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P.S. WHAT IS A COUGAR, EXACTLY?
Posted 03.18.10 by annajohnson
P.S. WHAT IS A COUGAR, EXACTLY?
A yummy mummy is yummy at every age. Lately though there has been a growing implication that a mature yummy is actually a MILF and a MILF is actually a cougar and all of this adds up to older women with kids wearing way too much eye makeup for the school run.
On my own school run down through the center of Sydney everyday I see a giant poster. It features Courtney Cox in tight jeans and a t-shirt that says ‘40 is the new 20’. The strapline is something like “For Steph life has just begun…” I look, stunned, at the stiff volume of her hair; The airbrushed looking makeup; The gritty determination on her hollow dieted face. And then I catch my own face in the reflection of a store window: freckled, eye-bagged, cheerful but much more canine than beast of prey. And I look at many women walking down the street. Women in crippling heels. Women with brutally tight pony tails. Women in suits that cleave into their tensed buttocks and business shirts starched into sharp angles. Women of all ages fairly intent on looking groomed, fierce and in control. Cougarish. I guess.
I admit I haven’t even seen the program. I object to the fact that TV shows ask for an investment of time and such a regular commitment. I don’t think I watched “Sex and the City” for the first five years it existed. But Cougar Town might take even longer. Because, what really is the comedic point of sale or controversy here? That older women are still hot? That older divorced women still stand a chance in a dimly lit bar? Or, more pointedly, that older divorced women are a specialty for certain younger men. Fold this fetish in with the single mother factor and my skin starts to really crawl. Nobody wants to be part of a demographic that is subtly demeaning. Actually, let’s be honest, downright demeaning.
My objection to the very idea of a cougar is that women have to compete at all: twenty vs forty, married vs single, cougar vs cub. Or, to be more historically truthful, that all women compete. All the time. Well, that’s a sad fact isn’t it? When I was twenty seven I had very few close female friends. Women my age were so busy going for everything (jobs, men, babies) they seemed to have very little time for each other and women older than me dismissed me on sight. Some years later I feel incredibly relieved NOT to be in my physical prime. Because I feel I have a lot more to offer than the firmness of my thighs or the condition of my face. I’m formed now, crumbly in several places, but fully formed. For better or worse. If I looked as good as Courtney Cox in a pair of jeans maybe I’d feel empowered but probably not if I had to go hungry night after night. With the denial of age comes the struggle to slow its hand. So I wouldn’t want to be in Demi Moore’s satin slippers for a minute either. Imagine bending over and having your ass posted on twitter by your young husband? Imagine how it feels to kiss his spongey elastic skin first thing in the morning when your eye makeup is a smudgy remnant and the claw of gravity is cleaving at your jawline. What does Madonna do with her boy-lover Jesus between dawn and pilates? I assume she has blinds made of peach tinted silk. Or hash cookies. Gluten free hash cookies.
I am not that sensitive about my age but I am sensitive about the cultural perceptions that surround it. That line by Rod Stewart at the start of “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart is a real stinger. “The morning sun when it’s in your face really shows your age” I mentioned this to an ex-lover the other day and he said “Yes and that song was written about a woman much younger than you.” Ouch. “You’re forty six” I snapped back does that make you a mature Lion in good condition or a sleazy Puma on the skids? He didn’t reply. He still loves the same super models he found hot in high school, but the issue with Claudia and Elle is that they don’t age like other women. They just wear more hair around their face. Or should that be manes?
Occasionally, I might still want to wear high heels and jeans and smoky eye makeup but now I think I may retire that look forever. In the hands of Cougar Town it’s become a ghastly cliché. Style wise the image of the Cougar Town poster is of a frozen identity: a character from Friends who hasn’t changed her leather jacket and eyeliner for 13 years. Perhaps that is why Cox was chosen, to carry the demographic from Friends well into their forties and maybe beyond. But I am sorry to say NO THANKS and simply NO. Forty is actually not the new twenty. You can’t erase two decades and frankly I am not hiding mine. But then again I am not on the prowl. Desire is not making an animal out of me. And my desire is neither a dirty little secret nor a secret weapon. It’s just a fact, like a wrinkle or a sun spot, and it really does seem to grow more intense with every passing year. The prowess of a woman coincides with the gradual decline in a man, maybe that is why a group of middle aged men made a comedy about it. So they can deal!
But can someone wake up and smell the Chanel no.5? I want to tell Hollywood that they got this one badly wrong. That, yes, women’s libido’s do radically ripen with age but so does our sense of irony. And taste. I am not about to knock some twenty one year old girl off her bar stool with a flick of my blow dried hair anytime soon while sinking my acrylic nails into her date. Because most clever creatures of a certain vintage know that seduction rarely happens on a Friday night and you can’t properly stalk prey in heels. Bare feet and broad sunlight works better for me. And so does picking on someone my own size.
Till next time, KEEPING IT YUMMY.
XXX ANNA