Ok, so it’s probably just me but I’ve been noticing lately that the narrative for non-very-young women is really starting to shift. As would be expected in a culture completely immersed in the mad fantasy that women are the “no-sex” class, women themselves are generally right at home with there sexuality whereas society is stuck trying to catch up with the concept.
How else to explain Chicago Sun-Times relationships writer Leslie Baldacci’s flustered outburst?
Women over 50 want sex. Lots of sex. Hot sex. And when they get it, they write about it so others, too, can learn how to get lots of hot sex.
What else to conclude from the new niche of sex-and-older-women books? Here are a few that have come out recently:
See Baldacci’s highly-scattershot set of book blurbs introduced here.
I say flustered in part because at least several of the authors she cites aren’t yet 50 and several books aren’t really about women over 50 either. (Aside: I’ve read two of the books in Baldacci’s list and highly, highly recommend both: Pepper Schwartz’s Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years. Schwartz is 62 and her wonderful book is about her experiences since her mid 50s’. The other is Esther Perel’s Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic. Perel’s amazingly thought-provoking book is about relationships in general, and she herself seems quite young. Other books in the series include Cissy Wechter’s Sex & the 60s: How to Survive as a Senior Woman In Today’s Dating World, Gail Belsky’s Over the Hill and Between the Sheets: Sex, Love, and Lust in Middle Age, which look interesting and seem to be on the mark but there’s also Holly H. Hollenbeck’s Sex Lives of Wives: Reigniting the Passion fits only if you equate “wife” and “over 50.” But I digress…)
Also here in town the alt-weekly kiosks feature a splashy cover story about the “elusive northwest cougar”. Note: “cougar” seems to be an anxious euphemism for “women older than 22 who don’t have to be manipulated into enjoying sex.” (As opposed to…? Only “no-sex” class ideologues knows for sure. On the bright side nobody seems to call them victims of “mid-life crisis.”)
I dunno. This seems like another one of those areas where “evolutionary biology” is revealed more as a source of metaphor than of scientific utility. Growing up I was told that women lost interest in sex around menopause. In the early 1980s sociobiologists opined this loss of interest was “designed” to help those “dried out” women concentrate on the offspring of their younger, more desirable children. Others, acknowledged that older women have active sex lives but averred that their horniness was desperation-induced in order to compensate for being all old and wrinkly. And all that subtle genetic sophistication in a species that didn’t work out basic hygene till 1867!
Yeah, well. When different decades draw different conclusions from identical data…
Me? I’ve got my own theory: given time, motive, interest, opportunity and, most importatly, economic security and self-reliance, human beings are a lot more likely to actively seek sex for personal enjoyment instead of bottling it up due to economic pressure or the pressure of one’s peers and elders (especially when one one’s self becomes an “elder!”) I know. I know! Evolutionary psychology says there has to be a genetic explanation for that somewhere. And I agree: we evolved the genes for large brains.
Now call me a rebel. Even call me a victim of mid-life crisis. But I’ve got at least as many crushes on women in their 40s and 50s right now as I do women in their 20s or 30s. For that matter, while I don’t know very many in either group I’ve got more crushes on women in their 60s than in their teens. Which in a big way is a good thing — barring tragedy we’re all going to grow older and, again barring tragedy, we’re very likely to remain pretty much the same people we’ve always been… minus perhaps a few “told you so’s” here and there as we grow to know better.
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Mon, 2007-08-13 13:08.
"..."cougar" seems to be an anxious euphemism for "women older than 22 who don't have to be manipulated into enjoying sex." "
I love that you describe this as an "anxious" euphemism. I HATE this term. I have been called it, I'm so sad to say, and when this occurs, I reject it emphatically. I am not a predatory "older" woman looking to shack up with young guys and...what? Fuck them? Certainly. Take them for all their worth? God, no. But, I'm told there is an implication there for wanting more than young cock. Trust me when I tell you that the young men I've been with have been the predators. Oh yes, no talent lacking there.
This cougar term is also somewhat related to the MILF, acronym (mother I'd like to fuck...thank you very much). I also find this to be as derogatory as cougar. Aside from the fact that we're talking about mothers, for gods sakes (and the implication there is just too fucking creepy) it just perpetuates a leniency in condoning men, of whatever age, to objectify women.
Okay, I'm done. I'm sorry. This is a sore spot for me. Being a woman of a certain age myself (what the hell does that mean?), I'm a little sensitive to being categorized.
whew....
Eve
[I'm pretty sure "certain age" means over 22 but not yet a great-grandmother. And yeah, "cougar" for "adult who's not pretending she's still 17" is a silly designation. Thanks, Eve. --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Sun, 2007-08-12 12:25.
Over 22? Gosh! I just heard the term "cougar" a couple of weeks ago from a friend telling a story about a man having a relationship with a woman 5-10 years his senior. I didn't know there was a word for that. From reading the SW article I am not sure that society is indeed catching up with the concept. It seems more like putting the spot light on a curiosity that accepting it. Is it the imagined reversal of power that makes it so interesting? I don't feel comfortable with the implication that these older cunning women are out to get the younger unsuspecting men. Come on. These are all relationships between consenting adults, who are very well aware of their mutual ages. I don't feel like "the archetype of the oversexed, predatory older woman" but the men I've been meeting lately have all been ~5 years younger than me. I am 27, single woman, living in a college town. That's how you meet younger men. Confidence helps. So does refusing to feel guilty for knowing what you want and getting it. I completely agree with your theory. Thanks for discussing the topic!
[I agree somewhat about the curiosity factor you mentioned. I think it's ok in the sense that it's a step up from the tradition of invisibility, but only if it's a next step. Demographics, if nothing else, make me think it *is* just a next step, but yeah, at the moment there's a lot of rubbernecking at the novelty. Well see. Thanks, Iva! --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-08-11 12:27.
"they've never struck me as quite so obsessed with youth culture"
You're absolutely right, and I particularly enjoy men's attitudes in France. Without a doubt, age is no limit, and I'm still often quite taken aback (when the insurance man looks deep in your eyes it can take your mind off the subject at hand...). There can be rather too much emphasis on outward appearance at times, but men and women of all ages really can enjoy each other.
So yes, do keep healthy. If you were single I'd be waiting for you :)
[Why thank you, A. --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Sat, 2007-08-11 11:56.
Older women? What is "older women"? Over 40 wasn't considered to be older even when I was in my 40s (and I usually just miss all waves of new thought), not among the men or women I knew anyway. It wasn't until I hit 50 that I started to feel people were considering me a species apart.
Nevertheless all is not lost. My mother (88) lives in a retirement complex and you might be surprised at the stories she tells. The latest: a woman I know relatively well has joined up with a man living there, a good few years her senior. She hasn't moved in but stays overnight frequently, prompting neighbours to suggest she wears rather more when she looks round the garden next morning. They are very clearly having a sexual relationship and they make no secret about it. This is not the first such relationship there. It's enlightening and heartening.
AS time goes on, the problem is not so much finding a man interested in an older woman, as finding (to put it bluntly) a man alive. We do get into a demographic problem as we age. Perhaps there should be rather more research into why.
[Same situation in my mom's retirement community and, I expect, it'll be the same when we get there too. I'll make a point of staying healthy then, A. As for people our age I think the French might have a leg up -- they've never struck me as quite so obsessed with youth culture. Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-08-10 18:18.
"Growing up I was told that women lost interest in sex around menopause."
Please explain how this statement fits into the women as the no-sex class paradigm. If you were told (as I'm sure many were and still are) that women lose interest in sex around menopause, then that means they had to have been interested in sex to begin with.
[All I know is if you asked questions like that in 8th-grade health you got sent to the office. Less flippantly, I think the emphasis on teenage virginity-harboring and pregnancy avoidance was so high they didn't bother to keep the message consistent for older, married, and therefore "used" women. I just know that sex-ed for boys strenuously advanced the idea that normal, healthy "nice girls" weren't interested and that girls who did had something wrong with them. And again, just to be very clear, I'm working to subvert that paradigm, not endorsing it. Thanks, Totem. --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-08-10 22:47.
The problem with finding partners in your later years is that while you're still as interested in sex as always, if not more, you're not only competing with women your own age, you're competing with women in their 20s and 30s, who don't have nearly as much mileage. And the reverse doesn't work so well. Few men in the 20s are interested in a woman in her 50s. And even if they were... ew! Too young!
While we still feel sexual and vibrant on the inside, by the time we hit 50 we're looking a bit the worse for wear on the outside. Grey hair and wrinkles aren't the best tools for attracting men and men are visual creatures.
While I'm often told I look as much as 10 years younger than I do, it's still not a look that screams, "Sex!" to most men.
I am not amused.
But I am enjoying the pictures.
[Hey Dawn! Thanks for stopping by. The most amazing aphorism I think I ever hear was from a social theorist who said "It's a mistake to imagine your lives in retirement will be anything like your parent's or grandparent's." Pepper Schwartz goes into that a lot in her latest book, particularly in the last chapter (which I'm going to have to do a big post on as soon as I can find where I misplaced it.) I think the main task isn't to create new conceptions about women *or* men over 40 but to subtract old misconceptions. And, however clumsily Leslie Baldacci might have handled it, the same women who overturned our conceptions of young women back in the 1970s seem ready to do it again in middle and old age. I might add that men of our generation are going to need to do some work as well. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-08-10 17:44.
I just wonder how those older women find the men to have sex with.
[That's still an excellent question, Five. I think we've talked about it before, and I agree it's still hard to find singles in your niche but, especially since people really are starting to open their eyes and realize there are millions just like you, I think it'll get easier. I sure hope so, Five. Thanks. --fl]
Submitted by 1538 (not verified) on Fri, 2007-08-10 14:58.
Ok, so wtf at this quote from one of the books: "Older women can please men in ways our daughters will never know". Is the author planing to kill her daughters to ensure they never become older women?
I think the paradigm here assumes that if women do want to have sex it is only as the means to an end -- the end being children. So once you are past that I guess the only possible motivation allowed by it is gone. And I do know women for whom that was true, but I doubt they are at all representative. At 39 I guess I am almost smack in the middle of those two expanses you give, and I would say my interest in sex is still increasing rather than decreasing. I don't feel the urge to write a book about it though, because well, it doesn't seem that interesting to anyone but me and my partners.
Enjoying the latest picture series btw -- I guess it would have made more sense to put that comment in a post with one of the pictures, but oh well.
["Older women can please... more than daughters ever could..." Yeah, that's logically impossible unless no daughter ever never becomes an older women... which itself is logically impossible. s As for other motiviations, yeah, for literal millenia people (mostly but not exclusively men) have insisted that women desire only children and therefore put up with sex. Yes, sometimes they're seen as absolutely rabid for sex but always with the assumption that it's *really* "for the children's sake." And no, I don't really get why it would be that way -- especially since I'm really dissatisfied with the still-popular Freudian explanations. Thanks, E. --fl]