OLDER WOMEN HUNT FRESH MEAT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Friday, July 28, 2006
'Cougars' on the prowl
Older women seeking relationships with younger men

Source: poughkeepsiejournal.com
By Barbara Yost and Susan Felt
Gannett News Service




Coo, coo ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson. Look what you started. Older women pairing up with younger men is becoming mainstream, barely raising eyebrows as women in great shape and good health find themselves attracted to men sometimes young enough to be their sons. All those baby boomer girls who watched Anne Bancroft seduce Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film "The Graduate" are middle-age and trying out May-December relationships for themselves.

"Younger guys are more fun," said Mary Walsh, 59, a single woman and nurse in the radiology department at John C. Lincoln Hospital in Phoenix. "Men in my age group are fat, have high cholesterol and are not in good shape."

A 2003 AARP survey on sexuality among single Americans ages 40 to 69 found that 35 percent of women want to date younger men, and 34 percent are. Three percent of women date men 15 or more years younger, 5 percent date men 10 to 14 years younger, and 11 percent date men 5 to 9 years younger.

Now there's a manual for such women. Valerie Gibson, author and sex/relationships columnist for the Toronto Sun, titled her guide for older women dating younger men "Cougar" (Firefly Books, 2002, $12.95 paperback). Once a derogatory term for the stereotypical older woman trying too hard to look young, sexy and available to younger men, "cougar" no longer implies an unsavory predator, Gibson said: "A cougar is a beautiful animal: sleek, powerful and in control."

"It's an important trend, it's a significant trend," said Duffy Spencer, a social psychologist on Long Island and host of the radio talk show "Just Relationships." "It makes male-female relationships topsy-turvy. It turns everything on end."

In the past, women tended to hook up with men their age or older.

"This is moderating," said Pepper Schwartz, a professor in the sociology department at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Staying in better shape longer

Women are keeping themselves trim and attractive and are staying sexual into old age. They have careers, higher incomes, a wealth of experience and good connections.

"They bring something to the relationship," Schwartz said. "Their antennae are out."

Part of the credit goes to the beauty industry, which has helped middle-aged women remain youthful, Scottsdale, Ariz., psychotherapist Marjorie Schulte said.

"Women are feeling like, 'Hey, I look great and I can be with this young pup who turns me on,' " Schulte said.

Married five times and organizing her fourth annual Cougar Cruise (there's a waiting list) on Lake Ontario, Gibson considers herself a pioneering cougar. In her late 50s or early 60s (she declines to give her age), Gibson said being a cougar is an attitude, not a number.

"They're professional, often entrepreneurs, corporate climbers. They're very much in command, very independent," she said.

Commitment also distinguishes cougars. They aren't interested in permanent relationships.

"They want to have fun with a good-looking guy on their own terms," Gibson said.

It's what men have done for years.

Not as big of an issue

Susan Swartz, a relationship columnist for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat in northern California and author of "The Juicy Tomatoes Guide to Ripe Living After 50" (New Harbinger Publications, 2006, $16.96 paperback) said age isn't the bugaboo it used to be.

"We have choices. And we think we should have as many choices as men," she said.

And as baby boomer women enter their 50s and 60s, no one is going to tell them what to do.

"This generation is not going to say, 'You don't get to do that,' " said Swartz, 61, whose husband is also 61. "They're going to keep pushing (the boundaries)."

Women comfortable with a younger partner are usually attractive and self-confident. Many describe themselves as not looking their age. Psychologist Spencer cites a survey showing that men prefer attractive older women to plain-Jane younger ones: Looks transcend age.

Sex with a younger man, Walsh said, is enticing. In addition to bedroom vigor, he brings to the relationship "vitality, zest for life, (an) energy level." Older men, she said, can't keep up with her.

Said Spencer, "It takes a woman to a certain age for all her sexual inhibitions to be unlearned."

It's that more relaxed, reality-based attitude that younger men find refreshing and seductive, "Cougar" author Gibson said.

"You know what you want, and you know how to get it," she said. "Older women are more honest and more open, and if it's not rockets and roses today, that's OK. It will be."

Steve Taniguchi, 42, said it was older women's sexual experience that initially attracted him in his early 20s and 30s.

"For younger men, it (dating older women) is like a rite of passage. There's more experience and more freedom, but as you (men) get older it's not so much that anymore," said Taniguchi, who has been in a relationship for five years with Colleen Hayes, a 53-year-old grandmother.

Tough to share power

When there is a wide age gap in a relationship, it can be difficult for couples to enjoy equal power, Schwartz said, but that can work to a woman's advantage. Although her gender might traditionally be a disadvantage, her age and experience balance it out, if not tip the scales in her favor.

It's their very independence that makes older women attractive to younger men, says James Basel, editor in chief of askmen.com, a Canadian-based Web site that attracts 7 million mostly American male readers monthly.

Like the average visitor to the Web site, Basel is 28 years old. (He dates a woman his age.) He said there has been a steady appetite for information about finding and dating older women.

Sexual experience is part of the allure, but the independence factor is also critical, Basel said.

"Older women have more of a male view (of relationships). They don't romanticize relationships anymore. They know the reality of relationships. She recognizes they are ephemeral and she doesn't need her man to define her."