Sex and women over 60
The escapades in hit flick The Book Club highlight an unexpected truth – women over 60 are having the best sex
GENERALLY speaking, a woman’s life can be divided into three Ms: menstruation, motherhood and menopause. The first one is grotty but kind of exciting, a sign that your body’s working and it’s all systems go. The second is frenetic and expensive and – hopefully – rewarding. And the third . . . Well, that means you’re past it, over the hill, dried up. Right? Hardly. There are all sorts of signs that the third phase could actually herald the best time of your life. The physical symptoms of the last M are a bit of a drag, of course, but the time it signifies could – and should – be rather liberating.
Your children should be out of the house and self-sufficient. You have more time to do things you want to do. Workwise you’re hopefully fulfilled and at peace – it’s too late to climb the ladder with any great vigour but not too late to keep doing what you love and have become good at.
And then there’s sex. Most of us grow up shunning the thought of Mom doing the deed – or, heaven forbid, Grandma. But catch a wake up, kids: they probably are.
Enter the new movie The Book Club. It revolves around four over-60 friends – Vivian ( Jane Fonda), Diane (Diane Keaton), Sharon (Candice Bergen) and Carol (Mary Steenburgen) – who’ve been getting together once a month for decades to discuss what they’ve been reading. And, you know, drink wine.
Then, when it’s her turn to supply books, Vivian throws a spanner in the literary works by buying everyone a copy of EL James’ erotic bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. The women initially scorn it but can’t help dipping in and there are a few “oh my’s” and some not-so-subtle imagery involving soil being watered while Mary reads a raunchy passage.
The film is a two-hour romp in which each woman examines where she is sexually and emotionally. Vivian revisits a relationship she began 40 years ago (a crinkly-eyed Don Johnson plays the guy). Diane defies her children’s best efforts to get her to sink into genteel old age by falling for a pilot (Andy Garcia, a little chunky but still hunky).
Mary tries to reignite the bedroom fires with her husband (Craig T Nelson) while Sharon, a federal judge, gives online dating a go and steams up the back seat of the car with cute little Derek (ittybitty Richard Dreyfuss).
And throughout it all the rest of the Fifty Shades trilogy keeps on coming.
The idea for the movie arose when its creators sent copies of the first book in the series to their moms for Mother’s Day in 2012. The response was “enthusiastic”, recalls Bill Holderman, who co-wrote and directed the movie. And it got him and co-writer Eric Simms thinking.
“I do think Hollywood is male-dominated and that the subject of older women’s sex lives is still, sadly, taboo in our culture,” Bill told The Guardian.
Fifty Shades made BDSM mainstream,
he points out, while older women’s sexuality is still a tough subject to tackle.
“I think women after a certain point are relegated and put out to pasture and that’s reflected in a lot of male studio executives’ mentalities. It’s too bad but hopefully this movie will start to shift at least some people’s minds.”
IT’S shifted people into movie houses and onto seats, that’s for sure. In the US and Canada it reached No 3 at the box office soon after release – behind superhero hits Deadpool 2 and Avengers: Infinity War. “Both Eric’s mom and my mom came to the premiere,” Holderman says. “I think both of them were thrilled and a bit inspired. That was kind of a dream scenario for us.”
If a recent sex survey is anything to go by, the movie is spot-on. According to the survey – by health service Public Health England (PHE) – women aged 24 to 35 are the least satisfied with their sex-lives, while those between 55 and 64 are the most sexually content. A whopping 49% of younger women rated their sex-lives as “disappointing”, while only 29% of older women felt hard done by in bed.
Then there’s the report published earlier this year by dating site Match.com that shows women have the best sex of their lives at age 66.
“Men of all ages make passes at women with reading glasses,” 50-year-old British journalist Rowan Pelling writes in The Telegraph. “My generation – women born in the ’50s and ’60s – have largely resisted the notion of acting our age or swopping sex for jigsaw puzzles. We’re the consumer-savvy shoppers with disposable income and excitement about life.”
Confidence and self-knowledge are the key factors in older women’s “erotic equilibrium”, she adds. “Women take far longer than men to discover their true sexual selves.” When we’re younger we’re often too eager to please our partners and too insecure about our own bodies to just lie back and think of something sexy. After 50 we’ve come to terms with our physical lot.
Cellulite? Who doesn’t have it? Stretchmarks? Try having your stomach extended by an ever-growing infant and see what happens. Floppity bits here and there? You bet. It’s called life. You want me, you get all of me.
AWEBSITE and Facebook page called The Advantages of Age is run by Americans Rose Rouse (65) and Suzanne Noble (57) to “celebrate midlife renaissance and highlight the upsides of tipping into the 55-plus bracket with joie de vivre”.
“As women get older they’re more relaxed in who they are and what they want and this includes the terrain of desire and sexuality,” Rouse says. “They’re more willing to point out to their partners the little rituals they enjoy.”
There was a time when women over 50 in Hollywood were cast as grannies, mothers of the bride, bitter divorcees, nasty stepmoms, you name it. There were femme fatales too – just think Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. But she was a bit desperate too, trapped in a loveless marriage, anxious to feel attractive and wanted.
But times are definitely a-changing. Just look at Sex and the City. Of each of the four protagonists, which is the one who has the most active sex-life? Samantha. By far.
Samantha, in her fifties, is a good few years older than the other three. She knows what she wants and she isn’t afraid to voice it either.
“I love you,” she tells one guy. “But I love me more.”
One of the greatest insults in modern times has been to call women who date younger men “cougars”, pathetically predatory. Yet men who go after younger women are “silver foxes”, silky old devils.
There’s another way to look at it though: cougars are in fact gorgeous, sleek, determined creatures. And foxes? Well, there’s something a little furtive and cringey about them.
But it’s not about women being better than men at the end of the day. It’s about women knowing what they want and going for it.
As Jane Fonda says in The Book Club, “Ladies, I am not going to let us become those people who stop living before they stop living.”
In other words, it’s all about being on top and loving it. Pass the wine, please. OTHER ‘COUGARS’ RIGHT: Sex and the City’s Samantha (Kim Cattrall). BELOW: Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in 1967’s The Graduate.