Today I Am a Ma'am: and Other Musings On Life, Beauty, and Growing Older by Catherine Whitney, Valerie Harper Page A

and Grandma would be thirty-three. Are there any real people left?
    Two years ago, I shot an NBC television pilot for a wonderful show called Thicker Than Water . The plot centered around a family in New Jersey. Ron Leibman and I played a blue-collar couple whose two adult off-spring were suddenly returning to the nest. The script was funny and real, and we had a great response from the studio audience. Our hopes were high.
    NBC tested the pilot. The marketing guy came back to us with the results. “It tested great in the demographic between ages eighteen and forty-nine,” he reported.
    I was thrilled. “Wonderful!”
    He held up a cautionary finger. “The problem is, it tested poorly in the thirteen to eighteen demographic.”
    I didn’t get it. “Why is that a problem?”
    He gave me a pitying look. “We can’t sell a program to advertisers without that demographic.”
    Oh. Silly me. I guess I missed the memo that explained how fifteen-year-olds were the Gold Standard for all television viewing. Maybe Thicker Than Water would have had a better chance if the twenty-something kids had an actress of thirty playing Mom.
    Ageism is practiced by the networks, because that’s what Madison Avenue dictates. But how do they explain away the decline in viewership? How does it make sense to say, “You’re over fifty. We don’t care what you watch?” Imagine a supermarket chain deciding they’re only going to count groceries sold to people under thirty. Youth obsession is killing us.
    And yet . . . you and I know that we grown-up women are a powerful force. The youth-addled brains in Hollywood just don’t get it. It’s time for a call to arms, and I’m leading the charge. I figured I was the right one for the job, because women of a certain age often come up to me in restaurants and on the street and just start chatting, as if we were picking up a conversation that had been going on for a long time. There’s a comfort level there, an ability to be perfectly frank.
    One woman told me, “When Rhoda and Mary talked about turning thirty in an epidode titled ‘Today I Am a Ma’am,’ it was extremely comforting.” It’s something I’ve heard a lot. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the first to feature women who were not only single and thirty but also on their own and enjoying themselves. Now it’s time to break another mold—to say, “Today I really am a ma’am!”
    My goal is to give women a laugh, a bit of encouragement, a brighter view of themselves. Behind every joke is a truth. When we laugh at ourselves, we’re happier. When we poke fun at the bizarre standards by which we are judged, we gain confidence.
       It’s Our Turn
    It feels good to talk back to the outrageous youth obsession that afflicts our culture. I can’t stand how grim everyone is about aging, as if it were a shameful secret. Osteoporosis, liver spots, vaginal dryness—oh, please! But I hate the other side of it, too. All those phony “fabulous at fifty” books written by people who never met a cellulite pocket. Face it. We aren’t all jumping for joy at being older. You don’t hear women waxing poetic about their alligator skin or the way their breasts are heading south. The point is, we can still be great. We can still be happy. And we can figure out, with humor, what it means to be us at this age.
    I’m enjoying this stage of my life. It doesn’t take me as much time to get going anymore. There was a point, not that long ago, when I wouldn’t leave the house without full makeup. Now you’re lucky if I bother to apply the line eraser makeup to the circles under my eyes.
    There have been other surprising benefits. I’ve discovered the joy of crankiness. I no longer feel compelled to be such a pleaser. And, while no one would ever accuse me of being serene, I find that it’s easier for me to get over disappointments. The voice of experience speaks to me, reminding me that nothing is ever life or death—except, of course,