Elizabeth Pike defines the third age as a section of ages after retirement, where individuals are still able to partake in activities, have a social life, contribute to society, and are still in good health. This is one of two sections post-retirement with the other being fourth age, and could also be referred to as a person’s golden years.

Today, older aged individuals are typically associated with being weak and frail. The image given includes an older individual being assisted across the road. This is a typical depiction seen, but I am having a hard time deciphering where it originates from in my mind, whether that be TV, movies, or books as a child. This place into the attitude and representation of individuals where these images are engrained into our head from an early age. Personally, I believe it could be considered more of a stereotype of age, believing that individuals are unable to perform tasks without younger individuals. Well, this might be the case for some people, it does not necessarily apply to the entirety of the elder population.

When the article mentions that the sports help the ageing population accept and resist ageing process it can be broken down two parts. The first involves resistance, and is meant as sports being a channel to be physically active. This allows these individuals to go against the stereotype of being frail and weak leading to resistance of the ageing process such as image one. In terms of acceptance, it can be generally understood that their performance in these activities will decrease overtime. With that being said, the slow decline in these activities over a duration allows for acceptance of the ageing process such as switching to golf cart use in golf.

Many groups are likely to experience, uneven opportunities in terms of taking part in sports. There are three major groups that can be associated with this, including – strength factors, privileged factors, and cultural capital. The first two include – the disabled population, the weaker population, and their classification of “strength”. These individuals have a harder time accessing sports. Similar to previous modules, these populations have a difficult time accessing sports at points of good health, let alone with increased age. Knowing this, I believe there’s a disconnect between the population, and the amount of opportunity presented to these individuals to play sports. Other significant group includes ethnic groups and can lower socioeconomic groups associated with privilege. These groups whether race based or financial based create limitations and opportunity for physical activity, and again are greater with increased age beyond the basic barriers, even at a younger age. Beyond this cultural capital also plays a large role in these populations leading to less opportunities. These can include factors such as education or social connections that lead to uneven opportunities and playing fields.

I believe that discrimination is reported more than any form of prejudice with older people because of how older age individuals are presented as threats to social values and interests. The topic of sport is typically tied to fast pace, energy, and youthfulness as seen with numerous ads encouraging kids to play, especially on TV when I was a child. In contrast, typical stereotypes associated with older age such as being frail or weak do not fit into people’s expectations of sport leading to this discrimination factor. Older people could often also be viewed as old timely with very different views than the younger population, creating a disconnect. While this is not true, it is an accusation made by younger people and could be a significant divide as well.  Even with publications today, you can look at most inclusion ads to find they will cover factors such as a race, disabilities, and gender, with the age being the odd one out.

With the exclusion of age, the Nike ad could be considered more inclusive. It included representation from various ethnicities, disabilities, genders, and sports all coming together for the message, you can’t stop sports. Comparatively looking at the ‘this can girl’ can ad, he covers most of the bases with the exclusion of gender and disabilities, which is the major difference between the two. This puts me on the fence, especially looking back to previous modules. On one hand, the promotion of female sports was a large topic in terms of inclusion and representation, but on the other hand sports without borders and gender free sports was also a large topic in terms of inclusion. For these reasons I believe the Nike ad could be considered more inclusive. Generally speaking, there isn’t much representation of age in the ads. Which seems to be a large gap when speaking on inclusivity for both the ads.

Feminisation of ageing is difficult topic to understand. From what I’ve gathered, I believe the issue that they’re trying to outline involves how even though they live longer, they are still shackled to acting as caregiving. Furthermore, even with more females given this statistic, they are still seen in the caregiving role as an expectation, well, men are able to proceed with what they would like to do until death. Ultimately, I do agree that ageing has been feminized in the way.