This article was published by Australia’s traveller.com.au and is republished with permission.
Coastal Grandma is a newly defined style category that is getting a lot of attention on TikTok and in the fashion press.
Who exactly is a Kustoma? Well, poster girls for the look are Diane Keaton, who effortlessly conveys the style in movies like Something has to givea romantic comedy set in the Hamptons, and Meryl Streep in It’s complicated and Hope Springsboth films about couples trying to rekindle the spark in their marriage.
Coastal grannies wear pale, loose, ornate clothes, cashmere shawls, linens, straw hats, with youthful, long hair, giving off easy seaside vibes. They live by the sea, have beautiful kitchens, love to cook or scratch in the garden, walk on the beach with their Golden Retrievers and arrange flowers, which they do with large glasses of white wine in their hands. They fall in and out of love. They are over 55, privileged and very white.
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On a positive note, “Coastal Grandma style” is one of the rare incidents where grandma and style appear in the same sentence.
What does this have to do with travel? Well, I’ve been thinking about coastal grannies and gray nomads and how our older members of society are being pushed into categories. My thoughts were inspired by a conversation with a colleague, who had regularly encountered blatant ageism in the travel industry.
Delivered
Diane Keaton is the epitome of Coastal Grandma Chic in Nancy Meyers’ 2003 film ‘Something’s Gotta Give’.
In one case, a tropical resort popular with honeymooners had shown disinterest in attracting older visitors because they weren’t the right “market,” as if over-50s never got married for the first or even third time. not reaffirm their wedding vows, or were not interested in romance and sexy tete-a-tetes on private sandbars.
Tell that to Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep.
“Honeymooners” are forever in their twenties and thirties for people with this mindset. It’s an unfortunate misconception because the last time I went to an island resort popular with honeymooners, many of the 28 guests were elderly couples. One couple chose to reaffirm their vows while on vacation. The other was a romantic proposal.
When two young newlyweds showed up, they seemed much less loved than the more mature couples, who had the benefit of the age perspective to appreciate their great fortune of finding or holding on to a great love in their later years.
And these easily fired old folks also had the resources for the expensive vacation. A family group on the island included two younger couples and an older couple. The parents had paid for the multi-generational trip for their children and partners. When not with their families, the parents set off and traveled the world on adventure cruises and safaris, the more challenging the better.
Are they not the market for a luxury resort?
This is indicative of the kind of casual ageism that permeates everything, especially travel. Older travelers are divided into two categories: cruisers and motorhomes. It’s very dismissive.
For example, the cruisers are not necessarily happy with Bingo and Trivia. There are cruises for singles and cruises for swingers for a generation that was freer and more liberated than their children. One unintended consequence is the rise of sexually transmitted diseases among the over-65s, which is worrying enough for the UK’s Health Protection Agency to warn against sex on cruises a few years ago.
But it’s not just sex. When your time is running out, you can become more adventurous, open to new experiences, rather than less.
There is also the assumption that everyone over 60 is retired and has a lot of time to spare. That is absurd these days. Not everyone can afford to retire. Not everyone wants to retire.
Young people are beginning to discover that a life outside the office or permanent address is not only possible, but desirable under certain circumstances. The Gray Nomads, elderly travelers who turn life into one long road trip, are in fact trendsetters. They did it long before the Van Life movement was favored by 20-year-old digital nomads and influencers.
Coastal Grandmas and Gray Nomads are having a style moment. Like Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep, they can fall in love, run a business from their van, climb mountains, or start a new life elsewhere. It’s about time some people in the travel industry recognized it.