Jun 10
8
Ford’s Third Age Suit
I’ve been reading Prime Time Women, How to win the hearts, minds and business of boomer big spenders” in my quest to make Flourish Over 50 wildly successful. Everything I’ve read so far is what you and I already know:
- Women over 50 are living in the prime of their lives, with an outlook on life that is quite different than their mothers had at this age.
- We are energetic, intelligent, and optimistic.
- Women influence 80% of all purchases made, and there are consultants who are making big bucks training corporations from auto manufacturers to Home Depot in how to be more “women friendly.”
One interesting story was about Ford’s effort to design cars with “a heightened awareness of the needs of older drivers” a few years ago. So to help their engineers understand what it was like to have an older body with stiff backs, arthritic knees and pudgy bellies, they developed a special suit that simulates an older body, the Third Age Suit.
The suit is supposed to instantly add 30 years to the age of the “young engineer” who wears it. I don’t know whether to be happy that they are trying to do something nice for me, or to be offended that they think I am overweight and stiff in my 50′s.
There are about a dozen parts that take almost 30 minutes to put on. The beekeeper-looking suit has splints and restrictors that limit the movement of joints such as the hand, wrists, elbows, neck, upper and lower torso, knees and ankles to simulate the loss of mobility caused by aging and arthritis. Yellow goggles mimic the declining vision, increased sensitivity to glare and reduced sensitivity to blue light experienced by many people as they age.
I hope I never feel like I have a third-age suit on. The makers pitch it as a way to simulate “not feeling young and fit like a 30-year-old.” Perhaps that should be changed to a “75-year-old” to appeal to all of us flourishing over-50 women!
Here’s a great video about the “baby boomer simulating” suit.
