You can find them in various social circles from grade school on up to college and beyond.
Pot Stirrers are easily identifiable, although they establish themselves in a deceptively innocent way. Often the instigators, Pot Stirrers can be found at the center of any drama. Friends who stand beside them are vulnerable to unsuspecting betrayal as they could easily become the next target of their attacks.
Pot Stirrers seem to always have something to complain about, and they are in constant need of validation and attention. They will do just about anything to get either.
Pot Stirrers aren’t malicious, but they can be manipulative and self-serving in how they engage with their friends, often setting little fires of he said-she said and fanning the flames into a wildfire of conflict among peers. They are skilled at weaving webs of connections that brilliantly display solidarity with the subconscious motive of leading the pack and staying in the spotlight.
This dynamic grows risky during the middle school years, when girls are exploring new friendships, growing in awareness of the world, and trying to figure out their place in it. Middle school girls develop a tight network of friends during those early adolescent years. Peer groups are often the most important part of their lives. If there is a Pot Stirrer in the group, the social dynamic can become harmful, dysfunctional, and futile.
Pot Stirrers often have a loyal band of friends, who will forever come to their rescue, because no one likes to see their friend hurting. The Pot Stirrers are not always fully aware of their manipulative techniques, but possess an uncanny skill of raising a call to arms for any perceived bruising or wound inflicted upon their reputation and, ultimately, their psyche. Their stirring often leads to messy mayhem.
“Support your sisters!” is something we urge our daughters to do – a principle we can all value. We embrace backing up and standing up for the rights of others, while taking the necessary steps to help those in need.
Herein lies the problem: Sisters can get pulled into the muck of the stirred pot and often can’t see the passive, self-serving motives of the Stirrer. This can cause shifts of alignment among those involved and fracture friendships within the group. Whatever the issue might be, friends are forced to take sides, and the truth gets buried in the rubble.
This gets dangerous.
If your child is a compassionate care taker, who easily gets pulled into helping other people with their problems, I urge you to equip her with the knowledge of the Pot Stirrer’s ways. The kids most vulnerable to getting pulled into the pots are the ones who may be gullible and easily deceived as they trust quickly and give freely to their friends. This may become detrimental to their own mental health because they often don’t realize the grip the Pot Stirrer has on them.
Help your child become aware of her role in friendships like this, and empower her with ways to detach and honor their own self-preservation. The last thing you want is to watch your own kid get thrown under the bus, or possibly worse.
If your child is continually manipulated by a Pot Stirrer, she may be denied the liberty to develop her own individual identity and thus be less likely to pursue new friends and healthy relationships.
We’ve all experienced this type of friendship in one way or another. Pot Stirrers are an inevitable part of all our lives, and it’s up to us to be aware of the dysfunction that can develop with these types of friends.
I vividly recall being sucked into the pot with a friend, who flew into my life and quickly started a storm of emotional drama within my group of friends. I adored her and naturally believed her and wanted to help her resolve the conflicts with those who, she claimed, had hurt her. After months of trying to affirm her ongoing complaints with the other friends in the group, I slowly began to realize the divide she had caused among us all.
Other friends identified her manipulative behavior long before I did, because she convinced me that she was the victim. I was finally able to recognize her destructive behavior and the impact it was having on my own mental health and decided I needed to end the friendship. It wasn’t easy to do, but I knew being friends with her impeded my other friendships. Her needs were dominating my life.
A hard life lesson to learn, and one I wish I’d learned sooner.
This isn’t to say that we must end all friendships with Pot Stirrers. That was the best decision for me in my own circumstance. It’s most important to recognize the Pot Stirrers in our lives and remain vigilant in protecting our own mental health and friendships. We must teach our children to do the same.
There is a fine line between friendship and foe with a Pot Stirrer. Although we never want to promote judgment or exclusion, we must encourage our kids to be socially aware and teach them how to care for themselves while caring for others. It’s an excellent life skill to master.
Loving difficult people can be difficult. And Pot Stirrers need our love.
But in loving difficult people, we must sometimes make difficult decisions for the sake of our own well-being. Learning to set and keep healthy boundaries is one of the greatest lessons we can teach our kids as they mature and dive deeper into various relationships.
Help your kids become aware of these traits in Pot Stirrers so they can develop a better understanding of the dynamics that can play out in some friendships as well as the pressures of social group thinking.
If kids can identify the dysfunction and danger with these kinds of people, they will be more equipped in dealing with them as they grow older and the stakes get much higher.
Christian preachers are often talking about the "mission" of God's people, and this is absolutely right. Christians have a lot to do in this world, and our task to make disciples and take the gospel to the nations is immediate and apparent. But there are also other things that we should seek to cease in our lives. Here, Chuck Tate at Charisma magazine gives us 22 key things and attitudes that we need to cut out of our lives.
1. Quit expecting the world to like you. Jesus said it would hate you (John 15:18-27, Matthew 10:22).
2. Quit throwing your own teammates under the bus. "We're called to build each other up, not tear each other down. In fact, Jesus said that our love for each other proves to the world that we are really His true disciples (John 13:35, 1 Thessalonians 5:11)."
3. Quit gossiping. This includes sharing "juicy prayer requests" with no intention of actually praying (Psalms 34:13, Psalms 101:5, Ephesians 4:29).
4. Quit replacing prayer with "good vibes" and "positive thoughts." No. Just no. Prayer moves the hand of God and the hand of God moves the world. "Prayer is much more effective than making someone feel warm and fuzzy inside. By the way, I'm not saying positive thoughts and good vibes are wrong (and they do make you feel good), I'm just saying prayer trumps them both (2 Corinthians 1:11, Philippians 1:19, Ephesians 6:18, James 5:16)."
5. Quit saying repentance isn't necessary. It is. Jesus said so. "And just so you know, there are 53 references to repentance in the New Testament. Now go repent (Matthew 5:17, Acts 3:19, Romans 2:5, 2 Peter 3:9, 1 John 1:9)."
6. Quit saying that the "portions of the Bible that make you feel uncomfortable" are irrelevant and nothing more than dated writings. "All 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and 31,102 verse are the inspired Word of God. So the next time you think about throwing out the Old Testament, just remember that Jesus quoted it numerous times in all four gospels (John 1:1-4, John 1:14, 2 Timothy 3:16)."
7. Quit expecting unbelievers/non-Christians to understand the Bible and/or to live like Christ. "It's hard enough for Christians to live like Christ and it's impossible to do so without Him (until the blinders are removed) (2 Corinthians 4:4, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Galatians 5:24-25)."
8. Quit acting like the Great Commission (Go into all the world to preach the gospel) is the Great Suggestion. "It's a command. Go already (Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:15)."
9. Quit thinking that it's OK to be silent about your faith. "Yes, it's just as important to represent Jesus by how we live, but someone can't respond to the Good News without hearing it ... and they can't hear it if no one opens their mouth (Matthew 10:27, Romans 10:14-15)."
10. Quit being more passionate about your political affiliation than your relationship with Jesus. "If 99 percent of what you post on social media consists of bashing government officials and presidential candidates—you're doing more damage than good (Romans 13:1-7, 2 Chronicles 7:14)."
11. Quit using the Bible to beat the "hell" out of people. "That doesn't work. Ever. I don't care if you're right—if you're a jerk, nobody is listening. Love wins! (No, I don't mean the book by Rob Bell.) (1 Corinthians 13)."
12. Quit your legalistic rants, knee-jerk reactions, and judgmentalism. "You're turning people off. You're making good news bad news. Jesus befriended sinners. Try it and great things will happen (Mark 2:17, Luke 5:27-32, 1 Timothy 1:15-16)."
13. Quit calling yourself a Christian if you believe there are multiple paths that lead to salvation. "Jesus said that He's the only way to heaven. If you don't believe Him, you're not a Christ-follower (John 14:6, 1 John 2:4)."
14. Quit living like everybody's going to heaven and nobody's going to hell. "Jesus died so the whole world could be saved, but He said the path to heaven is narrow and few find it. And for the record, He preached more about hell than heaven ... but He did it without using a bullhorn and manipulative scare tactics. #LeadLikeJesus (Matthew 7:13-14)."
15. Quit acting like you're better than those who don't know Jesus. You're not (Luke 18:19, Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11-13).
16. Quit criticizing loving believers who take a biblical stand for godly morals. "Jesus didn't call us to be politically correct. Develop some backbone. And yes, I said wimp. And yes, I will repent for calling you a wimp (Acts 4-6)."
17. Quit pointing out the speck in your neighbor's eye while ignoring the plank in your own eye. "By the way, I can hardly see my computer as I type this because of the log in my own eye (Matthew 7:3-5)."
18. Quit being a jerk, period. "Whatever your position is (on anything), if you can't communicate it in love, you're a clanging cymbal and your message is worthless. So yeah, I probably shouldn't have called you a wimp in No. 16 (1 Corinthians 13)."
19. Quit defending sin. Quit hating sinners. "These are equally important. Oh yeah, and lose your critical lens (Psalm 97:10, Matthew 22:37-39)."
20. Quit using the phrase "he who's without sin cast the first stone" out of context. "The next thing Jesus said was, "Go and sin no more" (John 8:1-11)."
21. Quit using grace as a license to live however you want. "Jesus is grace, so don't trample Him under your feet (Romans 6:1-2, 1 John 2:4, Hebrews 10:26-31)."
22. Quit using the phrase (when inviting people to church) "come as you are" if you're going to complain when they start showing up (Mark 2:17, Luke 5:27-32).
Maybe we’re entitled and delusional. Or maybe, explained millennial expert and author of Becoming the Boss,Lindsey Pollak, we have a progressive understanding of what it means to be a leader. “Millennials believe they can lead from whatever position they’re in,” she said. We know we don’t need an official title to impact our organization.
If you’re ambitious but stuck on Level 1, below are six possible reasons. (Warning, tough love ahead.)
1. You overwork.
Slade Sundar, COO of Forte Interactive, Inc., observed that working 60-80 workweeks actually “devalues the work an employee does, because it shifts the measurement from results and quality to time and quantity.” When an employee's work is measured simply by how much time she puts in, she seems cheaper and more expendable—“someone who is willing to do twice the work for half the salary.” Promoting her would thus ironically oppose the interests of the company. As a result, over-dedicated employees are “rewarded” not with a promotion but with more work at the same pay.
On the other hand, one survey revealed that 71% of managers didn’t promote employees because they were unwilling to take on additional responsibilities. Jennifer Dulski, president and COO of Change.org, speculated that employees who volunteer to do work outside the scope of their roles are "the most likely to be promoted.”
When you’re considering how to balance managing your time with new responsibilities, ask yourself where you’ll be most able to demonstrate leadership and problem solving abilities. Sundar explained, “We don't hire people to create widgets anymore, we hire people to solve problems. Widget Makers are expendable, Problem Solvers are not.” To get promoted, wrote Sundar, “you'll need to prove you're more than just a nose-to-the-grindstone type.”
2. You’re incurious.
The least attractive quality in an employee—or anyone, really—is thinking you know everything.
If you’re prone to being a know-it-all, start asking questions. Famed Silicon Valley executive Guy Kawasaki blogged that the key to great schmoozing is to “Ask good questions, then shut up.” If you get others to talk instead, “Ironically, you’ll be remembered as an interesting person.”
Then do your homework—over and over again. Leadership is the “10,000 hours thing,” said Pollak. It requires “wanting to read and learn and be curious about the topic, loving what you’re talking about.” If you don’t know where to start, Pollak suggests, “Learn from watching people who are good at it. Take classes, learn public speaking, observe difficult conversations.” Curiosity is, at its core, a product of engagement.
If you start to feel bored by your investigation, that’s a sign you should pick another reign.
3. You’re agreeable.
I once had a boss whose confrontational communication style led several employees to leave the company. Noticing that these employees tended to be soft-spoken and acquiescent, I resolved to stand my ground in my new role. My boss admired that I (respectfully) challenged him, and he quickly identified me as “leadership potential”.
Statistics support my story: Researchers at the University of Notre Dame found that less agreeable employees earned an average of 18% more annually than their agreeable coworkers. Those who demonstrated more agreeable traits were, conversely, less likely to receive promotions. Research also shows that we tend to think agreeable men will make worse leaders.
Why?
Art Markman, Founding Director of the Program in the Human Dimensions of Organizations at the University of Texas at Austin, explains that “While some managers may want to surround themselves with people who obediently agree, most want those who will find the flaws in a plan before it is implemented.” Less agreeable people offer this needed skepticism.
If you tend toward people pleasing, Markman suggests considering potential flaws in ideas that come your way at work. Or internalize this: always agreeing doesn’t make you a good employee, or a good person for that matter.
Source: Pexels
4. You’re untrained.
Many millennials fail to advance because we're prioritizing the wrong training. In The Hartford’s study, millennials least desired written and oral communications training—but employers consistently rank these skills as the ones millennials most need.
Determine what skills you need for the leadership role you seek. Then find a way to acquire them. David Goldin, the founder and CEO of Capify, told Business Insiderthat millennials who want to be promoted should proactively seek assistance. “Show that you want to learn.”
Of course, employers also play a critical role in training their workforce. Markman said, “The most successful organizations are ones that promote learning throughout a career.” If you repeatedly request training and your organization doesn’t deliver, it may be time to let them go.
5. You’re clingy.
Employees often think that checking in with their supervisors constantly is conscientious (a skill paramount to success, as I've written previously). In fact, it’s a sign of neuroticism, which is associated with compromised career success, emotional instability and lack of leadership potential. More immediately, incessantly checking in reflects insecurity and lack of self-sufficiency.
Some anxious employees, one study noted, use work to satisfy “unmet needs for love”. Managers can, in turn, find this clinginess “aversive and seek to distance themselves from the instigator.” In short, it’s the last thing you should do for a promotion.
You might recognize this scenario: your boss hates when you don’t check in—“touch and go”, as some call it—but then complains that you can’t think for yourself. The solution is to outline exactly what you’re going to do. This requires preparation. Even if it’s a small task, think of it as a presentation. Schedule one meeting with your managers, present how you’re going to tackle this specific project/assignment, and get their approval on every bullet. Follow up explicitly confirming that you’ll do xyz. Then here’s the key part: don’t check in again until it’s done the way you agreed.
6. You’re alone.
If you’re not dying for your boss’s attention, you may suffer from the opposite problem. As an introvert, I convinced myself for years that I could manage my entire career alone. I eventually learned that lone wolfing isn’t sustainable. As Markman explained, “we are a fundamentally social species. We succeed primarily because of our ability to learn from others.”
I resisted getting outside help because I was intimidated by the elusive “mentor” concept. I didn’t know how to get one, and I felt like I couldn’t request mentorship outright without spending money.
Pollak conceded that having one mentor is often unrealistic. “I think it’s too much pressure to ask someone to be my mentor,” she said. Markman, likewise, is wary of assigned mentors. “Mentorship is much more effective when it grows organically.”
Instead, Pollak prefers having a board of advisors and a collection of people who inspire her. “There are so many options to connect with people,” Pollak said. Markman advised, “Find time to go out for coffee... Ask questions. Find out what books they are reading. Get advice on how to handle difficult situations.” Many people can act as mentors without even knowing they serve that purpose for you.
Put concisely, here are some actions that will advance your career:
Seek to understand and master your field and your role.
Stop punching the clock and start solving problems.
Evaluate the facts and defend your informed opinion.
Seek guidance and then demonstrate self-sufficiency.
Surround yourself with and learn from inspiring people.
“Believing you’re a leader is one thing,” said Pollak. “Acting like a leader is another.”
8 Things Kids Need to Do By Themselves Before They’re 13
Don’t judge me if you happen to see my kids eating packaged Ritz crackers for school lunch.
Don’t judge me if they’re on the sidelines of PE because they forgot their uniform.
Don’t judge me if they didn’t turn in their homework because it’s still sitting home on their desk.
What some may view as a lack of parenting, is what I deem parenting on purpose, as we work to build necessary life skills in our kids.
I stopped making daily breakfasts and packing school lunches long ago.
I don’t feel obligated to deliver forgotten items left behind at home.
School projects and homework are not any part of my existence.
How do we raise competent adults if we’re always doing everything for our kids?
Walk away from doing these 8 things for your teen this school year
1. Waking them up in the morning
If you are still waking little Johnny up in the mornings, it’s time to let an alarm clock do its job. My foursome have been expected to get themselves up on early school mornings since they started middle school. There are days one will come racing out with only a few minutes to spare before they have to be out the door. The snooze button no longer feels luxurious when it’s caused you to miss breakfast.
I heard a Mom actually voice out loud that her teen sons were just so cute still, that she loved going in and waking them up every morning. Please stop. I find my sons just as adorable as you do, but our goal is to raise well functioning adults here.
2. Making their breakfast and packing their lunch
My morning alarm is the sound of the kids clanging cereal bowls. My job is to make sure there is food in the house so that they can eat breakfast and pack a lunch.
One friend asked, yeah but how do you know what they’re bringing for school lunch? I don’t. I know what food I have in my pantry and it’s on them to pack up what they feel is a good lunch. It will only be a few short years and I will have no idea what they are eating for any of their meals away at college. Free yourself away from the PB and J station now.
3. Filling out their paperwork
I have a lot of kids, which equates to a lot of beginning of the school year paperwork. I used to dread this stack, until the kids became of age to fill all of it out themselves. Our teens are expected to fill out all of their own paperwork, to the best of their ability. They put the papers to be signed on a clipboard and leave it for me on the kitchen island. I sign them and put them back on their desks.
Hold your teens accountable. They will need to fill out job and college applications soon and they need to know how to do that without your intervention.
4. Delivering their forgotten items
Monday morning we pulled out of the driveway and screeched around the corner of the house when daughter dear realized she forgot her phone. “We have to go back, Mom!” Another exclaimed that he forgot his freshly washed PE uniform folded in the laundry room. I braked in hesitation as I contemplated turning around. Nope. Off we go, as the vision surfaced of both of them playing around on their phones before it was time to leave.
Parents don’t miss opportunities to provide natural consequences for your teens. Forget something? Feel the pain of that. Kids also get to see, that you can make it through the day without a mistake consuming you.
We also have a rule that Mom and Dad are not to get pleading texts from school asking for forgotten items. It still happens, but we have the right to just shoot back “that’s a bummer.”
5.Making their failure to plan your emergency
School projects do not get assigned the night before they are due. Therefore, I do not run out and pick up materials at the last minute to get a project finished. I do always keep poster boards and general materials on hand for the procrastinating child. But, other needed items, you may have to wait for. Do not race to Michaels for your kid who hasn’t taken time to plan.
This is a good topic to talk about in weekly family meetings. Does anyone have projects coming up that they’re going to need supplies for so that I can pick them up at my convenience this week?
6. Doing all of their laundry
“What? YOU didn’t get my shorts washed? This response always backfires on the kid who may lose their mind thinking that I’m the only one who can do laundry around here. Every once in awhile a child needs a healthy reminder that I do not work for them. The minute they assume that this is my main role in life, is the minute that I gladly hand over the laundry task to them.
Most days I do the washing and the kids fold and put their clothes away, but they are capable of tackling the entire process when need be.
7. Emailing and calling their teachers and coaches
If our child has a problem with a teacher or coach, he is going to have to take it to the one in charge. There is no way that we, as parents, are going to question a coach or email a teacher about something that should be between the authority figure and our child.
Don’t be that over involved parent. Teach your child that if something is important enough to him, then he needs to learn how to handle the issue himself or at least ask you to help them.
8. Meddling in their academics
Put the pencil down parents. Most of the time, I honestly couldn’t tell you what my kids are doing for school work. We talk about projects and papers over dinner, but we’ve always had the expectation for our kids to own their work and grades. At times, they’ve earned Principals Lists, Honor Rolls and National Junior Honor Society honors on their own accord. At other times, they’ve missed the mark.
These apps and websites, where parents can go in and see every detail of children’s school grades and homework, are not helping our overparenting epidemic.
Every blue moon I will ask the kids to pull up their student account and show me their grades, because I want them to know I do care. I did notice our daughter slacking off at the end of last year and my acknowledgement helped her catch up, but I’m not taking it on as one of my regular responsibilities and you shouldn’t be either.
What is your parenting goal?
Is it to raise competent and capable adults?
If so, then lets work on backing off in areas where our teens can stand on their own two feet. I know they’re our babies and it feels good to hover over them once in awhile, but in all seriousness, it’s up to us to raise them to be capable people.
I want to feel confident when I launch my kids into the real world that they are going to be just fine because I stepped back and let them navigate failure and real life stuff on their own.
So please don’t judge me if my kids scramble around, shoving pre-packaged items into that brown paper lunch bag, before racing to catch the bus.
It’s all on purpose my friends.
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What makes human beings unique? It isn’t tool use. Finches, otters, baboons, and many other of our fellow animals use sticks, rocks, and more to build nests and find food.
Nor is it agriculture, though that particular revolution remains one of the most important events in human history. Ants farm aphids, and other symbiotic relationships exist in nearly every ecosystem.
Language doesn’t make us unique. Whales, birds, and even cats and dogs use sophisticated vocal and physical signals to communicate with each other, and with other species. In fact, many animals have distinct regional accents, the same as we humans do.
So maybe literacy and the written word set us apart from other species. Even if not, everything from a trashy celebrity news website to a university library is an amazing human achievement. As Kurt Vonnegut put it on page 133 of his posthumously published book A Man without a Country:
A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.
Or even some Kardashian’s latest jaunt to a nightclub. But note that posthumous part. Vonnegut passed away in 2007. Because of the written word, you and I can take in his insights and stories just as vividly as if he were sitting with us in person right now. Whether he was writing in the 1950s as a young man, or in the current century as a literary elder statesman, it’s all there. All you have to do is pick up a book and read it.
The same is true of William Shakespeare, who died in 1616, more than four centuries ago. His complete works, which consist of over than 30 plays and more than 150 sonnets, is now available online for free. Nobody alive today is within a dozen or so generations of Shakespeare’s time—but because of writing, even today he still makes people laugh, cry, and learn about what it means to be human.
Julius Caesar—the subject of one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies—died a violent death in 44 B.C., more than two millennia ago. Unlike the man himself, his two books, The Gallic War and The Civil War, survive. And if, like me, you can’t read Latin, English translations are readily available. They remain valuable introductions to political posturing, which has changed rather less than the rest of the world over the years. I recommend them.
Going back nearly another half millennium farther in time, Confucius died in 479 B.C. But because of the written word, his ideas influenced dynasty after dynasty in China, right on up to the twentieth century. Even today, his name and ideas are known and respected across the world.
The most amazing part about the written word is that nobody invented it. The earliest known examples go as far back as early Mesopotamian city-states, whose merchants and bureaucrats used cuneiform writing on tablets to keep track of their accounts. Phoenicia, located at the fringes of the Greek world in the Eastern Mediterranean, used the first known alphabet (we get the word from alpha-beta, the Greek letters A and B). Ironically, Phoenicia would eventually spawn a colony named Carthage, which was Rome’s greatest enemy in pre-Caesarian times.
Back to more modern times. Writing is a classic example of what the economist F.A. Hayek called spontaneous order. No single person consciously planned the spoken versions of Latin, Spanish, English, or any other language—except for Esperanto, which turned out to be a dud. Nor did any single person plan how the written word would work.
People experimented, talked to each other, went through many trials and many errors, and over time writing just evolved. Whether on clay tablets, papyrus, paper, or pixel, it’s everywhere. And not just in the Mediterranean world, but in Asia, Africa, Australia, the Americas—pretty much everywhere humans have lived, we have spontaneously evolved some kind of writing. Cuneiform, hieroglyphs, kanji, alphabets, and more all spontaneously evolved without any form of conscious planning or central direction. That is a true human achievement.
Which is why, for this year’s Human Achievement Hour, I intend to crack open a book—or my e-reader, which is another amazing human achievement—and absorb some wisdom from people who would otherwise be unable to share it across geography, generations, and language barriers. We live in amazing times.
The ‘60s youthquake killed our desire to dress like grown-ups.
Photo: ACP/Trunk Archive
On the cover of British Vogue in 1948, an unthinkable figure appeared. An elegant woman turned toward the camera with a set of pearls, a trim suit, and hair that was (gasp!) visibly gray. The fictional character of Mrs. Exeter appeared twice on the cover. Since then, rarely — if ever — would a woman approaching 60 appear on that coveted platform by herself.
Introduced in the late 1940s, Mrs. Exeter taught older women how to dress. “Mrs. Exeter knows what she likes — result of a thorough knowledge of herself,” wrote Vogue in the October/November 1958 issue. Her advanced age gave her an edge over flighty younger women who hadn’t zeroed in on their sense of self. She appears secure in dresses made from sturdy fabrics not seen as much today, like wool crepe or tweed.
“One of the things that is striking about Mrs. Exeter from the perspective of today is how old she is, and how unrepentantly so,” writes Julia Twigg, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, in the academic journal Fashion Theory. “Vogue writes in 1949, ‘Approaching 60, Mrs. Exeter does not look a day younger, a fact she accepts with perfect good humour and reasonableness.’ This is in marked contrast to the dominant discourse today, where the aim is to look ten years younger.”
After a nearly 20-year run, she vanished in the mid-1960s, along with the sophisticated styles reserved for older women. Before, girls aspired to wear the sexy draped dresses only deemed appropriate for over-30 women who could handle the consequences of showing off their cleavage. Today, if you were to read some women’s magazines at face value, we’re left with nothing to look forward to past the minimum age of renting a car.
The culprit? The baby boomers and the 1960s Youthquake.
“I’m afraid it is unfortunately part of a general contempt for older women that society picked up — along with a contempt for older people in general — in the 1960s,” says historian Linda Przybyszewski. “You have this enormous group of young people setting trends by themselves when they reached adulthood. They consciously rejected what older people were doing for good reasons and some not good reasons. [One] not good reason: The basic vision of old people as stupid.”
The Silent Generation made horrendous choices, like the Vietnam War and oppressing anyone who wasn’t white and male. As a result, being old looked awful. Baby Boomers decided they would be and look young forever. The problem with that became obvious when, despite their best intentions, baby boomers not only grew old, but also started their own wars, continued to oppress anyone who wasn’t white and male, and even elected Donald Trump.
“Being young became this yardstick in clothing and political discourse and music,” Przybyszewski says. “It started out rejecting becoming older, which is hopeless because you either die or you’re hoisted by your own petard. Over time, people have paid this price, eventually it came back to them, and guess what? Baby boomers are old, and people think they’re boring and they don’t fit into leggings very well.
“It’s like the Homer Simpson way of thinking, the idea that old people are never right,” she says. “We lost the idea that you could grow up and be dignified. Growing up: Boring!”
And to think that girls used to look forward to the fashion privileges that came with age. During the mid-century, girls leaving for college were encouraged to pack, if nothing else, a three-piece skirt, dress, and jacket, writes Przybyszewski in The Lost Art of Dress. “The shift in women’s fashion in the 1960s would make everyone, even grown women, appear childishly young, but in 1946 the pages of Vogue Patterns offered a variety of skirt suits and dress suits sized for juniors who wanted to look grown-up enough to join the more formal and privileged world of adulthood.”
Each decade of age seemed to offer its own licenses. “By the age of thirty, most women were married, held jobs, or both,” writes Przybyszewski. “And they were presumed able to handle the eroticism embodied in the draped designs that made for the most sophisticated styles.” Draping gathers excess fabric into unique waves that draw attention to the wearer’s womanly curves and the tug of gravity. “It offers a more subtle eroticism than our usual bare fashion,” she writes.
For older women in the mid-century, the styles of the time also happened to mesh well with the values of dignity and sophistication. “The 1950s... it’s dominated by the elegant, conservative style that’s really essentially set by Dior and the New Look,” Twigg says. “It’s a very womanly elegant style; it actually worked quite well for older women.” The Christian Dior New Look emphasized hourglass shapes with the wide skirt that flared at the hips. Granted, it was oppressive in its corseted waist and expensive with all the fabric it required, but it highlighted the fact that women have hips.
Then, the Youthquake disrupted any appreciation for ghastly old things. “What came in with Youthquake in the ‘60s is very, very different. It’s inexpensive, young, long hair, a body style that’s almost pre pubescent... with long legs and a thin body,” Twigg says. “So that creates a very different design aesthetic. And I think that’s part of what kicked Mrs. Exeter off Vogue.” In the swinging ‘60s, designer Mary Quant introduced the mini skirt that demanded a woman's legs look like straws. Stick-thin model Twiggy popularized the babydoll dress along with its infantilizing silhouette and name. Boxy styles eliminated curves from a woman’s body. Suddenly, magazines set an impossible standard for youthfulness and boyish bodies that most women, but especially older women, couldn’t achieve.
In 1965, fashion professor Helen Brockman wrote “youth is ascendant,” according to The Lost Art of Dress. She explained to young designers that they could choose between “young styling” or “youthful styling.” “Sophisticated styling” was no longer offered by manufacturers, so they didn’t have to bother with learning about it. And just like that, up-and-coming designers lost the legacy of dressing for older women.
“So the idea that older women wear complicated cuts, subtler colors, delicate details — those things simply got taken out of the knowledge of upcoming designers, so they would never even know this stuff because nobody talks about it,” Przybyszewski says.
That lack of education appears today on the show Project Runway. The fashion designers shiver in their sleek boots whenever Tim Gunn describes their work-in-progress with the “M word” for “matronly.” This means “suitable for an older married woman” in the dictionary, but on the show, it means frumpy and uncool. A matronly, dignified dress with an empowering design might be exactly what’s missing from stores. With an expanded cultural understanding of what old age can be, including self-possessed and badass, we might begin to find racks of matronly dresses that shoppers have been sorely missing.
Predominantly young designers also struggle to connect with older buyers. “There are structural problems to do with designing,” Twigg says. “There’s a kind of mismatch between the kind of person who’s thinking about what an older woman wants — and who’s actually a designer in her 20s or 30s — and the actual social reality of what older women are like now. I think they imagine older women as more old than they now are... Older people are as differentiated from each as younger people are... Among those, you’ve got some women who are still interested, stylish, slim, and can carry off younger styles, but you’ve also women who’ve decided, you know, they’re quite happy in a jumper and some slacks with an elastic waist, don’t bother me.”
In lieu of Mrs. Exeter, Vogue now has an annual age issue portfolio, but it only features older women alongside younger women, and only in small images. Przybyszewski used to tear out pages from fall fashion magazines to inspire her. “I don’t tear out many looks anymore,” she says. “There are three looks: the seductress, what I can only call the clown with a juxtaposition of color, and the slob. And none of these women seem to have jobs. It seemed there was no place for somebody who wanted to look savvy, wise, and dignified. I’m struck by how the word ‘matron’ became a curse. In the Sears Roebuck catalog into the ‘50s, they’d say ‘hats for matrons,’ so you would be willing to buy them. And now it’s clear, to be older is bad.”
Nowadays, older women in Vogue are airbrushed past the point of identifying their age, and that includes their clothing. “They now present a different version of the older woman that’s the ageless style, that style transcends it,” Twigg says. The only acceptable way to present old age in public is to completely efface it.
We used to identify desirable qualities with old age, like poise to deal with the complications of the world, discretion, and wisdom. “Now, we have to be fun and creative!” Przybyszewski says. “Come on, I know I was an idiot when I was 18. And there’s a thing where too much enthusiasm is bad for you, it makes you go out with the really wrong guy, so when you look back, you say, ‘What was I doing?’
“I unfortunately think all these ways of acknowledging that age does have benefits got thrown away. As a result, the ways women conveyed ‘I am a sophisticated, worldly woman, I’ve been around the block’... They just got thrown away.”
Przybyszewski feels lucky to work in one of the very few industries where old age is valued, and you don’t have to pretend to be 30 forever: academia. “If you can look older, it’s a plus! In so many other fields, people have to pretend. And it’s weird because we keep on figuring out that people who are old have knowledge. You know, it helps to have a man with gray hair because he can count the numbers and tell you when the bubble is about to burst, and you can’t just stay up all night and drink Red Bull. We’ve learned something from history, let’s try to use this!”
We despise old age so much that even men aren’t protected by the double standards of sexism. In Silicon Valley, men past their 40s dress in hoodies and zany socks and get botox just to blend in with their twentysomething cohort. To be young is to be innovative, so says the tech industry... and most everyone else.
But what if we accented our age on purpose to show off our hard-earned sagacity? The cultural tides might begin to change. We already have role models to follow.
French women let their hair go gray and still rouge their lips. They even have a sexy name for this: “éminence grise,” meaning literally “gray eminence,” but idiomatically “a respected authority.” Przybyszewski has noticed this in their cinema, too. “And we’re always like ‘Oh the French actresses, they’re still working! They’re over 30 and nobody has taken them out behind a barn and shot them!’”
Don’t forget esteemed Americans like director Nancy Meyers, the fictional characters from The Golden Girls, and fashion icon Iris Apfel. A bold pair of glasses and peacock colors of joie de vivre reveal what’s great about aging: We will give an ever-dwindling amount of fucks. As our social barriers dissolve, many of us will be left with a rock-solid sense of self. You could either get botox or celebrate the raw power of gathering decades of knowledge of yourself and the world. I say, let’s assemble a squad of matronly motherfuckers.
According to parenting expert and author John Rosemond, the problem with American parenting today "is the 1960s." He offered a simple solution: "America needs a 'Make American Parenting Great Again!' movement."
Writing in his syndicated column at Omaha.com, Rosemond said that the 1960s replaced rationality with emotionality, with mental health professionals urging people to "get in touch with their feelings." He recounts that when he was in graduate school in the 1960s his profession was teaching the following:
feelings — especially children’s feelings — held deep meaning
therapy was all about helping people recover the feelings their parents had made them repress
getting in touch with one’s feelings was the key to happiness.
Rosemond, author of The Well-Behaved Child, called this "a crock" and said that with rare exception feelings are more apt to deceive than to promote good decisions. "Pre-psychological (pre-1960s) parents insisted that their children control the expression of emotion for the good of those children (as well as the good of everyone who was ever in contact with those children)," he said. Rosemond explained that people who allow their emotions to control them "are not happy people."
"In their own enslaved minds, they are perpetual victims. Furthermore, the undisciplined nature of their emotions is destructive to themselves and others. Undisciplined emotions destroy relationships, property and spiritual health."
Anyone who grew up before the psychologists of the 1960s started telling parents how to raise their children can tell you that parenting wasn't nearly as complicated back then as it is today. In a typical family, the children were not the center of attention and the adults were authoritative—and had the final say in all matters. There was little (if any) negotiating and back-talk was forbidden. Kids were expected to entertain themselves (usually outside) for most of the day when they weren't in school. Whining was frowned upon—even a punishable offense. Pre-1960s parents weren't drowning in a sea of parenting books and they didn't obsess over every complaint and sob that emerged from the mouths of their immature little progeny. They didn't drag their kids to psychologists every time they misbehaved and didn't drug every wiggly little boy. They disciplined their kids and weren't shy about spanking. Instead of coddling them, they taught kids to face their problems and deal with them in a mature fashion. Or sometimes, they just told their children to "suck it up" or "rub some dirt on it" because they knew that kids can sometimes be overly dramatic and they didn't want to indulge that behavior.
A half-century later America is paying the price for the 1960s psychobabble that Rosemond encountered in grad school. We're witnessing a national epidemic of snowflakes who are unable to cope with disappointment or control their urges. Heck, they can't even tolerate being in the presence of someone with whom they disagree!
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