How to Age Without Fear and Be Bolder: An Interview with Dominique Afacan

When thirty-something friends Dominique Afacan and Helen Cathcart set up Bolder to try and conquer their fear of ageing they had no idea how popular it would become. Through interviewing older people and celebrating their verve, wisdom and perspectives they created inspiration – not just for themselves, but for an audience of peers keen to see growing older could be an enriching experience. And with a new Bolder book out this month, both are as passionate as ever about looking at ageing in a positive and powerful light.

We talked to Dominque about the impact that Bolder has had both on her life and on the narrative around ageing in society.

What was the inspiration behind setting up the Bolder website?

Helen and I first met in our twenties when we were working at an inflight magazine publisher – she was a photographer and I was an editor and we used to get sent on assignments together a lot. By the time we were in our mid-thirties we’d started panicking because neither of us had ticked off any of the life milestones you’re “meant” to have ticked off by certain ages. People kept saying things like, ‘ooh, you’re running out of time,’ and that would make us panic even more and think, ‘it’s all downhill from here.

But we also suspected that this was ridiculous and decided that we should do something about it. Over a bottle of wine, we thought, ‘Why don’t we meet some of these people rather than just imagining how rubbish it’s all going to be, and then we can speak to them about their lives and photograph them?’

We decided to make the people we would interview 70 and above because that was the age we felt was “old” then – I don’t know why. Obviously since then we’ve changed that dramatically and now anyone at the 70 end is a “bit too young”. The first person we talked to was an artist and he was still creating, enjoying what he did and was full of energy and life and that instantly started to make us feel better.

The website grew quickly – it obviously struck a chord with people – and within six months we were speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival, and getting loads of press. We also had loads of people writing to us saying, ‘thank you, I needed to hear this,’.

Was it the lack of visibility of positive older people that prompted you to do this?

There were other websites celebrating older people at the time – but the point of difference was that there was no one our age doing it. Once we started, we realised it was our generation who needed it most, because the older people didn’t care about ageing any more. Everyone we spoke to was like, ‘old news, get over it dude,’ it’s our age group that are scared. So linking the generations became an important part of what we were doing and our audience was actually totally different to how we imagined it would be; in fact it ended up being most popular with people of our own age.

Do you think a lack of generational interaction and generational role models is a key reason we live in such an ageist society?

I think the lack of intergenerational conversations is a big part of it – and I also think there’s a communal fear of getting old, so we like to put it off and pretend that that’s not something that’s going to happen to us. Ageism is a ridiculous prejudice because we’re ultimately being prejudiced against ourselves – we’re all ageing every minute.

What do you consider to be “old” now, having written Bolder?

I’ve changed my opinion about age – and any labelling at all to be honest. It’s become apparent to me that age is, to coin a cliché, just a number, not a homogenous group that we can just shove everyone “old” in to.

I’ve met people who are 72, frail but with a brilliant mind and I’ve met 90 year olds who are jumping out of planes, so there really isn’t a one size fits all, ‘this is what you’ll be when you’re 75!’ answer. One of the doctors I spoke to for Bolder said, ‘we don’t look at age in the medical world, we look at biological or medical age,’. In other words, age is not necessarily aligned with how many years you’ve been on the planet.

How dangerous it is to let society dictate what ageing should look like?

I found it stressful even at my age being told what I should do and all the things I should have achieved and it’s no different when you get to 70 when society’s telling you that you’ll probably be ill and you’ll probably be lonely. It’s dangerous because it becomes self-fulfilling in a way, and it also spawns more fear which is what got us here in the first place.