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I had a dream.  Men and women of every age, in every city in the United States marched in an age march.  They wore buttons with their real age printed on it. They carried signs and banners to celebrate their age, age awareness, age price, and to end age discrimination.  And they did so to unify a new generation of real people.

I woke up.  "Why not"? I said.  "But how?  It’s a big dream, but dreams come true."

This is how it started.

My experience trying to publish my latest novel, The Viagra Diaries, inspired my dream to have an age march.  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 HBO option for a television series.  I got tired of hiding my age.  I’m seventy-three and I want to be a movie star.  I'm performing my one woman show, The Viagra Diaries, at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, and around the country.  I'm studying with Wayne Harris, a director at the Marsh Theater.  Our society says, "No, play bingo, go on an AARP cruise, and get a husband."

 Age discrimination is at every age.  We live in an anti-age society: anti wrinkles, anti- gray hair, anti-be-who- you-are.  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.  Everything is possible at any age, especially after sixty!

Look at Helen Thomas, Betty White, Gloria Steinem, 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, what malady, has the right to pursue passions, dreams, old and new.  Everything is possible!

 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 went on to write other books and columns and since 1990, I have been teaching at universities and offering 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 you have to be, to live, feel, look?

In 2009, at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club I performed my first one-woman show, The Viagra Diaries, based on my latest novel.  I am performing it again in October 2010, and my show is televised more and more.  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 get a partner or a job, we may lie.

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.

Unless one is affluent, nursing homes treat those who are unable to move, or who have declining memories, like throw-a-ways. They have spirits, and souls.  The presentation of possibility must be shown to them.

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.  So, on a shoestring, without any money, I managed to form a committee to help form the first age march in history on August 8, 2010, in my native city, San Francisco. In the following months my age march will also be held in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago and New York and set examples for other cities.

We must stop this ageism.

Tell me your age stories.

Barbara Rose Brooker is founder of the Age March.  Register for the age march on www.AgeMarch.org or on www.TheViagraDiaries.com

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