the TV shows and women’s basketball games I want to watch precisely so I can zip through the commercials — a shocking number of which are for prescriptions with a litany of scary or smelly side effects.

But that’s not the problem. What disturbs me is advertisers’ assumptions about seniors, which rarely line up with the realities and reflections of my post-career life. Or with the passions, politically fueled anxieties and inevitable physical afflictions that dominate conversations with my friends.

“The public’s perception of aging is . . . antithetical to how most older people feel and what experts in the field know to be true.”

National Center to Reframe Aging

Not all of us want to travel abroad, pamper our pets, fix up our homes (we’re lucky if they’re paid for) or attend cultural events that occur downtown at night. Yet that is what the sponsored ads in my Gmail account push: new windows, cheaper internet, a dinner theater 23 miles away, a Tai Chi walking program that looks laughably slow for a fitness walker who moves 18,000 steps a day.

What I want from Gmail is no ads at all. I’m no one’s target market anymore. Or at least push the products and places I care about: good face cream, artsy earrings and glasses frames, locally owned bookstores and bike shops. By this age, I know what I want and need.

I understand, sort of, how algorithms work. That an ad not just for L.L. Bean but for their fleece-lined bedroom slippers and winter-walking Stabilicers will show up as banner ads on other websites after I’ve scrolled the Bean site for just those items.

So, yes, I get it that many of the sponsored ads in my personal Gmail — which, oddly, never show up in my work-related account — relate to some web search or another. I don’t want an e-trike (at least not yet), but I do read “Bicycling” magazine online. Maybe the ad for shapeless shirt dresses from Maye, a company I’ve never heard of, is there because the algorithm knows I’m 68, an age at which many women have developed enough self-confidence and common sense to prioritize comfort over body-hugging fashion.

Or am I giving the faceless algorithm too much credit?

A recent article titled “Marketing to Seniors,” which promised “transformative insights” into reaching my digital-wary demographic, manages to be both heartwarming and offensive — not unlike the senior-focused ads I see.

  • On the upside: The urge toward “straightforward language” and “offering customer support through phone calls rather than automated messages” strikes me as practical and respectful. Whatever our level of digital savvy, or lack thereof, we Baby Boomers are comfortable and conversant with a telephone.
  • On the downside: The article’s call to feature photos of people “5 to 10 years younger than your target demographic” because “it’s how folks tend to see themselves” may be accurate, I’m sorry to say, but it also is blatantly ageist and emotionally cruel.

Employing younger people to sell products and services to seniors plays on the insecurities and fears of older women, in particular, who for decades have been barraged with the fiction that only youth can be attractive.

Photo by Rosa Rafael on Unsplash

In the United States alone, the beauty industry is expected to garner $106 billion (yes, B for billion) in 2026. And now the folks who are marketing senior housing, flowing clothing and expensive foreign trips are instructed by advertising experts to employ models whose only sign of authentic aging is coiffed white hair.

I’d like people my age — women, especially — to fight ageism by boycotting products that imply growing old is a shameful condition to be hidden and denied. Older Americans Month in May urges us “to recognize the contributions of older adults” and “to raise awareness concerning elder abuse and neglect.” Let’s also grant older people the dignity of portraying us as we are, even if the advertising art directors think their necks will never wrinkle, their eyebrows won’t thin and their thighs will forever remain smooth.

Shopping can stimulate cognitive processes, provide physical benefits, and function as a leisure pursuit that promotes social engagement. 

Comfort Keepers, “Benefits of Shopping for Older Adults“

It isn’t that I dislike spending money. I’m as susceptible as anyone to the dopamine fix of treating myself to things and experiences, whether new walking shoes or a weekend getaway. But as I grow older, I am both more philanthropic — if by “philanthropy” you also count generosity with your grown children — and more intentional about where I invest my finite resources.

Age has shifted my priorities and patterns.

I enjoy shopping, especially for groceries, and try to support the shops and restaurants in my neighborhood, especially after seeing several go dark during COVID. Recently I learned that elderly folks (not quite where I am yet) benefit from in-person shopping because it gets them outside, keeps them moving, prods them to make decisions and handle money, and forces interactions with others younger than themselves.

Photo by Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

Less need or desire for stuff, an aversion to online shopping and a commitment to supporting my own community all make me a poor target for the products that companies are pitching me online. Except maybe this one: The You Are Enough Co. spammed me with an ad recently for “Dear Person” T-shirts and sweatshirts.

Curious about the concept, I clicked through and learned that You Are Enough aims to boost and normalize mental health awareness through clothing that proclaims to onlookers: “The world needs you” and “You are great.”

I may buy one and gift it to an older woman who needs a reminder that, no matter how much society tries to convince her to hide her age, she is fine just as she is. She’s earned her wear and wrinkles.

Then again, maybe I’ll keep that T-shirt for myself.

Dog bites woman: lessons learned

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Getting injured tends to make me reflective because it forces me to sit still, which I don’t do well. Even at 62, I value movement and action — to a fault, I am finding as I grow older.

Suffering a dog bite at an off-leash dog park, a juicy and unexpected chomp to my bare left calf, has left me hobbled, bleeding, aching, afraid, exhausted and unable to sustain my usual pace. I sought medical attention, after initially resisting, and two days later succumbed to the first round of rabies shots.

Mia_2019

Mia, my beloved Animal Humane Society rescue, gets ready for our morning run.

Here is what I’ve learned from the ordeal:

1. Posting on social media can turn bad luck to good advice: “You should have called Animal Control immediately,” said my experienced older sister, also a dog lover. “They would have impounded and quarantined the dogs.”

Problem is, I was so rattled, calling the authorities did not occur to me. What now? “At this point, I would ask the police to visit the dog owner,” my sister told me a day later. “She needs to be deterred from coming back to the dog park.” Numerous others on Facebook agreed. One even speculated I could be awarded $5,000 to $10,000 per puncture wound through the woman’s homeowner’s insurance. Well, maybe.

2. Trusting people based on superficial qualities leads to speculative results. The first question I asked the woman who insisted her dog only “scratched” me was whether her animal’s shots were up to date. “Of course,” she said. She looked trustworthy. But what does that mean? Turn over that rock, and out slither some stereotypical assumptions.

“Diana,” likely not her real name, was articulate and well dressed. She drove a nice van. She seemed friendly, approaching me later in the park — along with that damn dog! — to see whether I was alright. Again, being rattled and bleeding and in pain, I did not think to say: “Call my cell phone, so I have your number.” Instead, I texted myself the number that she told me, and this apparently trustworthy, friendly looking woman lied.

3. “Tough it out” is an ineffective strategy with an animal bite. Among the advice on Facebook, which I ignored for three days:

  • “You need proof that this animal is vaccinated.”
  • “Get to a doctor with that wound stat.”
  • “I didn’t go to the doctor when a dog bit my finger and ended up having surgery for an infected finger bone. My primary-care doc said to always get antibiotics.”

Ego can drive these decisions, especially as we get older and want to prove that we’re still strong and healthy. I remember a woman 10 years my senior telling me that she feels more “vulnerable,” physically. Not me! I arrogantly believed I could heal on my own, if I kept the wound covered and kept up my usual pattern of walking 14,000 steps daily. Bad plan, as the nurse practitioner affirmed when she prescribed amoxicillin for my weeping wound.

4. Short-term physical pain is worth long-term peace of mind. Because “Diana” gave me the wrong phone number, because I failed to follow her to her van and photograph the license plate, I had no way to reach her. Therefore, I had no way of proving that her dog had current vaccinations.

A doctor said the risk of rabies was low, given that the apparently cared for dog was at a dog park, not some crazed animal foaming at the mouth, To Kill a Mockingbird–style, that leaped out of the bushes on a jogging path. The Department of Health said otherwise. The only way to ensure I would not get rabies was to get the dreaded rabies shots. “I think the DOH is butt covering,” I told my oldest sister, the pragmatic one. “Maybe so,” she replied, “but rabies is fatal if you get it.” A quick Google search proved that to be true.

And the shots? Not nearly as painful as folklore would have it — or apparently, as invasive as they used to be. When I heard that the initial injections were in the wound, I pictured a doctor plunging a needle straight into the bite site (which remains painful to the touch eight days post-trauma). In fact, the doctor inserted the needles horizontally in the skin next to the wound, on either side, and then energetically rubbed the bite site so it could absorb the serum. That was the worst, and it was over quickly.

Gabby_smallest

Gabby, our rescue puppy from the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Dakotas

5. Keep the faith. “Here’s what I know,” wrote a former colleague on Facebook, a man who recently traveled across several states to buy a hunting dog. “There are many, many more bad dog owners than there are bad dogs.” Of course, he’s right.

One woman warned me about PTSD, predicting that I may never be able to return to dog parks. Another offered to connect me with a therapist who specializes in “dog-bite trauma.” I’m not afraid of dogs, which I have owned for most of my life. What I am wary of is lackadaisical dog owners — ones like my neighbor who lets his golden retrievers walk unleashed on city streets, reassuring passersby that the dogs are friendly.

I never intended to sue “Diana.” What I wanted was an apology, an acknowledgment of the pain I suffered and an offer to pay my medical bills. I wanted her to make things right, and she failed me. But I won’t give up on dogs, not today. Not ever. I need their love and loyalty in an increasingly hostile world.