If you are a woman with grandchildren, would you be offended if someone described a people carrier you’d tried out as “comfy wheels for a grandmother”? This is what happened to Anne Dopson, then 62, who sued her employers at a publishing company after one of her colleagues wrote a review of a Renault Kadjar — car names are so bonkers — for a trade magazine. The car, he wrote, had been test-driven by various members of staff: it had “three spells as family transport, one as a ride for the bachelor about town and the other as comfy wheels for a grandmother”.
I love the phrase “comfy wheels”, which pretty much defines what I’d want from a car, but Dopson was the grandmother in question and took exception. She raised a grievance procedure with the company, saying she had “no problem with being a grandma”, citing her beloved grandson, “but I don’t agree with what could be perceived as a dig at my age”. Her complaint was rejected, and rejected again when she appealed against the decision, so she resigned and started legal proceedings.
The issue came up before a tribunal, where a judge ruled last month that the mention of grandmahood in this context was indeed discriminatory on age grounds. The review, he found, amounted to “detrimental” and “less favourable” treatment of Dopson because it drew attention to her age.
However, Dopson, now 66 and a grandmother thrice over, ultimately lost her case. The judge threw out her claims of unfair dismissal, wrongful dismissal and age discrimination because the incident was “isolated” and her claim was filed too late.
Fair enough, but what is wrong with drawing attention to someone’s age, or their status as a grandparent if they have grandchildren? Is it insulting to call a grandmother a grandmother? It isn’t just that it is a coy and dated notion never to mention a woman’s age or procreative status — even the most coquettish older women today are straightforward about how old they are, like Dame Joan Collins, who is 88, or Jane Fonda, 83, or Cher, 75. It’s also the idea that revealing someone is a grandmother is somehow letting light in upon the magic. And you surely don’t get to say that you adore being a grandparent while also somehow finding the word pejorative.
Advertisement
It reminds me of that whole generation of women who don’t like being called Granny, or Grandma, or Nana, and who insist instead on some groovier, more youthful-sounding variant, which only draws attention to the fact that the person who is demonstrably a granny refuses to be called Granny, out of vanity. When I was young I had friends who called their parents by their first names, which seemed incredibly cool to my 14-year-old self but, looking back, it seems a sad shame to be a parent and never be called Mum or Dad. It’s not like anyone else can call you it, and it’s the same with Granny.
I wish women’s terrible, debilitating fear of ageing would go away, along with the sense that any mention of old age is doomed to be derogatory or shaming, and that any physical description of anyone should end in middle age. Ageing is a biological inevitability. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s especially important to remember this, because at some point we’ll get ill (probably) and die. But not yet. And so carrying on as though age were something to be hidden away because of its associations with hypothetical future decrepitude, even though you’re currently perfectly hale and hearty, seems a waste. It’s understandable to fear the future, because we all know where ageing eventually leads. But by taking offence at being called a grandmother when you are one, or at someone mentioning your actual age, you’re in effect fearing the present as well. Who fears the present? It’s a terrible use of anyone’s time.
The older I get, the more impatient I become with women who are evasive about their age, or spend all their time and money trying to look dramatically younger. It’s fine not to embrace the toasty slippers and lady-whiskers end of things too early, but it is also silly to pretend they’re not somewhere out there on the horizon. We laugh at middle-aged men with penis-extension cars — or penis-extension rockets, these days — but there is something nearly as absurd about women with youth-extension breasts or hair or lips or faces. It is a phenomenon that, cruelly, happens overnight, at the hard-to-predict tipping point where people’s excellent and effective cosmetic tweakments suddenly veer from “You look great” to “Oh”.
The fact is, ageing is wonderful — until, at some point, it isn’t. That’s why it’s so important to rejoice in and celebrate its benefits (grandchildren aside, you’ve lived a lot of life, you know a lot of stuff, and this combination is practically a magic power) before they are overridden with gloomier concerns about physical health or straying marbles.
It isn’t, in my view, discriminatory to call a grandmother a grandmother, and I don’t think it was in Dopson’s view either. What she disliked were the doddery/decrepit or rotund/cosy associations she, and much of society, make with the word, and which bear little relation to modern women’s lives. The way to cope with that is to make better ones, and let them roam free until they take root.
Advertisement
My youngest granny friend is in her mid-forties and makes a point of telling everyone that she is a grandma. Grandmothers are as varied as women are; it’s only by making that loud and clear that we’re ever going to get away from the idea that the very word is insulting.