Wrinkles vs. Zits
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon says
Michael Wolff ... does the nation a favor and shows that yep, The Village is more worried about politician’s sex lives than about what the public cares about, which is policy and leadership.
Politics is now about sex. Not just scandalous sex, not just who is having what kind of sex, but what we think about the sex each politician is having, or not having. Sex (sex, not gender) in politics is as significant a subtext as race.
Which I have to say is unmitigated bullshit. The illustration for the article is of Eliot Spitzer, and that entire scandal is totally about gender. There’s no term for a “call boy” (though a few do exist, servicing men predominantly) for a reason. Prostitution is about gender more than sex, especially in our modern culture that tolerates a lot more sexual freedom to change partners and men can’t reasonably say that they have to pay for it to get laid outside of marriage. (Especially, as I’ve noted before, a famous, wealthy, and not horribly ugly man like Eliot Spitzer.)
The rest of the article proves my point—Wolf longs for a time when middle aged men were protected by a society of men to have affairs with younger women without getting caught. If it was about sex and not gender, he’d have nothing to moan over. Because his notion that cheating has been done to death by disapproving soccer moms enacting a matriarchy (his words—no, really) is not born out by the statistics. Men and women both cheat at robust levels. There’s more than enough adultery going on for Wolf to imagine to keep his dick hard for forever, if this is really about his love of cheating and not about gender.
But it’s about gender. Cheating is not the point. Men getting to sneak around behind their wives’ backs with younger women is the loss he bemoans, and of course, women don’t get equal cheating rights, but that’s because they’re all dried up anyway.
...But women don’t need that kind of sexual freedom in their middle age, because we’re dried up. So that’s how to explain how the sexual-freedom-for-men-but-not-for-women attitude isn’t unfair. But he doesn’t address the other factor that pierced the wall of protection men built around their cruelties and adulteries in the past—the large scale female dependence on men that made fighting back or speaking up financially destructive. The culture he wants back wasn’t just randomly tolerant of men’s proclivities. Women didn’t like it then, but it took having a more equal footing to push back. And how much have we really accomplished, even then? Flip on your TV and witness the ads for “Girls Gone Wild”. Our culture still coddles the belief that humiliating and hurting women is “sex”, even if a few randy feminists demand that sex be defined as naked pleasure for all parties.
Read the quote in context here. (Emphasis in last paragraph mine.)
So! You feeling dried up? I'm always surprised how many people say you are. Over 16 (sez the National Review) or over 25 (said, I believe, Diana Vreeland) and now Michael Wolf in Vanity Fair.
Sort of baffling seeing all these older men "needing" younger women because women their age are "all dried up" while *younger* men daydream about cougars and MILFs.
Amanda's right and Wolf is full of crap. It *is* about gender then. Because how the hell do women "dry out" with age in any way that men don't? Sure *everybody* loses a step at some point but... for one thing it's the *same point,* and I'm not really seeing that much impact "dry up" wise between needing a little more lube at fifty than needing a little more viagra or a cock ring. And I'm not seeing a *real* difference because it's *not there!* Oh, or do you mean wrinkles? Yeah, fifty-year-old men and women have wrinkles and... fifteen-year-old men and women have oily skin and zits. So...
So if there's no difference in *reality* but there's a difference in *perception* then since gender in general is constructed we call that difference a *gender* difference and not a biological one.
I mean...
I mean...
What's *wrong* with us? Us men? Us *anybody* who spins these lines to each other?
%@%*#%!
Yeah, fifty-year-old men and women have wrinkles and... fifteen-year-old men and women have oily skin and zits. So...
Then there's women like me - I'm forty and have wrinkles AND zits!
Seriously though, my experience has been that most of my friends and I got hornier and more "into" sex as we got older (with some exceptions), especially once pregnancy was no longer a "threat" (via sterilization or menopause). I don't think any of us would consider ourselves "dried up."
Adultery is definitely an equal-opportunity past-time, in my experience. I think women just don't flaunt it, don't take the chances that men seem to.
[I agree that if you include the "some exceptions" clause you're definitely right. Which is why little statements about "drying up" are just so annoying. And insulting. And, worse, *counterproductive!* And not Parado optimal! :-) Thanks, Bunny. Also 10-4 on both wrinkles and zits. --fl]
I still have zits and now I am starting to have wrinkles, too. I can't win.
[Me too. But we still win. Screw wrinkles and zits, right? Might as well complain about death and taxes. When I brought it up I wasn't saying one was better or either were bad, I was just challenging the claim that "old" is just of necessity somehow worse than "young." Without which the guy's whole argument sort of falls apart. Thanks, Mag. --fl]
I'm amused by this sentence in the Vanity Fair article, "Therein lies Barack Obama’s advantage: he’s not middle-aged and, hence, not, well, gross. "
Hello? Barack Obama is almost exactly my age, mid-forties. Is anyone going to tell me I'm not middle-aged yet?
Now, I'll grant that Obama's a lot better looking than me, but then, you know, so are a lot of actresses our same age, and I don't hear anyone saying they're not middle-aged yet either. Certainly Hillary Clinton was already counted middle-aged when she was our age.
[It's a silly distinction anyway. "Middle age" is kind of arbitrary, ranging as it does from some time after maybe 35 to sometime before maybe 70, and what I think matters to most people isn't how many calendar flips there've been but health, fitness, adventurousness, and a lot of other qualities that aren't really tied that tightly to elapsed years. Thanks, Lynn. --fl]
I was going to nod, noting that Obama is exactly my age, and I thought I'd go check on just how exact it is. To my infinite amusement, he was born the day after I was.
Sunflower
[That's always a great piece of trivia to be able to share,Sunflower. Not earth-shattering but certainly fun. --fl]
There’s no term for a “call boy” (though a few do exist, servicing men predominantly) for a reason.
Well, women don't have to pay for sex. When I want sex, I get sex.
[And if so then you're actually kind of lucky -- a lot of *women* find it's harder than they expected. But I think true or not the expectation that there has to be something *really* wrong with a woman for her to have trouble finding a partner has a lot of social consequences. Thanks, Kate. --fl]
*runs through in a hurry*
35 years old.
WAY better and hornier than I used to be ... and I'm pretty sure its not going to suddenly run dry when I'm 40.
I have zits ... and crows feet. Feh!
[Yup. I started getting crow's feet at around age 25, and I still had zits to boot. I think you're doing fine,RPB. --f]
"APOLITO henpecks" I love the captcha's I always see on here.
There’s no term for a “call boy” (though a few do exist, servicing men predominantly)
Actually there is such a term. Only it's "rent boy", not "call boy". And if anything it's used with even more derision.
[Good point, SnowdropExplodes. Also just for what it's worth, Pepper Schwartz has documented what boils down to women's sex tourism in, especially, the South Pacific. Not to say it's *anything* like the scope or scale of male prostitution but there may be more structural reasons than innate ones. Thanks. --fl]
I'm 31 and not middle aged yet, but the husband is nearing 40 and getting to it. Honestly, we have more and better sex now than we did when we were first married (and I was 21 and he was pushing 30). I hold out hope that in 10 more years when we actually are middle aged, we'll be having, if not more, then better sex than we're having now.
Also, according to my mom, who is 51, sex is definitely better now than when she was my age. And, since she divorced and is available, she doesn't lack for offers either. So I guess some people find normal, slightly overweight, vital, and active middle aged women attractive.
[See! 51 isn't so bad! And Pepper Schwartz in Prime says 61 was pretty darn good for her too. Having just rounded my age up from 53 to 55 (so I'll have the same age for the next three years, after which I'll probably round straight up to 60) I can seriously appreciate spring chickens like you... and your mom. :-) Thanks, ks. --fl]