Everything Is Possible At Every Age! By founder, Barbara Rose Brooker

“I’m seventy-three and I want to be a movie-star,” I tell my friend Janet on the phone.

“Honey, It’s too late. Act Age appropriate. ” Janet says.

” Age has no rules. I’m not a senior. I’m a person.”

My experience trying to publish The Viagra Diaries inspired my dream to have an age march. I hope that every city in the US, will march for age pride; to celebrate our real age, for every race, color, sexuality, gender, to march for age pride and to end age discrimination; end social pressure to lie about our ages to keep a job or get a mate.

Mainstream publishers had said: “No one is going to read about a seventy-year old protagonist.”  So I published with a small press and now I have a major HBO television option for a series.

I believe that everything is possible at any age.  Age discrimination is at every age. We live in an anti-age society: anti wrinkles, anti- gray hair, anti-be-who- and after sixty we’re told to be “age appropriate.” Who decides what’s appropriate? Age is not a number, it’s a spirit and there are no rules.

After fifty we’re supposed to be invisible, told how to live and to die. I’m sick of it.

Look at Helen Thomas, Betty White, Gloria Steinham, and others. No one knows when one is going to leave the planet. And while we’re here every human being, no matter what age, has the right to pursue passions, dreams, old and new.

At forty I went back to college. I wanted to pursue my dream of writing, performing, and teaching. “Get a real estate license,” I was told. “It’s too late. At fifty, I got my MFA in creative writing and published two novels. I wanted to teach others my age to write their books in any genre. “Get a husband,” I was told. I went on to write other books and column, and since 1990 I have been teaching at universities and private seminars. I have seen miracles. Age is a miracle, not a hardship. Aren’t you tired of having professionals and legislation tell you how to be, to live, feel?

In 2009, I performed my first one woman show, The Viagra Diaries, based on my latest novel, at the SF Commonwealth Club. I am performing it again in October, 2010, and my show is steadily televised. I am studying acting this summer.

There is no such thing as age, only the spirit of age. No one really knows how old we are. It’s a number system.

Aren’t you tired of age segregation? It’s no different from the military’s bigoted legislation: ‘Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Social pressure makes us feel ashamed of our age, and to lie to get a partner or a job. Celebrate your age. Don’t lie about it! Media pressure presents aging as negative-we get the message to botox up, to look like those silly housewives of Orange County.

How we age is who we are. There are thousands of books on finding the true self, yet we’re pressured to go back in time instead of forward with passion and new ideas, goals, education.

Martin Luther King marched for human justice, equality, and to end racial segregation. Though it still exists, he made great strides. I feel he would support a march to end age segregation.

We have organized the first age march in history on August 8, 2010, in my native city, San Francisco. In the following months my age march will be in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago and New York and set examples for other cities.

We must stop this ageism.

Barbara Rose Brooker/founder