Note: this article is dedicated to the man who inspired it, who is probably waiting for me at the pearly gates with a pot of kale soup.
June 15this Elder abuse awareness day! As a student whose dream job is a nursing home social worker, I try to be up to date on issues involving the grayer population. Originally, I planned to discuss books tackling the subject of elder abuse. However, I racked my brain for examples and realized none of my books, except for textbooks, mentioned elder abuse. In fact, very few even portrayed older adults in a positive light (if they featured any characters over 55 at all). At first, I thought there was some logic to this because most of the books I’ve read are children’s and Young Adult. I started to search through films and adult books and found a shocking lack of older adults in those as well. This isn’t only my personal observation either. Older adults are snubbed in Mainstream Media.
Movies don’t have to portray things accurately. If things worked the way they do in real life it would be boring. Fiction doesn’t have to be realistic, and I would argue it shouldn’t be, but it does need to be believable. If a piece of media has a world, greatly resembling ours, where no one ages past 50, and nobody ages slower than the average human, but nothing is said about the majority of people dying before they can claim social security, I think there is a problem. A little less than 20% of America’s population is 60 years or older. However, few older adults, especially older women, are present in mainstream media, about less than 2% of all characters in prime-time television. Disney’s Up was the first full-length-featured-animated film to star a senior citizen.
In children’s books, negative words are often used to describe the appearances of older characters. Worlds like withered, crone, ugly, and toothless are very common. Although many people are passed he/her prime, older adults take a varying level of pride in their appearances. Just like middle-aged, and/or young people. However, this emphasis on the negative consequences aging has on the body, pales in the light of how the personality of those over 50 is portrayed. On the personal level, older-adults are often presented as sweet and childlike. They are frail and cannot possibly look after themselves. If there is a crime committed they are often the victim. Those who don’t follow this stereotype are treated as deviants and are almost always comic reliefs. However older-adults have a range of personality traits and abilities. Some may be child-like, while others may not. Vulnerability and independence also varies from person to person as well.
From all the YA books I have read, the only human older character was Cassia’s grandfather from Matched. *Spoilers* he dies not less than halfway through the book *End of Spoilers* Friendly older men are a rarity in fiction, but they are much easier to come by than their female counterparts. I found a handful of older women who aren’t mad at the world in adult fiction, but none in YA. In this category of literature, older female characters are old fashion, but this isn’t them having nostalgia for their youth and trying to get their granddaughters to act classy and ladylike (politeness is never out of style). Oh no, they think the good old days are the way it is supposed to be and a woman’s place is in the kitchen.
In Red Queen Mare is given two instructors who are both middle-aged and older. Her male teacher, Julian, is supportive of Mare and wants change. He becomes her friend and confidant, and I love his character. However, Mare’s female teacher, Lady Blonos, is a wrinkly-petty devil. She is impossible to please and clearly doesn’t want to teach Mare. The scary part of this is that Lady Blonos is one of the many older women written like this! Who fought for woman’s rights in the first place? From the way, older women are portrayed in fiction, you’d think Title 9 fell from the sky because politicians were bored one day. These fictional women’s real-life counterparts went through hell to get their granddaughters to where they are now.
Many older characters are treated like they are set in their ways and it is impossible to change them. Lia from The Kiss of Deception is very against tradition, particularly arraigned marriage. I don’t fault her for not liking the inability to have a say in who she marries, but older characters who weren’t okay with, not only arraigned marriage but other traditions, were presented as good people but those who followed tradition weren’t so kind. These backward-old men were simply relics of their times just like their traditions. But, older adults aren’t from another time. Although they were born decades ago, older adults are alive and part of the now. They take care of themselves, their homes, their families, communities, and many are still very politically active. The present doesn’t belong to only one generation. We are all together in a community whether we took our first breath this morning or 85 years ago.
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In high school, I was obsessed with this series! Although my life became busier as I got older, I found the time to work my way through these fairly large novels. I think the only thing keeping me from reading the books faster was how they were only released once a year. Which means my reading taste had changed dramatically by the time the last one came out. I decided to read through the other three books again in preparation to making my way to the finale. I even had plans to devote an entire month of articles on my blog to the Red Queen series the month War Storm was released. That didn’t happen as I was greatly disappointed with my re-read of Red Queen. I realized how predictable, clichéd, and mediocre this series is. I don’t hate them, but I no longer adore these books anymore and see them as bland but not bad. 
Once again, one of my high school favorites turned out to just be okay if that. Matched was my bridge series that brought me from middle school books to YA books. In early high school, I was addicted to this series, the romance, the characters, and the government that I loved to hate. I don’t think I could’ve read a trilogy any faster. The summer before I started college I decided to re-read the books of my childhood, The Hobbit, The Ordinary Princess, The Giver, and several others including Matched. It took me much longer to get through Matched the second time I read it. I couldn’t understand why the book suddenly seemed, cliché, predictable, and kind of bland by dystopian standers. Then I realized Matched hadn’t changed, I did. I still have a special place in my heart for Matched because of all the other authors and books I found through it, but I think I’ll leave the trilogy to rest in my heart. 
