So Miriam O'Reilly won her age discrimination case against the BBC today, after being dropped from 'Countryfile' (who knew that a rural affairs programme would be interested in youthful glamour?) and told to "watch those wrinkles when HD comes in". An open and shut case, surely. Miriam O'Reilly is 53 - not an age you'd expect to be confined to the scrap heap.
I don't think this ousting of older women in television is something the viewers want. I was disappointed when Arlene Phillips was axed from 'Strictly Come Dancing' as I thought she was bright, witty and knowledgeable (and with a forty-year career in choreography she certainly was). Alesha Dixon also seems bright and witty, but she's not even half as knowledgeable (how could she be expected to be?) and so the show has lost something valuable. I'm not quite sure why the BBC did that; surely the core audience for 'Strictly' isn't heterosexual men, and even if it were, aren't there enough young dancers in skimpy dresses for them to ogle? (God, now I'm really sounding like my Nan). But if anything, the viewers are being treated with more contempt that the presenters in the assumption that all we want to see on television is shiny, bright youth. We don't want real people with their experience and gravitas, Heaven forbid!
The Miriam story was reported in an online version of the newspaper I read, and readers had commented underneath it. I noticed a few of them said things along the lines of "were Miriam O'Reilly and others like her complaining about ageism when they were young and being promoted on the basis of looks?" I don't think that's at all relevant. When you're young, you're supremely self-obsessed (or was that just me?) and you skip through life not really questioning others' motives. When I was nineteen I was promoted to manager-level in a local call-centre (yes, I know - I was a high achiever). Suddenly my peers had gone from giggling eighteen year-olds to austere forty year-olds; I was the only 'young' person in the manager's group (though I've basically been about thirty-five years old since the day I was born, but that's another story).
There was one woman in particular (of around forty-five) whose behaviour towards me struck me as 'odd' after I'd achieved my promotion; she seemed pleased for me but her dealings with me seemed tinged with a kind of strange weariness that I would only now I'm a lot older, recognise as her feeling threatened by a younger person doing exactly the same job as her. At the time I didn't have a clue what it meant and just thought she didn't like me very much. Though that may have very well been true!
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