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Age disparity in relationships is nothing new. But this year has seen an increase in older women in relationships with younger men in movies and television, leading publications like Newsweek to declare 2009 The Year of the Cougar.
For those of you who, for one reason or another, don't know, a cougar, essentially, is an older woman who pursues and enjoys sexual relationships with men at least ten years their juniors.
Valerie Gibson, who wrote Younger Men: How to Find Them, Date Them, Mate Them, and Marry Them, told AARP that the book caused quite a stir when it came out fifteen years ago.
“And not a good one,” Gibson recalls. “People were horrified. They were absolutely horrified that older women should be having sex with younger men.”
Things have changed since then. These days, not only are such age-disparate relationships featured in the media, they have become the subject of several shows, such as Cougartown and The Cougar. Older women who are interested in younger men are not an oddity today any more than men who are interested in younger women. A host of sites have appeared to assist in matching “cougars” with “cubs,” the term used to describe the younger men they pursue, and classes centered on becoming a better “cougar” and “hunting” for one have become wildly popular.
Many women see “cougar-mania” as a sort of liberation.
“There is a growing population out there of divorced women who are over 40. They are not the cast aways of previous generations,” writes Marilyn Campiz, an over-40 divorcee who has dated men 10 years her juniors. “Though there are a lot more dangers, such as HIV/AIDS, the plus is that our identities are fully developed. Women in this age group have a strong sense of self. We also know what we are looking for... younger men expect women to be more liberated and they don't try to have a traditional relationship. They tend to view the relationship as a partnership.”
Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert, who write about health for Newsweek, note the progress that this trend highlights: “In Victorian times, for example, doctors routinely warned midlife women to abstain because intercourse past menopause could be fatal. The exact mechanism for this predicted demise wasn't always clear, but physicians of that era did believe it was dangerous for older women to even think about sexual activity because erotic thoughts might, among other evils, evoke regrets for lost allure and those regrets could trigger disease. Medical literature and popular culture of the time (mostly written by men, of course) often portrayed women over 50 as borderline insane. The supposed reason: they were no longer appealing to the opposite sex.”
Not only are older women no longer warned to abstain from sex nowadays, they're told that 40 is their sexual peak—similar to the peak men experience in at 18. So it follows that women, who are perhaps past a time where their primary concern is creating a relationship suitable to raise a family would seek out men who can match their drive for another desire: sex.
Not surprisingly, not all women are comfortable with the ethical issues engendered by the notion. One of the most reluctant, fellow contributing editor here at BlogHer, Gena Haskett, took the time to explain her concerns with me.
“For the record, I would like women to be sexually emancipated,” Haskett prefaced. “Meaning, that they get to explore what they need sexually. I do believe in consensual adult sexuality. It would be silly of me not to. There is sexual responsibility as well. With this commercial/advertiser driven version of the hungry Cougar situation, are we now saying that your sex drive is so important that you will snag young men to satisfy that need? That is part of where the exploitation could come into play. What would some people do to get a young man into their bed? Just because you can, should you? Do we really need just a body? See, I think there would be a kind of emotional spackle going on. Is sex being used as a metaphor for covering up being lonely? Companionship without obligation? Is is necessary to have any man or woman satisfy you sexually when it isn't really about sex?”
Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Situations vary across the board. A Marilyn Campiz mentioned earlier, for her, it's about being with someone who sees their connection as a partnership as opposed to a traditional relationship bound by gender roles.
For other women, it's not so much about
