Editor's note: Sarah Stewart is a film and culture writer living in western Pennsylvania. Opinions expressed here are her own. Find more opinion at CNN.
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No matter how much progress we've made regarding middle-aged women and their visibility, from a massive increase in menopause research and advocacy to the relatively recent expansion of roles for older women on television, there remains the incredibly stupid dead-end where the public cannot bear the idea of women over their 20s having sex, or even thinking about having sex, especially with younger men (despite the ridiculously persistent double standard).
Todd Thompson
Sarah Stewart
“Didn't I warn you? People hate happy women,” says Tracy, played by Annie Mumolo, in The Idea of You.
That's the central theme of this widely watched drama-comedy: A 40-year-old single mother (Anne Hathaway) falls in love with a 24-year-old boy band star (Nicholas Galitzine). The sex is great, they really do like each other, and of course, when the paparazzi find out, the world goes crazy.
In the Amazon film, Hathaway's Solène meets Harry Styles-esque singer Hayes Campbell (Galitzine) at Coachella. He takes an instant liking to her, but she wonders why things aren't working out, mainly because of the age difference. When she finally gives in to their chemistry, she is rewarded with a highly explosive orgasm the first time they have sex, with the moment solely focused on her pleasure (it's impressive that a man in his mid-twenties would know so much about the female body).
The film opens with a montage-heavy romp through Europe before the couple publicly come out, at which point countless cougar headlines pop up. I'd like to think the fuss is overblown and doesn't actually happen in modern times, but as a Vogue article points out, this is exactly what happened a few years ago when Olivia Wilde was dating the real Harry Styles. “Hayes Spotted with a Cougar” and “Naughtiest Mom of the Year?” are two of the film's fictional headlines. (By the time Styles began dating Wilde, who is 10 years older than him, in 2021, the cougar craze was real.)
I had forgotten the torrent of nasty, cruel criticism that was unleashed upon the celebrity couple when they were thrust into the spotlight, just as I had forgotten the never-ending brouhaha, including that covered by Vogue, about director Sam Taylor-Johnson and her now-husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who is 23 years her junior.
But this summer has seen a string of delightful pop culture ripostes to that scolding narrative, with older women giving a collective middle finger to the idea that they can't sleep with whoever they want.
Miranda July, the performance artist who's been catapulting her offbeat cultural critiques into the mainstream since her 2005 debut film, “All Fours,” is back on top with a new novel. “All Fours” tells the story of a married woman, a minor celebrity artist much like July, who leaves her husband and kids at home to head to New York on a cross-American road trip.
Soon after, she meets an attractive young man named Davey in a dusty town nearby, staying at a motel there during her trip, and their unique flirtation becomes the springboard for revelations about aging and desire, with July pretty firmly on the optimistic side.
“Was this the whole secret? This bodily freedom? It felt intuitive and healthy, as if promiscuity was my birthright as a woman,” she writes. “Maybe it was. Was this civilization's secret? Is that why men have punished us so harshly since time immemorial?…Suddenly, having sex with all my friends seemed natural and sweet.”
Her secret adventures include an affair with an older woman, a moment that leads to a key revelation for the narrator: “From the beginning I had thought of her as a person with a fundamentally pitiful, sad character. But that beautiful bed in her living room… she must have been having sex on it all the time, caressing and kissing people. She wasn't lost in the past… that sad character was all in my head.”
The “sad personality” narrative is a long-held trait we've been trained to think about single, older women. There's something about a woman of an age who knows herself and who perhaps cares less about the opinions of others than she did a decade ago that seems endlessly threatening to some factions of our society. The brilliant writer Glynis MacNicol's forthcoming memoir, “I'm Here Mostly to Have Fun: One Woman's Journey in Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris,” addresses this provocation head on.
Writing in The New York Times, McNicol said her life “has the makings of a fantasy, if you can stomach that kind of fantasy featuring a single, childless woman shying away from 50. It shouldn't be a radical thing to say in 2024, but somehow it feels that way. We live in a world in which power structures continue to benefit from women staying in power. In fact, we're currently experiencing the latest backlash against the slight feminist progress of the past half century.”
Amen. Seriously, I feel like I've been writing all sorts of things on this subject for years about how women should be free to live how they want, sleep with who they want, whatever their age. But still.
It's heartwarming to see such a summer slate of shows so wholeheartedly supportive of women enjoying themselves and their bodies after they've been deemed undesirable by society. Even Bridgerton, which I previously raved about, has a scene in which a socially underdog, “single lady” Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), is pleasured by her lover in a carriage ride at the end of the first season.
This is the most talked about scene so far, and along with the sexiest scene in “The Idea of You,” it's part of what a good friend of mine describes as “finger signs.” This means, among other things, that in these scenes, all of the pleasure is focused on the woman, which feels like a step up from the almost-everything love scene where two straight guys have sex in the missionary position and the woman reaches a dramatic, yet anatomically highly improbable, orgasm.
A related but helpful read is Dr Karen Tan's excellent book, It's Not Hysteria, which was published last month. This reproductive health guide covers the full range of women's issues, including a chapter on sexual dysfunction, and criticizes doctors for telling women with low libido to “have a glass of wine.” Dr Tan points out that “in many parts of the world, there is a societal expectation that sex is something that women owe to their male spouse or partner, not a source of their own pleasure or enjoyment.” In contrast, she provides a substantial chapter exploring the many legitimate reasons why women experience low libido, and the various ways (though none as varied as Dr July's) to treat this.
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No survey of middle-aged women's sexual liberation would be complete without mentioning Mumolo, co-writer and co-star of Barb and Star: Go to Vista del Mar. I've been raving about her and co-creator Kristen Wiig's hilarious comedy since its release in 2021, and the response hasn't been nearly enough. Wiig and Mumolo play a pair of culotte-wearing Nebraskans who hook up with a younger spy played by Jamie Dornan, but neither woman is remotely shy about her age or her sexuality.
Speaking to Variety at the time, Wiig said “Barb and Star” was made primarily because “Bridesmaids” was a huge success, paving the way for raunchy middle-aged female comedies like “Girls Trip” and “Bad Moms.” “It's great that more shows are being greenlit,” Wiig said. “But at the same time, it's like, 'Why haven't we greenlit this before?'”
