Opinion

The New, Improved Cougar

But are current hots for 'older' women just skin deep?

By Vanessa Richmond, 8 Oct 2008, TheTyee.ca

Mrs. Robinson, Anne Bancroft

Have we graduated from this Mrs. Robinson?

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Leopard-print spandex, Lee press-on nails and orangey-foundation used to be the signs of a cougar sighting: a single, man-hungry, 30-something woman. Oh, the good old '80s.

But that's not what a cougar is anymore. In the current pop culture vernacular, "cougar" simply means a sexy woman over the age of 35. The word "desperation" seems to have disappeared from its definition; words like smart, successful and funny have often taken its place. It no longer even necessarily means single -- just hot and older.

There are a few more pejorative cultural examples, like in this season's Gossip Girl: a step-mom who sleeps with two male high schoolers in an attempt to enjoy the last dregs of her prime before the plastic surgery starts.

But the list of good "cougs" is long and growing: Tina Fey, Carla Bruni, Halle Berry, Rachel Griffiths, Kylie Minogue and even Helen Mirren, and of course the '90s supermodels who are "back": Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and the rest of George Michael's "Freedom" video cast. More Emmy statues went to "older" women than ever before and the language used to talk about their wins wasn't about how they manage to do so much and still get dinner on the table.

"Forty-year-old women look very good these days," remarked my mom this summer.

Well, here's to you, Mrs. Robinson...

Mrs. Robinson is no longer the prototype of the cougar, partly because in today's world, a woman her age is almost as likely to be the mother of a newborn baby as a teenager, and more likely to have a busy career than enough free time to have a romp around with teenage boys in the afternoon.

It could be my own bias inventing all of this (and my mom's), but it's refreshing, in my world, that women of a certain age are no longer called that. That audiences, watching last week's vice-presidential debate, were just as likely to find the female candidate "hot," as the male one. That some women are joining the ranks of George Clooney, Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and, yes, Joe Biden as icons with both sex appeal and power.

Palin: not a sign of progress

When it comes to U.S. politics, though, women who swoon for Say-It-Ain't-So Joe still invariably do so out of the euphoria of "watching a man with real command of facts, details and history," while admiring his physical virility -- an intoxicating mix. But though I rarely hear mention of Sarah Palin without some reference to her "hotness" -- as my friend said yesterday -- Palin is only there because she's pretty. It looks like politics still hasn't outgrown the style-versus-substance divide.

The scores of feminist pundits reminding readers and viewers to separate Palin's policies from her pageant past, and her qualifications from her lipstick jokes, have a tough job -- because there is almost nothing of the former. Still, until now, in politics, it's been almost mandatory to be anti-sexy to be taken seriously: Madeleine Albright and Margaret Thatcher are just two examples. So it seems like progress that an attractive woman is running for a top position. Except she's just jumped to the other side of the dichotomy, proving it's still either sexy and vacuous, or dragony and smart for women.

But change comes in little high-heeled steps, right? Slow and, at times, painful, but at least moving forward; and one day, women might embody the full range of career possibilities regardless of whether we're good looking or not.

In other news on the gender front...

According to Brandweek everyone thinks hard times must be triggering women to pull back on discretionary vanity products but the opposite is true: business is up. Julia Beardwood, principal at design shop Beardwood & Co in New York, was quoted in the article saying that when the economy is in crisis, men drink and women buy cosmetics and skin treatments. And the same happened after 9-11.

Does this mean that stress brings traditional stereotypes out -- the certainty of gender roles in a world where there's no other certainty? Or does it mean that a little sugar, in the form of lipstick and botox, is somehow thought to help everyone's bad medicine go down? As one Salon writer put it, "Apparently, national crises make some women take their mothers' advice to heart: Put on a little lipstick, and you'll feel better."

And more little high-heeled steps...

Also, this week, via Time magazine, are the results of a study aimed at figuring out why men earn more than women: nature or nurture, in a nutshell. To eliminate most of the usual factors, they interviewed people who have undergone sex change operations. They found that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32 per cent less after they transitioned from male to female. And the FTMs found they were treated much better, paid more, respected more and promoted.

"Schilt, one of the authors of the new article, interviewed a female-to-male transgender attorney a few years ago. As a younger attorney, the lawyer had been Susan; now he was Thomas. He told Schilt that after he transitioned from female to male, another lawyer mistakenly believed that Susan had been fired and replaced by Thomas. The other lawyer commended the firm's boss for the replacement. He said Susan had been incompetent; "the new guy," he added, was "just delightful."

But take heart: in 1978, full-time women workers earned just 61 per cent of what full-time men did, but 79 per cent now. If that keeps equalizing at the rate of .6 per cent per year, we'll be on par the year I retire.

Related Tyee stories:

[Tyee]

Tyee contributing editor Vanessa Richmond writes the Schlock and Awe column about popular culture and the media.

9 Comments:

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  • nightbloom

    3 years ago

    I like your columns,

    I like your columns, Vanessa. I this is quite a pastiche tho, and I can't connect the dots here. I do know that you're using "cougar" in quite a different sense than the young men who are their "prey". I'm around university/college aged males quite a bit, and the sense they're using the word now is the same sense we were using back in the day. Hint: Kylie Minogue isn't a cougar - Cameron Diaz definitely is. 'Cougar' and 'Milf' are not synonyms.

    I think you're also on the bandwagon re. Palin. Read more Camille. Her latest commentary on Palin (posted today) is well worth the read: http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/10/08/palin/ See especially her response to Steve Gurney on the second page.

    As for the relative transitional difficulties of MTF transexuals (compared to MTF), I think you're deriving the wrong lessons. It's beyond mere the socio-economic fallout of walking in women's shoes; I'm convinced the MTF metamorphosis cuts a lot deeper, and is far, far more subversive to the dominant culture and the social order.

  • ThisCanadian

    3 years ago

    Sarah Palin...

    EDITED FOR CRUDE AND SEXIST REMARKS. -- TYEE MODERATOR

    Truly, the 'DoomsDay Code' Apocalypse looms if that anti-ethics-hag drives international relationships...

    "Pretty women scramble men's ability to assess the future"
    10.Dec.03, NewScientist Danny Penman

    Psychologists in Canada have finally proved what women have long suspected - men really are irrational enough to risk entire kingdoms to catch sight of a beautiful face.

    Biologists have long known that animals prefer immediate rewards to greater ones in the future. This process, known as "discounting the future", is found in humans too and is fundamental to many economic models.

    Resources have a value to individuals that changes through time. For example, immediately available cash is generally worth more than the same amount would be in the future. But greater amounts of money in the future would be worth waiting for under so-called 'rational' discounting.

    But some people, such as drug addicts, show 'irrational' discounting. For example, preferring a small amount of heroin today rather than a greater amount in the future.

    Margo Wilson and Martin Daly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada decided to investigate discounting behaviour and see if it varied with sexual mood.

    Male students, when shown pictures of pretty women, were more likely to opt for short-term economic gain than wait for a better reward in the future.

    Sexual opportunity

    Both male and female students at McMaster University were shown pictures of the opposite sex of varying attractiveness taken from the website 'Hot or Not'. The 209 students were then offered the chance to win a reward. They could either accept a cheque for between $15 and $35 tomorrow or one for $50-$75 at a variable point in the future.

    Wilson and Daly found that male students shown the pictures of averagely attractive women showed exponential discounting of the future value of the reward. This indicated that they had made a rational decision. When male students were shown pictures of pretty women, they discounted the future value of the reward in an "irrational" way - they would opt for the smaller amount of money available the next day rather than wait for a much bigger reward.

    Women, by contrast, made equally rational decisions whether they had been shown pictures of handsome men or those of average attractiveness.

    "We have not elucidated the psychological mechanisms mediating our results," says Margo Wilson. "But we hypothesise that viewing pictures of pretty women was mildly arousing, activating neural mechanisms associated with cues of sexual opportunity."

    Tommaso Pizzari, an evolutionary biologist at Leeds University, offers another possible explanation: "If there's the prospect of getting a very attractive partner it may pay a man to take more risks than if an average partner was available."

    He told New Scientist: "If this is a response to sexual selection then you would expect men who are less attractive to take more risks. If you have many attractive potential partners then it does not pay to take risks. If you are less attractive, with few potential partners, then it pays to take risks."

    Journal reference: Biology Letters (DOI 10.1098/rsbl.2003.0134) "

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  • Tieleman

    3 years ago

    Demographics help

    Interesting piece Vanessa. I suspect that another reason for the trends you identify is simple demographics - the baby boomers - those born between 1945 and 1965 - represent a huge age grouping.

    That means women between the age of 43 and 63 are not only present in larger numbers than probably ever before proportionately but they also have different roles than ever before - especially as workers.

    So perhaps the reason for your mom's observation that 40 year old women look very good these days is because there are so many of them.

  • ME2

    3 years ago

    re demographics

    Those were my thoughts too, Tieleman. Also, the "bulge" in numbers of "older" women is very unlikely to have been missed by the advertisers.

    In their efforts to attract these women to their products, it's a safe bet that they will portray them in the best light possible, which includes sexuality.

    It will not be long, I think, before the skinny woman will be making way for the more "Rubeneaque" types.

    Tip: Invest in the foundation garment industry. :-)

  • Fii

    3 years ago

    I could name about 10 female

    I could name about 10 female friends (we're in our late 30s) who are waaaay hotter- including me- than we were in our 20s. Older women= more self-esteem, more self-discipline, more life experience, etc. Newsflash- this translates to hotness!!

    40ish women DO look good these days- but who said they ever didn't? I look at pics of my mum when she was in her early 40s (with a 2yr old and 8yr old) and she was beautiful!

  • shmendrick

    3 years ago

    Good article.

    I'd like to add my comment on the quality of the writing.

    I'd say I agree with nightbloom, that MTF 'cuts deeper' than FTM, but I might wonder if that has something to do with the final product being female.

    And, while I would imagine that the example given about 'Thomas' getting totally different treatment than 'Susan' exposes a wider problem that contributes to the pay differences, I always wonder: why is the goal avg wage parity between women and men?

    There is no doubt that GREED (for money, for power, and for things) plays a large role in the amount a person desires as a salary. I'd think it entirely possible that the wage disparity also reveals that women might be less greedy on average, or at least think about self worth in ways beyond money. I could also mention that men are pressured by a society that values them mostly by salary and height... I'd be interested to see the wage gap between short and tall men; I've certainly seen studies that suggests tall men make much more on avg.

    Which leads to the next question: Why do we value ourselves so much on the wage we earn?
    My partner has an engineering degree and could probably make quite a bit more than she does. But she is more interested in learning other skills right now: canning, baking, growing food, knitting, and many other similar skills. The value and satisfaction from this type of thing is big personally, but not for her parents or society in general it seems.

    Personally I'm currently more interested in learning how to bake a really good loaf of bread then increasing my wage, and find it really insulting when people treat me like I am wasting my intelligence by not shooting for 6 figures.

    I think we need to remove emphasis on pay as personal worth. I certainly support equal pay for equal work, but in that realm, we should worry more about CEOs being paid over 500 times what the average worker makes; that stat dwarfs the male/female pay inequality.

    I see that I am rambling a bit off course here, but I find this topic interesting.
    I don't think male/female pay will ever equalize, but I do not think that this is a bad thing.

  • reality_check

    3 years ago

    About gender/salary issue:

    Let's put to rest a well-used stats from feminists that women earn 70% or so than a man.

    Assuming that we are comparing apples and apples (which is not often the case), young women (less than 30) NOW make about the same kind of salaries than their male counterparts! See MISMATCH for info. While it is true than older women are not earning and have not earned as much (because shareholders and companies' preferences for males who can work longer hours and for longer years,...). Not fair? Many women do like to be mom and so their husbands will have to stay at work being the breadwinner (whether or not they like it or not). From a male's perspective, I feel women have the best of both worlds and want even more. Why would a woman who has been of the labour force because of labour ( :) ) deserve the same salary of a man who has acquired all fo this experience! This might explain why women>men who cannot get children biologically ear more! Maybe there is some discrimination, but that is hard to fathom considering how younger women and men make the same salary (all jobs and hours being equal).

    About the article, let's not kid ourselves. Women who are 40 and over DO NOT look good in general. Let's remove the make-up and the rest and compare, not with the usual whales who are younger than 40, but women who eat well! Miss Palin or others look great for their age! But, to say they looki better than when they were younger is hype and wishfull thinking! Assuming they are not smokers and unable to get an orgasm, they are "superficially-speaking" a bad deal, especially considering the menopause and all the hell that men have to put up with during that time. NO, THANK YOU!

    Personally, women in the West will use the victimization excuse (and other excuses) all the time. Why don't any women talk about their definite advantage of being to attain promotion while sleeping around. I have seen women at work and they do use their sexuality to get better jobs! How I would love to be a saleswoman doing nothing (or nearly nothing) all day and coming back home to a nice home and a nice wallet! Her BF or husband's wallet! How many women have not had to work full-time because they do not want to (not because they cannot)!!! It is not all good for women, but it is not all good for men either! Let's tell the whole story! OK!

  • margot

    3 years ago

    Madeleine Albright and

    Madeleine Albright and Margaret Thatcher may not be sexy, but they are also pond scum. "Worth it" and so forth.

    Palin is the idiot my mother, and other mothers in the 40s and 50s, thought they might be raising if they didn't whisper a lot.

    My mother whispered a lot, later regretted it, but hey ho, I'm a bear. Older boomer women who like themselves and don't need botox and don't apologize, are bears. Bears have fun and walk everywhere if possible and rattle the cage.

    Bears say Caspian Sea oil and gas a lot.

  • freebear

    3 years ago

    Cougars & MILFS & GILFS too!

    As Fii said:

    "40ish women DO look good these days- but who said they ever didn't?"

    And 50's and 60's too!

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