Because I am working on a new book about the unprecedented stage of new life that women are discovering, I have an excuse to indulge in my favorite pastime: talking to women. And because our conversations get real pretty fast – even if we’ve only just met – I have heard a lot about sex in this strange new world of Second Adulthood. The responses can be sorted into three general categories: “Who needs it!” “Where do I get it?” and “What took so long?” (Perhaps this is the next-stage version of the question we posed in a memorable cover line on Ms. Magazine back in the ’70s – How’s Your Sex Life? Better / Worse/ I forget.)
The First two categories are self-explanatory; the third – “What took so long?” – is the one that we need to talk about – particularly in the context of a new movie called “Heading South” that purports to deal with it. Countless women have told me how, to their amazement, sex has become not only better, but very different for them after menopause. For some the simple knowledge that pregnancy was no longer an option – or a risk – is so liberating that they feel more relaxed and better able to focus on their pleasure. Others say that the outrageous streak that they find erupting in their “Fuck-You Fifties” enables them to really throw themselves into sexual experimentation and self-expression. And still others have told me about their discovery of “casual sex” or “sex for its own sake” or even paying their way – the kind of sex we used to consider a male specialty.
The three middle aged women in “Heading South”- which takes place in the seventies for some reason – are regulars at a Haitian resort where they adopt the beautiful young black beach boys and give them money, gifts, and doting admiration in exchange for hot sex. The amazing Charlotte Rampling stars as a Wellesly professor who has enjoyed playing the game for several years until a rival (Karen Young) arrives at the resort, and jealousy drives her into “wanting a relationship” with her favorite. The emphasis of the movie is on the growing rivalry between the women, and much less attention is given to celebrating the joyous, liberating, self-empowering sexual experience the women characters talk about. The message is that no matter how hard women try to talk themselves out of competing for men or into enjoying simple delicious sex – no matter how liberated they think they are – the need to possess the beloved or to beat off a rival will win out in the end.
The message I have gotten from women who have sex with men with whom there is nowhere to go but back to bed is just the opposite. Jealousy and possessiveness are tired, old themes, to be dealt with if need be, but the real headline is the s-e-x. For them being old enough to know what they want and being able to go out and get it is so new and so titillating that it opens up an endless array of delicious possibilities. The movie didn’t go there; after positing the existence of female lust after fifty, it didn’t dare believe it. It’s hard for the media to keep up with us. As I keep discovering, women are defining a new stage of life by living it!