I used to be 5 ½ when Barbie was born. I didn’t take a lot discover on the time — or ever — and hadn’t meant to catch the brand new film starring the plastic princess.
However I bought curious the opposite day when, in the course of a Sacramento listening to on growing old, Little Hoover Fee chairman Pedro Nava talked about the summer time field workplace sensation.
The fee — an unbiased state oversight company that checks up on how our tax {dollars} are spent — was asking questions of public officers and others to see if sufficient progress is being made on a 10-year-long challenge known as the Grasp Plan for Getting old.
Nava, commenting on the daunting problem of recruiting a large enough workforce to look after the state’s quickly rising inhabitants of older adults, stated that society has achieved a great job of demeaning and marginalizing older adults.
Then the dialog turned to popular culture. “I don’t know what number of of you could have seen the ‘Barbie’ film,” Nava stated.
I puzzled the place he was going with that, however he shortly recalled a scene through which the eternally youthful Barbie, performed with out a wrinkle by Margot Robbie, travels from Barbieland to Los Angeles. She takes a seat on a bench, subsequent to a white-haired 91-year-old lady, and is transfixed.
“You’re so lovely,” Barbie tells the girl.
OK, I assumed. Possibly I ought to see that film, which hits on one thing I’ve been writing about since I started the Golden State column six months in the past. We’re all getting older, for higher and for worse. It’s okay, and customarily talking, higher than the choice.
I’ll admit to being a bit involved, again in January, that writing about growing old would possibly really feel limiting, or perhaps even miserable at occasions.
None of that has occurred.
Certain, I’ve written about individuals struggling the ache of loss, monetary hardship and persistent illness.
However talking of “Barbie’s” message, I used to be impressed by my go to with actress Mimi Rogers and listening to her ideas on growing old naturally and with grace. I bought a kick out of watching Benny Wasserman, 88, hit 90 mph fastballs in a batting cage. Ken and Audrey Mattlin, of their 80s, are defying stereotypes and embracing change with their household of robots in Bakersfield.
And Somkene Okwuego, a 23-year-old USC gerontology grad now learning to be a geriatric dentist, resides hope that the younger haven’t forgotten the outdated. She’s additionally a reminder that job alternatives in healthcare, expertise, housing and transportation abound for millennials and Gen-xers as the worldwide inhabitants races towards the purpose at which these over 65 outnumber these underneath 18.
Earlier than I tuned in to Thursday’s listening to on growing old, I searched my emails for leads on older adults who proceed reinventing themselves. And I started researching love amongst older adults after interviewing a lady who emailed me to say that, at 71, she’s having fun with a strong affair with an 81-year-old man, and they’re having, in her phrases, “wild monkey intercourse.” We had a pleasant chat, throughout which I didn’t ask for particulars.
And he or she’s not the one reader who puzzled why I haven’t touched on twilight romance but. So that you would possibly learn all about it right here quickly, if I can work out the proper therapy, and squeeze in a visit to a Coachella Valley restaurant/evening membership the place, I’m instructed, age stands in the best way of nothing.
And simply as I used to be taking inventory of the place I’ve been and the place I’m going, the Little Hoover Fee was doing the identical with Gov. Newsom’s directive to get the state prepared for 2030, when individuals 60 and older will make up 1 / 4 of the state’s inhabitants.
The brief reply is that issues look like going fairly nicely midway by way of the third 12 months. One witness — a healthcare coverage guide— testified that California’s work has been a mannequin for most of the 20 states implementing related packages.
The issue is the scale of the enterprise, which includes greater than 100 initiatives and a number of state businesses, in addition to coordination with counties and philanthropic teams.
Fernando Torres-Gil, of the UCLA Coverage Heart for Analysis on Getting old, serves on a committee overseeing the grasp plan’s implementation. He testified on the listening to, expressing each optimism and a few considerations about pulling collectively all of the individuals wanted to make the plan work. At occasions, he stated, it’s like “making an attempt to herd kittens.”
Susan DeMarois, director of the Division of Getting old, instructed commissioners progress has been made towards every of the 5 important grasp plan targets – equal entry to high quality healthcare; cures for isolation, discrimination, abuse and neglect; 1 million new high-quality caregiving jobs; and monetary safety for all growing old adults.
Early achievements embody growth of Medi-Cal protection, a $1 billion-plus funding in healthcare workforce improvement, and almost $1 billion earmarked for senior housing for low-income adults (a significant objective is to reverse a pattern through which older adults are the quickest rising section of the homeless inhabitants).
“With excessive humility,” DeMarois instructed commissioners, “we additionally acknowledge that our work has simply begun.”
Commissioners had plenty of questions.
How a lot cash has been spent, and may the digital tracker be improved so taxpayers can preserve tabs on progress? What occurs if the state runs low on money? Will the plan nonetheless be in play after Newsom leaves workplace? Is there sufficient legislative help to maintain the early momentum going, or to steer state division heads to proceed prioritizing the grasp plan?
Some however not all of the questions have been answered, however there’s one other listening to subsequent month.
It’s anybody’s guess if there will likely be one other “Barbie” second, however Nava instructed me he loved the film. He stated he had learn that director Greta Gerwig resisted a suggestion to chop the scene through which Barbie compliments Ann Roth, who portrays the 91-year-old and is an Academy-award successful costume designer in actual life.
“It’s the center of the film,” Gerwig instructed Rolling Stone.
So, along with saying one thing about motherhood and feminism, evidently Gerwig wished to touch upon our youth-obsessed tradition.
Below the Golden State banner, I’d already served as a restaurant critic, reviewing early-bird specials. I figured I had no alternative however to broaden my scope and turn out to be a film critic.
So on Thursday evening I purchased a ticket, a bag of popcorn and a soda, and took a seat within the firm of moviegoers wearing what seemed to be Barbie-inspired outfits. (Nobody instructed me that I used to be supposed to decorate like Ken.)
With out giving an excessive amount of means, Barbie develops a contact of cellulite and begins to worry demise, neither of that are imagined to exist in Barbieland, the place everyone seems to be eternally younger and excellent. So she travels to the actual world — or Venice, Los Angeles, a minimum of — to get herself proper. And right here within the Metropolis of Angels she is shocked to seek out that males, quite than ladies, run the world, and she concludes, not like many people, that growing old is one thing to embrace quite than worry.
The character performed by Roth is studying the Los Angeles Instances whereas seated on the bench, so we all know she’s a lady of excellent style. When Barbie tells her she’s lovely, the girl flashes an enormous smile and says:
“I do know it.”
Two thumbs up.
Steve.lopez@latimes.com
