‘For me, the menopause proved a passport to a golden age of naughtiness’ LIZ JONES
Felicity and her pals will be getting some real health benefits,
Way back in the Seventies, Felicity Kendal was the kind of natural, girl-next-door beauty I longed to be. In the sitcom The Good Life, she perfected a kind of wholesome sexiness that was alluring to men, but didn’t alienate women.
Gamine and gorgeous, she made dungarees look desirable and became a refreshing role model for a generation of women weary of the Playboy (boobs and bums) culture of the time.
But hang on a minute — well actually, about 50 years — and time seems to have stood worryingly still for the woman I adored back then.
Now in her 70s, Felicity is offering my generation a message that is more depressing than refreshing. This week — in the pages of Saga magazine no less — the actress has revealed how important ‘physicality’ is for her and her 82-year- old ‘ boyfriend’ Michael Rudman. Felicity goes on to tell us that for other couples in her social circle ‘sex is as important to them as it always was’. Swinging from the chandeliers in your 70s? No thank you, Felicity.
On all sorts of levels, this revelation is a huge mistake. For a start, if the idea of your parents having sex is disturbing to children, how shocking must it be to grandchildren? Knowing what Granny and Grandpa get up to under the sheets is, frankly, TMI. What on earth might Felicity’s (at the last count) 12 grandchildren make of her latest confession?
What worries me most, though, is the suggestion that I will not only have to attempt to look as trim and artificially youthful as Felicity (who has admitted to Botox and fillers in the past, but denies having surgery) when I hit my 70s, I will also have to work my way through the Kama Sutra.
at 65, the thought of putting on a pair of zebra-print nipple tassels, stockings, suspenders and stilettos in an attempt to finally discover my G-spot is as unimaginable as flying to the Moon on Elon Musk’s starship.
Maybe my reluctance to embrace sex in my mid-60s is linked to the fact that I never was what you could term a ‘sexual athlete’.
I have only ever had two boyfriends (unlike Felicity who has been married twice and had ‘affairs when I wanted’).
I married my first boyfriend and 25 years later divorced and then met my second. Since parting from No 2 — a decade ago — I have been more or less happily sleeping as a single in my kingsize bed.
Of course I miss the physical closeness of a partner and yes living alone is not something I would have voluntarily chosen, but there have been compensations during those years — chiefly the arrival of a granddaughter giving me a new and exciting role in life as I grow older. Sex, as wonderful as it can be and has been in the past, is now just a fading memory for me.
AND while I do still secretly harbour a fantasy of one day finding my prince, a brief foray into online dating has confirmed to me that this is never likely to become a reality. There were no princes on the ‘mature’ site I went on, just a lot of rather dull elderly men who were more in need of a carer than a partner.
But there are, I have to admit, some pretty sound scientific studies that suggest that what Felicity and her friends are doing (but I am not) will be giving them some real health benefits. One study found that older women with ‘satisfying’ sex lives had lower blood pressure, and the North american Menopause Society asserts that regular sex is good for vaginal health in post-menopausal women as it improves blood flow and keeps pelvic muscles toned, lessening the need for all those discreet Tena-Lady products.
In fact, as I discovered while conducting exhaustive research for my book How Not To Get Old, there are an awful lot of advantages to maintaining Felicity’s enjoyment of sex for as long as possible.
The female orgasm, it turns out, is not only useful as a sleep aid and an anti-depressant, it is also frightfully good for the ageing brain. Researchers at Rutgers University in the U.S. asked female volunteers to achieve orgasm in an MRI machine that measured blood flow to the brain. They concluded that ‘mental exercises increase brain activity but only in relatively localised regions. Orgasm activates the whole brain.’
This revelation prompted me — just before the pandemic hit — to undertake a masterclass in orgasm held at the London-based womenonly sex shop SH!. Thankfully this didn’t involve removing any items of clothing although it did expose me, and my 20 or so classmates, to some pretty scary sights. In the terrifying two-hour session, we were shown an anatomically correct glove puppet called Ruby Vulva, a giant model clitoris and a selection of eye-watering sex aids, some of which had Smartphone controls and glowed in the dark.
at the end of the lesson, we were offered a small discount on any of the varied merchandise in the store. Strangely, for once I was able to hold back on my lust for retail therapy, turning down the chance to buy a Tickle Feather Stick (‘Sensual wands for teasing and stroking’) or a ( vegan) edible condom.
Nor was I drawn to the torturous-looking clothing — studded basques, thongs and big balcony bras. I was, needless to say, a bit of a failure at Felicity’s ‘physicality’.
But then, I am rather in agreement with a quote attributed to Sophocles that suggests that one of the advantages of old age is not having sex. ‘To my great delight I have escaped from it, and feel as if I had escaped from a frantic and savage master.’
While he meant the male, rather than the female, libido, it seems equally relevant to how I feel in the 21st century.
The calm of my life now, as a post-menopausal woman, is so preferable, to me, than going back to the emotionally fraught and often truly miserable times when I was in thrall to my hormones and desperate for ‘true’ love.
REMAINING sexually alluring to men in your 70s must surely involve a great deal of tedious, time-consuming work and, doubtless, a permanent prescription for HRT (something I have assiduously resisted).
In her 60s, Felicity — who vehemently denies having had surgery — did confess that her then-youthful look was ‘not entirely natural, it’s a lot of work’. and really, with each passing year mustn’t it become a harder and harder task to still look like that gamine girl?
at a time when the whole world is becoming more and more ‘anti’ ageing, women in their 50s, 60s and 70s are put under so much pressure to hold back the years that they are in danger of becoming tied to a ‘ frantic and savage master’ for their entire lives.
a master that makes them fearful of putting on any weight (Felicity no longer talks of dieting, but remembers ‘starving myself in my early 20s’) and terrified of displaying any of the more natural traits of later life, most particularly laughter lines.
I have no intention of growing a moustache (which would be very easy) or giving up on an attempt to look good. I love make-up, I love dressing up and I hope to remain as close to attractive as I can when I am 74.
But I am not going to waste the good years I have ahead of me pursuing the impossible ideal of eternal youth in a bid to find someone (apart from my dog and my cat) to share my bed.
In fact the person I most want to emulate as I grow older is no longer the faux-girlish Felicity but the full-on, grown-up woman that is Jane Fonda. Questioned last week on whether or not, at 82, she was still having sex she replied that she didn’t have ‘time’ for it.
‘I’m old and I’ve had so much of it. I don’t need it right now because I’m too busy.’
Still relevant, still stunning and still looking forward in her life (rather than backward). n How Not To Get Old: One Woman’s Quest To Take Control Of The Ageing Process by Jane Gordon (£14.99, Trapeze) is out now.