The theme of one of the sessions at the recent LeadingAge national convention in Philadelphia was that the message presented by the marketing materials for retirement communities can be misleading. There is often an “ageist” bias. This topic was explored in a session called “Crafting messages that advance age and ability inclusion” (in other words: creating non-ageist marketing messages for retirement communities).
I hadn’t noticed this ageism previously, but now I see it in the marketing of almost all retirement communities (including the one where I live). It is most obvious in the photos that are chosen to illustrate life in the retirement community.
Where are the wheelchairs? Two different ageist stereotypes were emphasized. First, the marketing photos almost never depict residents with aids such as wheelchairs, walkers, or oxygen cannulas. But if you live in the community, you are constantly interacting with people using these support devices, and you can be fairly sure that you yourself will need one or another of them in due course. So when these items are avoided in the photos of actual residents, prospective residents are being given a misleading idea of what life in the retirement community is like.
Of course it is true that some people don’t want to face their potential frailty and would prefer not to have to see a realistic portrayal of where they may be heading. Some retirement communities even have rules to keep wheelchairs and other assistive devices out of the main dining room. But isn’t that encouraging self-delusion?
A typical retirement community might show a photo of healthy seniors enjoying a glass of wine on the terrace. That situation really does occur, but it is not representative of the full range of the retirement-community experience. Shouldn’t there be comparable photos in which some of the residents are in wheelchairs or using canes, for example?
Similarly, the photos of seniors jogging or working out in the in-house gym are representative of the experience of only a limited fraction of residents.
I’m just here for the care. The second stereotype that is implicit in the photos in the typical marketing materials is that what seniors are primarily interested in is being cared for. The photos often show a beaming healthcare worker bending over a grateful senior. These images, of needy seniors, are also misleading. They suggest that what the resident wants from the retirement community is primarily support and safety.
We all do want support and safety, of course, and those features of our communities are valuable to us. But at the same time, we also want agency. We want to initiate things, to choose how we organize our time, and not have everything done for us. In this sense, accepting direction from others in the name of support and safety can feel like a surrender of control. For many of us, that is not what we want in our retirement. And yet, the marketing photos that show caregivers and grateful care recipients are spreading that message.
A delicate balance is needed: residents need to be able to determine the level of care they actually welcome, and caregivers need to respect the autonomy of residents to the greatest extent possible.
Will people be put off by realistic information? One of the questions raised at the end of this LeadingAge session was whether prospective residents would react negatively to realistic photos and other information. One of the panelists, a CCRC administrator, replied that a resident had told her that the realistic photos that had been added to the website were off-putting to prospects. The administrator felt strongly that presenting a realistic image of life at the CCRC was critical. Perhaps a prospective resident who did not want to see a photo of a resident in a wheelchair was not yet ready to come to that CCRC. The administrator said she had “had to stand up to her community” on this issue.
Many other aspects of ageism and “ableism” were brought up during the session. It was clear from the energy in the room that these questions are important to a lot of people involved in senior living.
I suspect that the incoming boomer generation will welcome more realistic information about what awaits them in retirement. It is a generation that has a history of wanting facts, not just reassurance.
