新视野大学英语读写教程听力 第四册 课文 te-08c_new

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[00:00.00]喜欢hxen.net，就把hxen.net复制到QQ个人资料中！ What Does It Really Mean to Grow Old
[00:-1.00]In my late fifties, and then my sixties, I heard,
[00:-2.00]"I can't believe you're that old. You don't look that old."
[00:-3.00]At first that felt like praise. Then I became a bit uneasy.
[00:-4.00]It reminded me of early pre-feminist days
[00:-5.00]when I was complimented by some men for being "smarter",
[00:-6.00]and "more independent" than those "other" women.
[00:-7.00]Slowly other experiences began to accumulate,
[00:-8.00]reminding me of a real change in my life status.
[00:-9.00]First, I moved.
[00:10.00]And while I found easy acceptance among older people in the community,
[00:11.00]when younger people talked to me they invariably would say something like,
[00:12.00]"You remind me of my grandmother." Grandmother?!
[00:13.00]I felt like I had been given a label and my position lowered somehow.
[00:14.00]Recently, I have, in fact, become a grandmother.
[00:15.00]I found most young friends expected me — automatically —
[00:16.00]to "be" a certain way.
[00:17.00]Many of those expectations were in accord with what I felt.
[00:18.00]Some were not. I did not instantly fall in love with my grandson.
[00:19.00]I was much more drawn to my daughter and what she was experiencing.
[00:20.00]I must admit that I am now a devoted grandmother,
[00:21.00]but being put in a particular category about that bothered me,
[00:22.00]as though all of my reactions could be known in advance
[00:23.00]and belonged to the general group "grandmother" rather than to me.
[00:24.00]I lost some money recently through bad judgment
[00:25.00]and suddenly had the realization that I would never be able to replace it.
[00:26.00]I do not have enough time left to be able to earn that money again.
[00:27.00]I looked in the mirror and saw lots of wrinkles.
[00:28.00]I had a hard time fitting that outward me with the me inside.
[00:29.00]I felt like the same person, but outside I looked different.
[00:30.00]I checked into a face lift, with much unease.
[00:31.00]What a piece of marketing took place in that doctor's office!
[00:32.00]He told me he would make me less strange to myself.
[00:33.00]I would look more like I felt! I became frightened by the whole process.
[00:34.00]Who was I then? This face? What I felt like inside?
[00:35.00]How come the two images were not connected?
[00:36.00]My own ageism told me that how I looked outside was ugly.
[00:37.00]But I felt the same inside, not ugly at all.
[00:38.00]Finally, death entered my life as a direct reality.
[00:39.00]My oldest friend died of cancer three years ago.
[00:40.00]My father died two years ago after what turned out to be needless surgery.
[00:41.00]Another close friend died last month after a year of struggling with cancer.
[00:42.00]My mother is dying slowly and painfully after suffering a massive stroke.
[00:43.00]The realization hit me that I can expect this kind
[00:44.00]of personal contact with death to occur with greater and greater frequency.
[00:45.00]Not just my age,
[00:46.00]but life itself was telling me that I was becoming an older/old woman!
[00:47.00]Think of all the adjectives that are most disrespectful in our society.
[00:48.00]They are all part of the ageist description of old women:
[00:49.00]useless, powerless, complaining, sick, weak, conservative, rigid,
[00:50.00]helpless, uNPRoductive, wrinkled, ugly, unattractive, and on and on.
[00:51.00]How did this happen, this picture of old women?
[00:52.00]To understand this phenomenon we must look at our society's insistence
[00:53.00]that women are only valuable when they are attractive and useful to men.
[00:54.00]Women spend their lives accepting the idea that
[00:55.00]to be beautiful one must be young,
[00:56.00]and only beauty saves one from being discarded.
[00:57.00]Women's survival, both physical and psychological,
[00:58.00]has been linked to their ability to please men.
[00:59.00]It is small wonder that the prospect of growing old is frightening to women.
[-1:00.00]By denying our ageing, we hope to escape the penalties placed upon growing old.