ageism

Most of us know bet­ter by now than to make racist or sex­ist com­ments, at least in pub­lic.? Ageism, though, seems to still be con­sid­ered fair game, at least among cer­tain venues in the craftosphere.

First there was this lit­tle gem from the Etsy Forums:

Vanessa says

(snip) Here’s the thing. We really want to rep­re­sent the older demo­graphic of Etsy sell­ers. We are not look­ing for the hip, the indie, or the alt craft­ster seller for this one (though we love you guys, you know we do)! We are look­ing for the clas­sic, tra­di­tional, old school crafter. We are dream­ing of a charm­ing, lit­tle old lady who has been quilt­ing for 60 years! Or a black­smith or a fur­ni­ture maker whose tech­niques have been passed down through the ages! Lace­mak­ing, whit­tling, minia­tures (and there are so many more examples…)

If this is you or have noticed a shop like this on Etsy, (or your grandma or grampa or uncle that you’ve been dying to get on Etsy, now is the moment) and you’re in the area, this is your moment to shine!

I wasn’t aware that “clas­sic, tra­di­tional, old school” was the sole province of “charm­ing lit­tle old ladies.”? In my expe­ri­ence, “the hip, the indie, or the alt craft­ster” doesn’t imply young.? After all, it’s my gen­er­a­tion, the early-to-mid part of the Boomers, that was the ‘60s hip­pie move­ment.? If that wasn’t hip, indie, and alt, what was?

Other Etsy staff tried to backpedal, but it was too late. The word is out.? Etsy has to make spe­cial allowances, as it were, for the older folks who just aren’t as hip as the pre­sump­tive tar­get demo­graphic.? I won­der if the Etsy staff has any real idea how old their sell­ers actu­ally are, or for that mat­ter how old their non-selling buy­ers are?

Fol­low that with the recent inter­view with Carter Seibels in Belle Armoire Jewelry’s lat­est issue, which adds insult to injury: (empha­sis added)

She stays on top of trends in lam­p­work beads by track­ing the list­ings on eBay, where you can see a huge range of qual­ity and style from the omnipresent mold-pressed beads to one-of-a-kind works of art, from the tra­di­tional col­ors and shapes of beads cre­ated by the typ­i­cal middle-aged bead artist to the more exper­i­men­tal pieces being cre­ated by younger artists just start­ing out.

Does she know the ages of the bead artists on eBay?? I doubt it.? I’m aware of a num­ber of rather young lam­p­work­ers sell­ing on eBay that make what most peo­ple think of as tra­di­tion­ally col­ored and shaped beads, because there’s a decent mar­ket for them.? I’ve also seen many of the most inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative bead artists that I know of, young and old, leav­ing eBay for other venues.

Carter was called out on Lam­p­work Etc. for her com­ments (not just the one above, but her dis­missal of presses and other such tools as pro­duc­ing infe­rior qual­ity beads — not true, but that’s another post for another time).? Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t read the thread and it’s gone now because it turned rather nasty.? I have it from my reli­able source, how­ever, that her attempts to jus­tify her words only showed that she actu­ally believes that young artists are more cre­ative and edgy, more artist-y if you like.? She’s apol­o­gized on her blog, but it comes across as dam­age con­trol more than anything.

Odd, that.? Many of the lam­p­work artists that I regard as doing truly unique and exper­i­men­tal work left their twen­ties behind long ago.? Andrea Guarino-Slemmons, Marcy Lam­ber­son, Pam Dug­ger — those are just three that come imme­di­ately to mind.? Their work, for me, is far more inno­v­a­tive than any­thing Carter Seibels showed in the Belle Armoire arti­cle, on her web­site, or in stock today at Matilda’s Gar­den in Alpharetta.

Would either state­ment have been taken dif­fer­ently if the speaker had used women vs. men, or Cau­casian vs. African-American, instead of young vs. old?? Would either state­ment have even seen the light of day?? The fact that Madi­son Avenue con­stantly pro­motes youth, youth, youth does not mean that it’s okay to dis­re­spect any­one over 40 — Madi­son Avenue is full of crap anyway.

Ageist remarks are just as offen­sive as racist or sex­ist ones.? You prob­a­bly won’t ever change your race or your gen­der, but you damn well are going to become one of us “middle-aged folks” sooner than you think…and you don’t want to find out just what a bitch karma is when you get here.