Showing posts with label ageism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ageism. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

If I can be a boy OR a girl, can I be young OR old? (and other inane questions)


69-Year-Old Dutch Man Identifies As “Age Fluid” And Seeks To Legally Change His Age By 20 Years

By Bernadette Deron
Published November 12, 2018

He claims that his biological age does not reflect his emotional age, and is hurting his chances with women on Tinder.


69-year-old Dutch “positivity guru”, Emile Ratelband, has embarked on a legal battle in the Netherlands to legally make his age 20 years younger.

Born on March 11, 1949, Ratelband wishes to change his birth date to March 11, 1969.

Ratelband is a motivational speaker and trainer in neuro-linguistic programming. He said in a courtroom in the city of Arnhem in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland recently that he doesn’t feel “comfortable” with his date of birth. Instead, Emile Ratelband wishes to be identified as 20 years his junior. He believes this age change will enable him to go back to work and to achieve more success in his personal life.



The guru feels that he is discriminated against on dating apps like Tinder because of his age. He continues that his advanced age is not reflective of either his character or physical well-being:

“I have done a check-up and what does it show? My biological age is 45 years. When I’m 69, I am limited. If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work. When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer. When I’m 49, with the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position.”




Emile Ratelband added that if transgender people are allowed to undergo a sex change operation and identify as a different gender, then if he identifies as a different age he should thus be allowed to change his date of birth:

“Transgenders can now have their gender changed on their birth certificate, and in the same spirit there should be room for an age change.”


The judge apparently seemed to be somewhat sympathetic to Ratelband’s cause. He noted that the concept of legally changing one’s gender was once completely unthinkable:

“I agree with you,” the judge said, “a lot of years ago we thought that was impossible.”


But the judge also recognized that there would ensue negative consequences from changing one’s date of birth, namely that the process would effectively delete a massive chunk of one’s life.

The judge asked Emile Ratelband what would happen to the early years of his life, from 1949 to 1969, should his request be granted: “For whom did your parents care? Who was that little boy then?”



"With the face I have, I will be in a luxurious position" - E. Ratelband

Emile Ratelband nullified this statement and responded that both his parents are dead. He argued that his legal age-change would actually be good for the government, as he would not seek his pension until he reaches the country’s retirement age again, 20 years down the line.

As ridiculous as the argument sounds, Ratelband’s court battle has actually tested the limits of individual human rights.

Indeed, at the end of the 45-minute court session, Emile Ratelband stated that his case is “really a question of free will.”

The court is scheduled to submit a written ruling in early December 2018.




BLOGGER'S BLOTTER. About this, I just don't know what to say. I'd rather say nothing and call it a day, but feel called upon to say something.

This guy is just squirrely enough to be taken seriously: that is, taken to mean that he means it. With his weaselly sense of influence, of entitlement, of agency, he might just pull this off.

It just means the Gabor sisters were around in the wrong era. Were they here today, they could just keep going back for more and more birth date changes, knocking off the decades, even if it meant having so many brow lifts they became airborne. But surely this is a sardonic view, written from the perspective of someone who has never experienced it.

We're in a position now where we can't say anything at all about any of this, however, which is the only reason I find this interesting at all. Is he really backhanding the whole transgender movement and trying to make it look ridiculous? Or is he - serious? Does he want to jam himself right in behind the thin edge of the wedge driven by transgender pioneers? Thus he'd reap all the rewards, without having to experience all that agony of soul.

If he has one.




Imagine seeing that face on Tinder. I don't care if he says he's 39 or 29 or even 19. He is a holy horror of a man. His website is hilarious: he claims to make "tailor-made presentations" to all sorts of businesses, meaning: look, pay me enough and I will say anything you want, even if I don't mean any of it at all.

A man for our times.

But really. Tinder, and such.  I'm too old for all that, but I hear it's a real meat market, and how fresh IS the meat of a man who is nearly 70?  For that matter, 50 is seriously pushing the best-before date.

No, it MUST be a joke. Or not? I heard about the first successful human head transplant on the news a few months ago, the item read straight, no horrors or commentary or anything. Just: here's what they're doing in the operating room, folks. My stomach dropped at the same time that my hair stood up. I was unable to look it up on the internet to see if it was true.

This guy may want some other organ transplanted. Or is it his brain, after all? Put that ugly pocked head on the body of a 29-year-old, and see how far he gets on Tinder. 



UPDATE. Or downdate or something. While trying to find a thing I posted on transgender regret, which it turned out I ALREADY re-posted in February, I found this ridiculous thing. Haven't heard anything about him since, so he likely either kept taking 20 years off until he turned into a zygote, or else he died of old age. Not nice to fool Mother Nature. She'll get you every time. (And does Tinder even exist any more?)


Monday, October 22, 2012

Ann Romney in a swimsuit?!


 

NEWS OF THE WORLD!!

Ann Romney cooled off on a Florida beach this weekend as her husband got fired up for the final presidential debate.

As husband Mitt indulged in a beach football game between his staffers and invited reporters, Mrs Romney took advantage of the Florida sunshine in her fetching floral suit, going for a swim with her family at a public beach.

The 63-year-old wife of the Republican presidential candidate looked glamorous in the brightly-colored, halterneck suit with matching sarong on Delray Beach.

She splashed around in the water with her son Craig, his wife Mary and grandchildren, before she grabbed a towel and headed for a hired sun lounger surrounded by other families.



 
 

The seven of you who follow this blog will probably realize the heavy political emphasis I place on each and every post. In other words, yes, I am vaguely aware there is a Presidential election going on, or should I say a campaign, and that these-hyarr guys seem to be arguing it out every time I dang-well turn around. Not that any of this affects me in Canada, Land of the Silver Birch, Home of the Beaver.

But I DID sit up and bark when I watched my favorite hard-hitting analysis of world news, Inside Edition with Deborah Norville, and saw a gushing item about Ann Romney deciding to go to the beach in Florida: the BEACH?? Wait a minute. This woman is over SIXTY years old and is deciding to go to the beach? Then surely she won't be wearing one-a-them swimsuit things, will she? Gadawmahty. A Mormon, ain't she? With five kids and the Lord only knows how many grandkids?




So anyway, they show pictures of her in the kind of suit I would die to find, IF I could find one anywhere, which I can't, which is one reason I stopped going to the beach a long time ago, even though I am not 63 or a Mormon. And she looked - good. The suit had a colorful, sundressy flavor to it, no industrial-strength spandex straps or bumpy black crimplene in evidence anywhere.

But here's what got me: their style correspondent or whoever-it-was came on and started gushing on and on, analyzing the suit thread by thread, seemingly, and gasping in shock and awe and even disbelief that a woman her age could "still" look good in an actual bathing suit. It was as if Ann Romney had taken a huge risk, bigger than that guy, you know, the one who jumped out of that thing and spun around and around and around and still landed up OK.




This can't be happening, they seemed to say: some magic must be afoot, and we must find out what it is!

The word "age-appropriate" came up so many times that I wanted to gag. Yes, the suit was attractive, BUT it was age-appropriate. Yes, the suit was colorful, BUT it was age-appropriate. God forbid she should wear something that made her look like mutton dressed as sacrificial lamb, or some henna-haired Mormon chippie.

It just galled me, is all. Age-appropriate this, age-appropriate that, and wowee, a woman who looks good  (they didn't dare say sexy: she's past menopause, for the love of God!) who isn't 35? Normally those comments are reserved for the mausoleum look of such death's-heads as Joan Rivers and Mary Tyler Moore. Everybody knows that "older" women (women who are no longer 35) have to preserve their "beauty" at any cost. Which means their eyes suddenly tilt up as if they're Chinese, plastic cheekbones explode forth like ping-pong balls, lips blow up like inflated worms, and faces become dead of all expression, with noses caved in like Michael Jackson's.





I have nothing against political candidates if they want to go knock their brains out. To me, "Romney" still refers to the governer of Michigan, whom I guess was Mitt's Dad, George (and who in their right mind would name their son. . . but I digress.)

Anyway, the below-most little article more or less sums up the bumph I've been seeing on this recent sensation. Funny, when Jackie Kennedy used to go to the beach, nobody said, "My God!", or "what nerve" (which is the hidden subtext of all this gasping and slavering). I don't think it mattered how old she was or whether or not the cameras were snapping. She was cool like that.

MAKING A SPLASH: ANN ROMNEY'S FLAWLESS BEACH STYLE


While most women of 63 would be hitting the beach in all-obscuring black, or shrouded in a loose cover-up, the trim Mrs Romney knows she has nothing to hide.

Proving women in their sixth decade can have as much fun with swimwear as their daughters, the white floral-print number is a clever choice that flatters the figure without losing out on style.

The punchy print, with its bright flowers, distract from any lumps and bumps beneath, as does the ruching across the midriff.

The suit, which may actually be a tankini, though it is difficult to tell, appears to have some underwire to support the bust. This lends structure, helping to make the waist look smaller - and the wearer walk taller.

A slim halterneck, too, is always pretty - a thicker strap style would have looked matronly with that print.

And though Mrs Romney has slim legs that a woman half her age would envy, the co-ordinating swim skirt covers her behind, allowing for a more modest look befitting her age, while the tie at the side can be adjusted so as not to cut into the waist.
 
 
 

I found a whole bunch of Mormon stuff, too, which kind of gets more unbelievable with every site, but if true, then Ann Romney must have her "garmie" all bunched up inside of that swimsuit, an act which may scandalize the elders of the Mormon Church, not to mention the Sister Wives who really aren't in any kind of shape to wear a bathing suit anyway.

This is from one of those style-dissection sites and talks about Ann Romney doing scandalous things like wearing the skins of animals with cloven hooves.




We can all agree that the black leather outfit Ann Romney wore on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno last night was the closest to risqué she's ever come. But according to a chat forum titled "Why didn't Ann wear her garments ... ?" on a website called MormonDiscussions.com, some members of the LDS church are concerned that she might not be wearing "garments," a kind of underwear worn by most adult Mormons. Here's a sampling of their reactions:

From zeezrom:
Thank God for Ann. This is a cry to all the LDS Women in the world:
"It is okay to raise the hemline!"
Now, let us pray she begins to work on the sleeves next.
From Just Me:
She could absolutely wear garmies with that awesome skirt.
 
From DarkHelmet:
She's probably wearing garments. Garments tend to ride up a little bit. The skirt probably just barely covers her garments.


 
 
From Elphaba:
I have a couple of questions. First, are garments fairly standard in length? I know my mother's garments would definitely have shown when sitting down if she had worn Ann's skirt, but my mom is only about 5'5". Is it possible Ann is tall enough that they would not have shown when she sat down?

Second, does the Church approve of adjusting the garments in some way to prevent them from showing? If Ann's height did not ensure the garments would not show when she sat down, it's obvious to me she altered them somehow, such as taping the hems up. In fact, given she was on national television, I would be shocked to discover she didn't take precautions of some sort to ensure they did not show. I have no personal objection to that, but it does seem to me something the Church would oppose. I admit, however, I really don't know.

Neither do I, Elphaba. I'm going to go lie down now.