So older women don't have sex?
Why, in the 21st century, is the sexually active older woman still depicted as a figure of fun?
Author Helen Walsh is urging middle-aged women to challenge casual sexism and ageism. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Judging by the slew of letters bulking up my inbox, the sexual content of my latest novel, The Lemon Grove, is dividing opinion. It's not so much the idea of a stepmother sleeping with her daughter's boyfriend that's ruffling feathers; rather the idea that a teenage boy might desire a woman in her mid-40s at all. "Preposterous!" one outraged woman exclaims; another reader, male, asks: "Is this just not wish fulfilment on your part?"
Perhaps it is. Ever since I devoured Lolita in my late teens, I've been aware of an imbalanced and highly gendered depiction of intergenerational relationships in fiction. Some of my favourite novels – Coetzee's Disgrace, Philip Roth's The Humbling and Gabriel García Márquez's My Melancholy Whores – feature older men smitten by much younger girls. Yet one struggles to name more than a handful of texts written by women that depict older women lusting after teenage boys.
The norm in those few works that do buck the trend – Zoe Heller's brilliant Notes on a Scandal, for example – is for the errant woman to be apprehended and punished, emphatically, for succumbing to their obsessions. Needless to say, no such draconian fate awaits Coetzee's or Roth's priapic protagonists. Their randy old men are punished not by a jail sentence, but by a tragic and deeply profound reminder of the iniquities of old age.
With women in fiction, it really does seem to be a case of art imitating life – it's all a bit unseemly, a little bit ridiculous: once you reach a certain age you should keep your sexuality – and your body, for that matter – under wraps. The sexually active middle-aged woman has long been portrayed as a slightly desperate figure of fun. Whether it's Mrs Robinson in The Graduate or a quintessential Milf on heat such as Stifler's mom (does Mrs Stifler even have a name?) in American Pie, their stories are invariably told from the perspective of the lusting teen stud. Where are the stories that shine a light on the psychological complexities of the mums they'd like to bed?
If Milf weren't already a sufficiently hateful term, there's an expression, too, for women who date younger men – cougars. The Urban Dictionary defines these ladies thus: "Anyone from a surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old hornmeister, to a real hottie or milf." Cougar-reverence virtually oozes from the page: "Particularly the true hotties, as young men find not only a sexual high, but many times a chick with her shit together." Glad to see the themes of my novel have hit the thinking man's zeitgeist. Seriously though, cougar? I'm racking my brains to think of an equivalent handle for a man in his mid- 40s who dates a 17-year-old girl, but I'm damned sure there's no pejorative.
It says a lot about our views on gender and age that director Sam Taylor-Wood is perhaps better known for her relationship with Aaron Johnson, an actor some 20 years her junior, than she is for her Bafta-nominated directorial debut, Nowhere Boy. Yet here we are, living in an age where more and more women hold influential roles as cultural gatekeepers. From columnists to commissioning editors to heads of drama, women have significant powers of veto as well as the green light. How can it be, then, that this misogynist strain of ageism is allowed to flourish unchecked in popular culture?
In stark contrast to the stereotypical Desperate Housewife, the equivalent senior male is described as distinguished. Tony Soprano was once voted one of the sexiest men on TV – and, OK, given a choice, I'd have taken James Gandolfini over Aaron Johnson any day. But can you imagine a perspiring size 20 woman with thinning hair and collapsed buttocks scooping a similar accolade?
It is no coincidence that our society construes and vilifies the ageing female body with the same reckless generality that it celebrates and objectifies its pubescent incarnation. We're quick to express rage at Jimmy Savile's reign of abuse or the taxi drivers who targeted vulnerable girls from care homes in Rochdale, yet our culture is still casually at ease with its sexualising of young female bodies. Our lionisation of size zero, our aversion to pubic hair, even an increasing trend towards vaginaplasties are all symptomatic of a desire to take the female body back to its pre-pubescent state.
The full Brazilian is a look that is borrowed from pornography – can there be a more damning style endorsement? At least pornography has a disclaimer: hair gets in the way of the money shot. Nice try, but perhaps our fear of hair is less to do with practicality and more an attempt to postpone womanhood. 2014, however, is supposed to be the year of the bush. Cameron Diaz and Gwynnie have already signed up. The optimist in me hopes that this trend is dictated less by the vagaries of fashion and more by a gradual awakening to the fact that there is something seriously creepy about a grown woman with the buffed pudenda of an eight-year-old.
But it will take much more than a stance on waxing to challenge the negative perception of the ageing female. Sexism and ageism will continue to thrive unless women begin to challenge and reverse a cultural diktat that desirability and beauty are synonymous with youth.
Resisting the convention could start with an understanding that trying to craft youthfulness on to an ageing body is pretty pointless: youth's core ingredients of exuberance, abandon and curiosity cannot be concentrated into a serum or a syringe.
The allure of women such as Kristin Scott Thomas, Tilda Swinton andMichelle Obama lies to a large extent in their repudiation of youth itself. These are women who clearly have their shit together. Theirs is an easygoing kind of beauty that is not fixated on turning back time, but exists firmly in each shifting inflection of womanhood. All of these women possess a sexiness that is neither insincere nor apologetic, but shot through with the wisdom, confidence and, ultimately, self-knowledge that maturity brings.
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