I Wrote About Having Sex After 40 and It Literally Became International Tabloid News
“Melanie!” my friend messaged me. “The U.K. tabloids LOVE you!”
I first found out I’d become international tabloid news when this message along with a screen grab of an article from the Daily Mail popped up on my phone. The headline included a picture of me riding my bike and the word cougar. In all caps.
I immediately googled myself, my screen flooding with similar headlines next to grainy pictures of me taken from my Facebook page. The Sun, the Daily Star, *The Mirror"—more than a dozen tabloids (so far) have picked up my most recent Glamour article, pulling salacious quotes from the story I wrote about my sex life as a 41-year-old single woman. My personal favorite was the The Mirror's headline: “Cougar, 41, says sex life’s better than ever with ‘lonely cub’ tinder hookups.”
Earlier this month I wrote about my dating life, which is apparently so shocking it’s newsworthy. As a woman in her forties on Tinder, I quickly realized men my age, true to stereotype, weren’t interested. But after lowering my age minimum on the app, my inbox flooded with messages from twenty- and thirty-something men seemingly dying to date me. As I wrote about in my article, I have never had this much sex—let alone good sex—in my life. The international tabloid media apparently can’t handle this.
After discovering that my name would be associated with the word cougar (ALL CAPS) in any google search of me for all of eternity, I felt a little violated (and slightly worried that all the press would ruin the hot streak currently tearing through my dating life). One tabloid reached out to extend the courtesy of at least letting me choose the photos that would run with the article, rather than picking at random from my Facebook page, at the same time reassuring me they wouldn’t make me sound like a terrible person.
I know I’m not a terrible person! I know there’s nothing wrong with me or the relationships I share with other consenting adults, but apparently others think there is indeed something terrible about a woman in her forties having satisfying sex with men who think she’s amazing and treat her well. The fact this cougar story made headline news to begin with—in not just one but over a dozen tabloids in different countries—is what I find unbelievably disturbing. I knew the patriarchy is still alive and well, but I didn’t fully comprehend just how much our society hates aging women until my active and awesome sex life became a scandalous headline. Has not one of these people ever seen The Graduate? Dating younger men isn’t new! Women have been doing it since the beginning of time.
The obsession with analyzing older women dating younger men is baffling—this isn’t National Geographic and women are not animals.
It sure seems as though society thinks we are, however. If we’re fat, we’re whales (or cows, depending on just how fat). If we’re assertive, we’re bitches. If we are any type of woman under age 35, we’re chicks. If we disagree with women, we’re catty. If we’re young and horny, we’re vixens. And if we’re horny, over 35, and prefer men who aren’t too damn tired to have sex now, we’re cougars. When society talks about women’s sex lives and our relationship statuses, they constantly rob us of our humanity and complexity and instead reduce us to a trait that has absolutely nothing to do with who we actually are, whether it’s our age, size, or sex drive.
It wasn’t just the tabloids that had something to say about this here COUGAR (all caps!) “having the best sex of her life.” Lots of lovely men on the Internet had some thoughts too. I made the mistake of reading the comments at first, which is the writer's equivalent of walking into a den of hyenas, especially if you’re a woman. “EWWWWW. She’s a leathery old bag!” one person wrote. “She’s not that pretty to start with,” said another. “She’s only got a few years left and she’ll be an overused tramp no one will want to settle with.” Then there was the unsolicited feedback from trolls that came directly to my inbox. They tweeted at me, left messages on my website, emailed me, and sent messages on Facebook. One of my favorites was the guy who reached out to tell me I already looked “DOG ROUGH” (they love all caps!) at 41.
Even with all the attention from tabloids and trolls on the Internet, talking about my sex life as a forty-something single woman was more than worth it. Since publishing my story, hundreds of women have reached out to me to thank me for normalizing something so, well, normal. Just the other day, while working on this story during a flight, I mentioned to the woman sitting next to me that I’m a writer. Turns out she’d read, and loved, the original cougar story I’d written for Glamour and told me I should write a book about my dating life. All the women who finally feel heard makes turning into a tabloid sensation worth it.
The papers can write what they want about me (and they clearly will), but they won’t ever convince me there’s anything wrong with a 41-year-old having great sex with men in their twenties and thirties. We cougars aren’t going anywhere—get used to us.
I hope our society will one day evolve to the point that we don’t use the word cougar at all and instead just call us what we are…women. But in the meantime, I’ll take pride in knowing that anyone curious about what a cougar is can now look the word up in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, where they will now find my name and article as the first example.
