![catherine-deneuve1[1]](http://tartandsoul.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/catherine-deneuve111.jpg?w=500 "catherine-deneuve1[1]")
Something odd happened when I hit thirty. The men in my life got younger. Every year, I get one year older while the men who approach me seem to get one year younger. By the time I hit fifty, I’ll have to date a fetus.
Many of these guys in their twenties want to play “there’s no way you’re older than me,” then get all keyed up once they discover I’ve passed the thirty mark. The latest was an adorable artist who bought me drinks a few months ago to talk about the existential crisis he’s suffering. None of the poor guy’s dreams have come to fruition and here he is, staring down the barrel of twenty-four. I was considering calling him to distract myself from my recent heartbreak until my friend Dave gave me the chilling news: call the kid and you’re a cougar.
I hate Dave.
This Cougar stuff is the worst thing to happen to women since the crimping iron. It’s an offensive, freakish aberration that doesn’t look good on anybody. I say we chuck it along with MILFs.
Years back, I had a brief “thing” with a 22-year old. Mark was waiting to move into a new apartment, so I rented him a room at mine. We spent a couple weeks drinking wine and staying up until dawn talking about God and sex and Vonnegut. Mark was as interesting, as creative, as wily as a man twice his age, but he was young so everything about him was on the surface and raw. He hadn’t been around long enough to censor himself and stop feeling. Hadn’t yet polished his ideas, so listening to him was like meeting Hunter Thompson in a dream.
Mark and I never consummated our attraction which is probably why we remain friends today. A long-term relationship was probably not in the cards for us, as Mark’s life was ascending while mine was just coming in for a landing. But we liked each other. I was no predator and he was no prey.
The “Mark thing” made me feel like Isabelle Huppert, this great French actress who gets to play seductively remote older women in movies. In one film, she has a mutually obsessive affair with a young wonderstud. The film is about lust, passion and the turmoil both can provoke. It’s not about some old biddy pathetically chasing young tail, only to be reminded that she’s gross and should no longer be having sex. A Spanish film I watched had two men fighting over a beauty in her forties, much to the dismay of the twenty-five year old babe who couldn’t keep anyone’s attention no matter how insistently she strutted around in a bikini.
Then there was a scene in a French film with sixtysomething Catherine Deneuve nude in a bathtub, epitomizing the complex beauty and sensuality that can come with age and experience. Seeing it made me want to be Catherine Deneuve when I’m sixty. Hell, I want to be Catherine Deneuve now.
Seems the beautiful, lustful older woman isn’t an ogre in other cultures. Like fine wine, she gets better with age. And being a decade or two older than her lover only adds another layer of eroticism to the exchange.
All this to say, I’m totally moving to Europe when I retire.
There is no “Cougar Phenomenon,” don’t let ‘em tell you otherwise. Occasionally seeking out no-strings situations, especially after being entangled for too long, is not something only men do. Wanting to couple up with hard-bodied hotties at their physical prime is human. And though age may make our options dwindle, it never stops us from wanting connection and passion in our lives.
Instead of distracting myself with a cute twenty-four year old, I’m going to nurse my heavy heart and wait for something real. But should I find myself alone in my fifties and a similar opportunity comes along, I won’t feel guilty about considering it. Whether he’s 24, 34 or 54, any man’s a catch as long as he’s solid and his soul is alive. As a wise woman once said, “it’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men.”
“By the time I hit fifty, I’ll have to date a fetus.”
I was approached by a 24 y/o online who wanted to know if I wanted to “feel 24 again.” Maybe these guys are attracted to who they think are alpha females?
coming in for a landing?
come on girl, you’re just re-fueling
Asked if I wanted to “feel 24 again”…. hahahahahahahaha
“By the time I hit fifty, I’ll have to date a fetus.”
The funniest line ever.
I dated a fetus. Her prelife experiences were so limited it was hard to talk to her. In fact it was impossible.
cougars get what they want !!!and there sexy i im 20 and im fuckin a 32 year old its the best sex
Whatever that 32-year-old’s taught Ron, it isn’t English usage.
I would say go for it. Don’t let other people cloud your judgement. I prefer to regret the things I did, than the things I didn’t do.
I don’t have those feeling things, but I know who rouses them, and it definitely aint my age group. To be safe…I am actually into cougars
What great writing! I’ll be sure to come back. (Came to you via Slate comment.) I named my blog as part joke/part reclamation a few years ago, based on a part I had in a play, and it stuck. But whenever there’s a cougar uptick in popular culture, I have to debate this all over again. Contemplated changing the blog name, but nahhh.
Came her via your comment on Jezebel, and I agree with you. Cougar is another objectification and marginalization of women and is ridiculous. I’m 34 years old; from 30-33 I was with a man who was 7 years younger than me, and someone recently jokingly called me a cougar.
It’s ridiculous, and I personally, can’t wait for the fascination with this to end.
Just the trailer of Cougar Town pissed me off, the way Courtney Cox rips open her robe and flashes the audience for approval. The show’s producers seemed to be telegraphing, “Don’t worry. Our cougar still looks like a kitten.” — (Because the only way 40 can be the new 20 here in the States is if you still look at least 30.) And anyway, shouldn’t the gratuitous shot have been of a man?
Along the same lines… many forty-something actresses, like Mary Louise Parker, are stripping for men’s mags and showing that ‘despite their age,’ they’re still fit and hot. Which I wouldn’t have a problem with if Charlie Sheen and other middle-aged actors also tried to pass inspection. But they just get an automatic pass.
It’s this double standard that made me uneasy with the whole Liz Phair transformation that EW talks about in Slate (which is how I landed on your blog). First, it wasn’t Phair’s potty mouth that got my attention (EW lost me on that one. Imagine a guy gasping and giggling because Mick sings, “you’d make a dead man come.”) What grabbed me was her real “girl power”; the fact that she wrote her own material — and it kicked — and that she could play her own instrument. To see her tarted-up on the cover of her album… even my boyfriend winced and said she was trying too hard. I love Chrissie Hynde’s qoute about the real r-n-r attitude: “Remember…It’s not “fuck me”, it’s “fuck you!”
End. Thanks for this space and the blog entry. Good content and good writing.
If you are still competitive in the dating market go for it. It will give the older guys something to think about if they can’t fall back on hot women their own age, as many guys are still operating under wildly optomistic dating ideas and tend to pester younger girls as there are a lot more of them trying to date down than the women. And not all of the guys are at all competitive in the dating realm they have chosen. Women’s dating markets tend to be more targeted from my experience.
I have a friend who is about your age and her prefered range seems to be younger by about 5-10 yrs and she is hit on by guys even younger all the time, whom she typically rejects as not mature enough. But she practically lives in the gym and fits the trophy wife type but with brains, so the guys are cherry picking. I can’t imagine her dating guys her own age as a lot of older men are flabby. She blames our diet and exercize habits but she plays up her eccentricity as she’s russian. A former neighbor of hers, a man 8-10 yrs older with kids her age tried to date her a year ago or such, but she wasn’t at all interested. She said he looked old. Lol. Not all devorcees are created equal…
Maybe the reason my friend gets away with dating down without much social complaints (as she has dated/flirted down beyond her prefered range) is that about half her friends are younger than her (girls and guys), and the other half are geeks, russians, or grad students. She is so eccentric that she doesn’t really play by the same rules other people do. I mean it’s the same model that business contacts go by, where age is not a barrier to networking and making deals. I don’t know why more people don’t bother slipping their categorical constrants, acceptable normal behavior is very dull and entirely uninteresting.
Ron was typing his comment while in the act
these days its not…”.oh! how beautiful ur eyes are” that works
its “shit! those crow feets looks yuck”…..
so its not the life in men its the ego in you……
human mind becomes more screwed up as they grow older because they have to retain lot of information to function in the world its termed as “maturity” and their cells start giving up due to gravity of earth. hence everything is complex complex….complex…..
younger girls are more in the moment..less complex more fun..
older girls are more into..my pump is drying out…hence more fun
she has seen more summers in the planet and to share the sexual pleasure is a great pampering to young ego..a subtle respect.
this planet is hell of some other world..so love yourself and have fun