Older women and sex

Marie Schuller's Visiting Hour, a fashion film about an older woman and her sexuality. Model: myself 

The market is currently aware that the diversity agenda sells. Thus Selfridges, the well known London department store, has launched The Beauty Project, a series of events meant to celebrate beauty in all its forms, with in store demonstrations, performances, talks and lectures. I was asked to participate in the 'Parisian ladies shopping' event on May 3rd, with a group of other models, all dressed in 1950s inspired fashion, with bell boys and poodles, striking poses on the escalator, and walking around the store on the ground floor accompanied by an accordion. All in all a fun performance.
Meanwhile Ari Seth Cohen, on the lower ground floor, showed his film Advanced Style, premiering in London next week, and was on a panel with some of the leading ladies, to discuss style among older women, something he is now an expert on.

Line up of 'Parisian Ladies' with poodles.  Photo courtesy of Jo Chamberlain

I missed that discussion because I was involved in the performance - would it not be nice to be able to clone oneself and be in several places simultaneously? However, on May 1st, at the last minute I was dropped from the launch event as, naughty me, I was in Spain watching a corrida when I ought to have been rehearsing. This meant I was able to participate as audience and so I attended another ticketed event, another panel discussion this time with the intriguing title  "How to look hot at 100" chaired by former ballerina turned into writer and academic Deborah Bull. Ari was also on this panel, as well as model Pam Lucas, of The Guardian All Ages fame, Anne Karpf, author of How to age a book  in which she discusses attitudes to ageing and how to do it well i.e. ageing, Inge Theron, Spa designer and writer, Jean Woods, one of the Fashionistas from the Channel 4 Fabulous Fashionistas, which is now regarded as the British answer to Cohen's Advanced style - there is no event about ageing that does not include them, either as speakers or as VIP audience.
It was a most interesting discussion, in which beauty and style were talked about at length, and women (and men) were encouraged to dress to express themselves, not to bother with the injunction of looking good all the time, not to succumb to the anxiety that inevitably accompanies ageing and to find outside interests as they grow older, to avoid moping about their loss of looks.
What struck me however was the fact that very carefully the discussion steered away from mentioning the obvious. Much of the anxiety women and men have about ageing is to do not so much with a lack of attractiveness per se, but with a perceived lack of sexual attractiveness and a consequent feeling of dis-empowerment. So I asked the question.

Me with from right to left: Pam Lucas, Anne Karpf and Jean Woods, iPhone shot

A woman over fifty is not allowed to be overtly sexual, that is a big no -no. Yes, we are told and retold of how happily married couples, now well in their seventies and beyond, are still 'doing it' - one panelist told us of how her mother would constantly discuss with her grown up children the active sex life she had with her (the panellist's) father. But that is the kind of sex still contained in a logic of long lasting monogamous unions, which we know is definitely not the norm, though still invoked as the norm, and which somehow provides a firm boundary to the expression of an overt sexuality.
Because let's face it, a woman over fifty who displays any type of aggressive sexual behaviour is regarded as lewd and disgusting.
Many of the anxieties women feel about ageing are to do with the loss of sex appeal, hence the rush to try and look younger. Men feel this pressure in equal measure - the latest thing is middle aged men pumping iron in the gym, hoping to turn themselves into hunks and gain an illusion of long lasting potency.
Writing in The Observer only a couple of weeks ago author Helen Walsh recounts the reactions that her latest novel has elicited, as her protagonist is an older woman that occupies the sexual fantasies of a teenage boy. Apparently, someone wrote to her that this was preposterous.
"Sexism and ageism" says Walsh "will continue to thrive unless women begin to challenge and reverse a cultural diktat that desirability and beauty are synonymous with youth".

Desirability is a key word. I am tired of sanitised versions of the 'ageless beauty', with sex and sexuality carefully removed from the equation. I am not interested in the safe  "happily married for fifty years and we are still, blush blush, doing it". I am also tired of the cougar narrative, which is still negative. Men routinely bed younger women and no one bats an eyelid - unless of course they decide to target underage girls. 

Being sexy is something that should not be denied to older women. It is a sexiness that does not come from looking young, but from a confidence in one's own sexuality and knowledge of one's body which, paradoxically, only comes with maturity. 

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