“I don’t care what society says about women our age. Sex must not be taken off the table!” This double-entendre line from the recent film, Book Club, reflects a shift in public discourse about sex and aging. The film is a jovial portrayal of four older women’s discovery of the book, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Many of us, at the end of a busy day, just want something light and entertaining to watch. For many individuals, this rules out watching anything to do with older adulthood; any film dealing with aging and growing older would not, by definition, be an entertaining film.

When I was in my early twenties, I wrote a really bad poem about climbing trees at different points in my life: as a little kid, and then projecting all the way into my imagined eighties.

The other night I dreamt that I was walking outside and as I walked, my thoughts left word prints on the ground. The words just spilled out and arranged themselves on the ground behind me as I moved along.

The concept of “successful aging” has been around for some time, and has gained increasing currency over the past few years. It is fueled by oodles of books, films, academic articles, newspaper columns, blogs, and social media musings. But how does one measure successful aging?

Living in a society that uncritically accepts the denigration of aging and elderhood can be like living with polluted air. Polluted air will affect your health and longevity. Polluted perceptions of older adulthood can affect your emotional and physical health as well. Such perceptions of older adulthood are prevalent in the stories presented to us on TV and in films.

One day, many years ago, my teenaged son was introducing me to some of his friends. After the introduction, he added: “He makes boring films about old people.” We all had a good chuckle over that, but later it struck me as a poignant reflection of the societally ageist waters we all swim in every day—waters that refuse to nurture an acceptance of our human life cycle in its later stages. My son was simply reflecting back the perceptions of the culture he was swimming in.

Long before there were cameras to capture images, our early ancestors were creating images of their own.