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A legion of websites attends to a fascination certain men have for older women. Havens for this porn genre — called Mature — have predictable names like sexygranny.com, greybeaver.com and olderisbetter.org. Like all special interest porn sites, these destinations bring together communities of enthusiasts online, but they are hardly revolutionizing society at large. A different story is unfolding at the website CougarDate.com. The consolidation of the cougar phenomenon in Toronto, Vancouver and other parts of Canada can probably be attributed to the success of this Canadian-based dating service (and vice versa, of course) that specializes in older women/younger men affairs. Started by two successful, self-proclaimed cougars, CougarDate hosts personals for 25,000 men and a thousand women at last count (the number of men posting outnumbered the women from day one), and the women's  inboxes are deluged by desirous Canucks. Elspeth Sage, one of CougarDate's co-founders, tells me that most cougars have no trouble finding guys in their twenties to hook up with. If it proves not so easy to find the guys they want, Sage recommends changing their personal ad to emphasize shy-ness. Of course, I think: you want your woman to be older, experienced and on the prowl — but really just shy at heart.
CougarDate.com makes women pursuing younger men seem like the most natural, fun, healthy way to pass your middle years; reading their upbeat manifesto or cougar testimonials, it all just seems like happy, sex-positive freewheeling. And I suspect that for many of them it is. My experience of cougaring in Toronto, however, didn't really correspond to this example. Of course, it is usually the case that if you look for paradise, you will be disappointed when you reach Shangri-La. I came to Toronto's cougar bars hoping to find a significant social breakthrough, a convenient (and rare) vehicle for older women to find companionship, to embrace their sexuality, to flirt and dance and have a good time. But finding just that, I am confused. Is cougar sex revolution or revenge, desperation or just no biggie? In what appears to be an almost global rejection of female aging, is something really important happening north of the border? And is it good? As it turns out, most of the women I speak to in the Toronto bars who would, under pressure, call themselves cougars say that they would prefer to date men their own age. These men, however, are typically not available, and it proves to be a lot easier to meet men considerably younger than they. This is a function of a number of factors: most obviously, that men their age want to be with younger women. On the flip side, however, younger men are drawn to older women primarily because they aren't expecting the women to want to marry them (my male friends complain about the "marriage threat" when they date women who are hovering around thirty). Finally, the young guys are looking for a good time, and, the older women are thinking: maybe that good time can be finessed into something more. It's an interesting gambit. Younger men do have a number of factors going for them; the women I speak to list these among the advantages: sexual enthusiasm and stamina, nicer bodies, less jadedness (i.e., "They still have a certain wonder about the fact that they're getting laid"). One woman tells me that every young man she's with says something along the lines of, "You don't look forty." "Older men," she says, "would never say that." The problem, of course, is that when the encounters do take place, the young men are operating under any number of misconceptions. Foremost is that they think the women are in it only for the sex. Not so, the Toronto cougars tell me, or at least, not ideally. In some instances, that's what they're after, but typically these women are looking for relationships, and they're doing their best with the men they find available — who happen most of the time to be younger. Furthermore, the younger men think that they're going to learn some bedroom artistry from the older, implicitly more experienced women. But the women tell me that they're often in the dark too. "Being married to someone unimaginative for fifteen years does not bring about any great knowledge," says one cougar. Another tells me that she and her friends study sex manuals in order to maintain the illusion of being experienced. Much of the appeal, for the men, of being with a cougar is getting to have the much touted near-anonymous sexual experience. It becomes painfully apparent that as long as this misconception endures, the business of cougaring will require a certain bracketing of emotions on the women's part. And from what I know, that's typically not most women's strong suit.  And thus it might be that the cougar phenomenon is actually more beneficial to the men than the women. The boys' illusion that cougars are permanently in heat allows them to project their desires onto the women, and then to operate with impunity. Freed from their natural insecurities, and bolstered by the belief that any kind of seduction will work, the prey goes back to being predator. The ego boost the women get from such attention can only be short-lived. One woman tells me that she's been in cougar bars and had men come up to her with the "oldest, shortest and worst line in the book": "Wanna fuck?" Whether the answer is yes or no, it's still probably not the courtship most women are looking for.
George Burns famously said that you're only as old as the woman you feel. He meant grope, of course, and the joke was funny because he was already around ninety. But what about feeling in a more substantial way? It's not much of a stretch to say that one's success (and certainly failure) as a man is tied, in large part, to our ability to feel the people around us, and perhaps most pointedly, the women. While cougardom is bringing a lot of young men in contact with many more older women, I remain skeptical that, apart from the bump and grind, there's much connection taking place. Cougaring, in the majority of instances, seems like a desperate solution to a desperate situation. There is every possibility, of course, that I am misreading what's going on. So much of perception is projection, and as I indicated at the outset, I'm not experiencing these things innocently. Perhaps some residue of watching my divorced mom date loser after loser (many of them younger) colors my perception of all this; perhaps my own fear of aging (newly experienced) has me feeling tinges of a desperation of my own. Perhaps it simply saddens me that it is so hard for people to find good partners, of any age, and when the difficult becomes yet harder, optimism doesn't come easily. I'm not really sure. Feeling very confused and dubious about all the Canadian cougaring, my last night in Toronto I experience what would clearly be the coda to this story: a poignant example of what happens to women for whom cougardom is not an option. I am on the subway back to my hotel, and two attractive young women are sitting across from me. Still feeling flirty from all the cougar interviewing, I ask them if they've heard of cougars and what they think about the whole phenomenon (I have been told that younger women resent older women "stealing their men and making it seem like it's normal to have sex on the first night."). Neither of the women has heard of cougars, nor do they have much to say when I explain what they are. But an older woman sitting to the side of us reading a paper stops reading and pipes up loudly that in her native Trinidad, "That would never happen. You marry a man; if he leaves you, too bad. That's it. You don't go out looking for another." I ask her what she thinks about that, and she says that she doesn't know, that's just the way it is. And I ask her if she is married and she says yes. Then I say, "So if for some reason your husband dies or leaves you, you wouldn't want to have places where you could go out and meet new people? Maybe dance and have some fun?" She says she would go to a club, maybe, but she'd bring her brothers. "To defend you?" No, there'd be no need for that. Just for companionship. There is no chance that she would find someone else. "I wish your husband were here to hear you say all this," I say, "he'd be very happy." And she smiles and doesn't say anything. Then it is my station to get off, and I say a quick goodbye and am about to get off the train when she calls to me: "Excuse me?" "Yes?" "The truth is: my husband left me eighteen years ago. And there will never be another." n° | |
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