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It's been... Women on the prowl for younger men. From the hoopla, you'd think 40-something women only recently looked up from their quarterly reports, household chores or pre-teen children to cast an eager eye on verdant pastures of younger men.
Click here for older women seeking younger men
But long before Courteney Cox prowled the cul-de-sacs of ABC's Cougar Town and tongues wagged over Demi Moore, Madonna or even Elizabeth Taylor, women of a certainage have tangled with the young and the beautiful of the opposite sex. Remember the Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ? She was a medieval cougar with a mouth on her that would have made Samantha Jones from Sex and the City proud. A glance at centuries of myth, fiction and history offers cougars enough to fill a jungle. “It's a fairly common motif,” said professor Elizabeth Cullingford, chairwoman of the English department at the University of Texas at Austin. “But there aren't too many cases in which it ends happily.” Cougars may not be a new species to human mating and dating rituals, but how they have been portrayed has changed over time. Mrs. Robinson's lonely housewife of the 1967 film The Graduate was replaced in the late 1990s by the ravenous and unapologetic career woman Samantha Jones from Sex and the City . Go back even further, to, say ancient Greece, and Euripides has Phaedra killing herself for lusting after her young stepson.. With ABC's new show, viewers are being asked to be accepting enough of cougars to poke PG-rated fun at the idea. Sort of. The show, which airs its third episode tonight, has stumbled with critics who found it silly and degrading to women. Even self-proclaimed cougars have found fault. Valerie Gibson found the show embarrassing. And she wrote the book on the subject, Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men (Key Porter Books, $12.95).As Gibson sees it, no self-respecting cougar would muddle through middle age looking for lost youth at the bottom of a shot glass as Cox's character Jules did on last week's episode. A cougar, as Gibson sees it, is a single woman 40 or older who embraces midlife with energy, sex-appeal, independence and financial security. A true cougar is more than willing to let men her age rely on young cuties to keep the Lipitor separate from the Viagra. “I say women should be celebrated, too, for being vital and sexy,” said Gibson, who lives in Toronto. Of course, sexy has not always been on the tip of society's tongue when describing older women. Crone, hag and witch are probably more common descriptions. Indeed, women involved with younger men through the ages have often wound up dead, depressed or ostracized. A very informal survey of the UT English department faculty drew a long list of cougars who reach back to ancient Greece, Cullingford said. Queen Elizabeth, in charge of England at the end of the 16th century, was billed as the Virgin Queen but was also the object of poetic praise from younger men. More modern examples of the cougar include Colette's 1920 novel Chéri, and Lady Brett Ashley, who gives up her younger matador in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises so she won't ruin him. Gibson said she has noticed a change in attitude from 2002, when she wrote the book, to 2008, when it was reissued. With books and Web sites offering advice for a young man looking for a Mrs. Robinson to call his own, cougars have gone from predator to prey, Gibson said. “It is a social movement, it is not just a silly trend,” Gibson said. Texas man wins $75K after tracking down and suing telemarketers over illegal robocalls Baseball is back: Players, owners reach deal to end MLB lockout POST Houston already loses two key restaurants, replaces them with burger pop-up Dallas Kimball player arrested after accidental shooting before state basketball tournament FOX 26 meteorologist Jim Siebert gives tearful on-air goodbye after final forecast Meet the Texas librarian fighting book bans in schools Hiker captures 'once-in-a-lifetime' photo of wildlife at Brazos Bend State Park. There are reasons for such a movement, said Christine Labuski, a fellow at Rice University's Center for the Study of Women, Gender &, Sexuality. Women, especially those older than 40, have more economic power than ever before. Cosmetic procedures can help them look younger. “There is a shakeup of what 40 means to women today,” Labuski said. That's true at least for some women, she said. Cougars in celebrity magazines, on television or in the movies usually are women with a healthy stock portfolio. All that financial security means that single women these days don't need to choose a mate for those old-fashioned reasons of security or prestige, said Cindy M. Meston, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between) , which came out last week from Times Books. Meston's research shows that, just like men, the No. 1 reason women have sex is because they are attracted to their partner. “If you don't need him to pay the bills,” she said, “you'd rather look at a good-looking guy than some old codger who drives a fancy car.” There remain pitfalls for cougars, Gibson warns. Younger men may move on to start families or careers, she said. “If you think you are a cougar, it is best to go into something with joy and say I'm going to enjoy this for as long as I can,” she said.
Seeking younger man
Women looking for young guys
Younger women looking to date older men
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Article:
It's been... Women on the prowl for younger men. From the hoopla, you'd think 40-something women only recently looked up from their quarterly reports, household chores or pre-teen children to cast an eager eye on verdant pastures of younger men.
Click here for older women seeking younger men
But long before Courteney Cox prowled the cul-de-sacs of ABC's Cougar Town and tongues wagged over Demi Moore, Madonna or even Elizabeth Taylor, women of a certainage have tangled with the young and the beautiful of the opposite sex. Remember the Wife of Bath from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales ? She was a medieval cougar with a mouth on her that would have made Samantha Jones from Sex and the City proud. A glance at centuries of myth, fiction and history offers cougars enough to fill a jungle. “It's a fairly common motif,” said professor Elizabeth Cullingford, chairwoman of the English department at the University of Texas at Austin. “But there aren't too many cases in which it ends happily.” Cougars may not be a new species to human mating and dating rituals, but how they have been portrayed has changed over time. Mrs. Robinson's lonely housewife of the 1967 film The Graduate was replaced in the late 1990s by the ravenous and unapologetic career woman Samantha Jones from Sex and the City . Go back even further, to, say ancient Greece, and Euripides has Phaedra killing herself for lusting after her young stepson.. With ABC's new show, viewers are being asked to be accepting enough of cougars to poke PG-rated fun at the idea. Sort of. The show, which airs its third episode tonight, has stumbled with critics who found it silly and degrading to women. Even self-proclaimed cougars have found fault. Valerie Gibson found the show embarrassing. And she wrote the book on the subject, Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men (Key Porter Books, $12.95).As Gibson sees it, no self-respecting cougar would muddle through middle age looking for lost youth at the bottom of a shot glass as Cox's character Jules did on last week's episode. A cougar, as Gibson sees it, is a single woman 40 or older who embraces midlife with energy, sex-appeal, independence and financial security. A true cougar is more than willing to let men her age rely on young cuties to keep the Lipitor separate from the Viagra. “I say women should be celebrated, too, for being vital and sexy,” said Gibson, who lives in Toronto. Of course, sexy has not always been on the tip of society's tongue when describing older women. Crone, hag and witch are probably more common descriptions. Indeed, women involved with younger men through the ages have often wound up dead, depressed or ostracized. A very informal survey of the UT English department faculty drew a long list of cougars who reach back to ancient Greece, Cullingford said. Queen Elizabeth, in charge of England at the end of the 16th century, was billed as the Virgin Queen but was also the object of poetic praise from younger men. More modern examples of the cougar include Colette's 1920 novel Chéri, and Lady Brett Ashley, who gives up her younger matador in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises so she won't ruin him. Gibson said she has noticed a change in attitude from 2002, when she wrote the book, to 2008, when it was reissued. With books and Web sites offering advice for a young man looking for a Mrs. Robinson to call his own, cougars have gone from predator to prey, Gibson said. “It is a social movement, it is not just a silly trend,” Gibson said. Texas man wins $75K after tracking down and suing telemarketers over illegal robocalls Baseball is back: Players, owners reach deal to end MLB lockout POST Houston already loses two key restaurants, replaces them with burger pop-up Dallas Kimball player arrested after accidental shooting before state basketball tournament FOX 26 meteorologist Jim Siebert gives tearful on-air goodbye after final forecast Meet the Texas librarian fighting book bans in schools Hiker captures 'once-in-a-lifetime' photo of wildlife at Brazos Bend State Park. There are reasons for such a movement, said Christine Labuski, a fellow at Rice University's Center for the Study of Women, Gender &, Sexuality. Women, especially those older than 40, have more economic power than ever before. Cosmetic procedures can help them look younger. “There is a shakeup of what 40 means to women today,” Labuski said. That's true at least for some women, she said. Cougars in celebrity magazines, on television or in the movies usually are women with a healthy stock portfolio. All that financial security means that single women these days don't need to choose a mate for those old-fashioned reasons of security or prestige, said Cindy M. Meston, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between) , which came out last week from Times Books. Meston's research shows that, just like men, the No. 1 reason women have sex is because they are attracted to their partner. “If you don't need him to pay the bills,” she said, “you'd rather look at a good-looking guy than some old codger who drives a fancy car.” There remain pitfalls for cougars, Gibson warns. Younger men may move on to start families or careers, she said. “If you think you are a cougar, it is best to go into something with joy and say I'm going to enjoy this for as long as I can,” she said.
Seeking younger man
Women looking for young guys
Younger women looking to date older men
Men seeking older women
