Pole dancers in care homes? I’d send them strippers too!
WE’VE heard much about how Hollywood actresses, lactating mums, ethnic minorities, gay men, transgender people and even schoolboys forced to wear long trousers in hot weather feel slighted.
But the most outrageous, offensive piece of patronising despotism took place last week, and it was aimed at a much maligned sector of society we barely ever hear a peep from, other than when they say ‘I’m fine’ and ‘Thank you, dear’.
In response to requests from residents of the Fairmile Grange care home in Christchurch, Dorset, for ‘more modern-style activities’ (even that is touchingly sweet, tired as they probably are of endless bingo sessions and Emmerdale omnibuses), its managers hired six female pole dancers to entertain the inmates.
A pole was erected in the communal lounge, and the dancers twirled to Abba and Frank Sinatra (I hope they didn’t play My Way: ‘And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain…’). The ensuing outrage centred around the fact that elderly men and women had been subjected to such a sight, even though they said they quite liked it.
A local councillor, Denise Jones, champion for older people, would you believe, deemed the pole dancing ‘inappropriate’. ‘I’m a bit staggered about it,’ she said, probably snapping her copy of Fifty Shades shut. ‘While I’m always delighted to see the horizons of older people widened, I’m not sure that includes pole dancing.’
The last people on earth who need their horizons widened are the elderly. They have seen and done it all. They may well have lost their soul mate, a child possibly, careers, houses, friends, independence and maybe even memories. Haven’t they lost enough? Shouldn’t they still be able to laugh and be amazed at that young woman’s athleticism?
We treat them like infants, but no middle-aged person would want to stay in one of these places: bored, imprisoned, pitied, playing a waiting game. Just as all beautiful young woman are assumed to be stupid, so the elderly are meant to conform to a one-sizefits-all, outdated template of what an old person should be like: a cross between Private Godfrey and Mrs Pepperpot.
It’s bad enough our senior citizens have been shipped off by ungrateful families to institutions where they are unable to cook, garden or keep a pet. It’s bad enough that in too many care homes residents are subjected not just to pinching, neglect and awful food but to over-loud voices shouting their first names sing-song fashion. It’s bad enough their children rarely visit, or if they do, count the minutes on their Apple watches until it can be deemed acceptable to leave.
I’m not advocating all old people should stay in their own homes or live with their children once they become infirm. My generation of women, the ones who should be shouldering the task, are far too brainwashed by ‘because I’m worth it’ propaganda to ever put a parent first, their menfolk too resentful to possibly convert a room downstairs. It’s a tough, highly skilled job looking after an old person.
And who, really, would want to be a relative moving into that atmosphere? You would no longer be Granny. You would just be a burden.
And your own home, once the NHS and carers commandeer it, is quickly divested of its identity and turned into an institution: even your own bed, the one your husband died in next to you, replaced with something narrow and cot-like.
No wonder so many older people prefer to move out into care, rather than sully memories with so much equipment, which is always, always salmon pink.
IF A care home is indeed the only viable option, then the least we can do is make them less like an Eastern European Premier Inn: let’s have squashy club chairs, vegetable gardens, a bar and a pool table instead of nylon carpets and views of the car park.
How about a yoga class instead of the constant blare of the television, and t’ai chi on the lawn. How about a visiting hair salon, and pedicurist. Afraid it will cost too much? As the Dorset pole dancers show, there are plenty of volunteers willing to show off their skills.
Given how successful last year’s Channel 4 experiment of placing four-year-olds in a nursing home was, how about twinning every care home with a local primary? And in the evening, special performances by the Chippendales: each elderly lady would be given a bottle of baby oil and biceps to buff. It may not help them live longer, but I bet it would make them die happier.