Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Short iPod Post: Age.

(I am so very frustrated with my lack of a computer. Teeny tiny non-tactile buttons on a cracked screen with no flash and no tabbed browsing and cumbersome copy-paste sucks SO MUCH. Wahhhh.)

I saw an ad on TV the other day for a modeling show featuring women over 35. All the promo quotes were things like "after 35, I have no fear," and "I'm more beautiful now than ever." Well, no shit, lady, because you're barely middle-aged! You're not exactly a wise old silver fox enjoying her golden years at thirty-freaking-five. Hell, in Kinkland that's still TNG age! (The Next Generation, a group reserved for young kinksters to keep out the goddamn creepy old chickenhawks.) But in TV years that makes you older than Yoda. God knows what they think a 45-year old is. I'm guessing "someone with the majority of their sexually active years still ahead of them" isn't the answer.

It still gets to me sometimes that Britney Spears is only four years older than me. I'm just barely starting at life and she's widely considered to be completely used up. ...Is four more years of sexiness all I'm gonna get? Shit.

I saw an ad for porn featuring 18- and 19-year-olds, and I wasn't enthralled by the prospect. Not because of the "they're making a life mistake" concern, but because most 18-year-olds kinda suck at sex. At 18 I really didn't know how to move, didn't know how to communicate, had no self-confidence at all, and had probably 10% of the still-immature skillset I have these days. "Innocence" is just another word for incomptence.

It's not that older is always better, but I'm dismayed by the idea that older is sexless, and by just how low the "old" bar is set. Old is, like, 80. 40 is just an adult. And lemme tell ya, some of those adults really know what they're doing.

22 comments:

  1. One of those Goddamn Creepy Old Chickenhawks (you know which one)August 24, 2010 at 10:07 PM

    I'm just barely starting at life and she's widely considered to be completely used up. ...Is four more years of sexiness all I'm gonna get? Shit.

    Actually, you're officially all used up as this Thursday (which is why you're not as tender as the other cute piggies, and tougher to chew on than you used to be). You should get a notice in the mail soon with some info on the retirement package. Sorry about that.

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  2. GROWN AND SEXY. hellz yeah!

    flightless
    (after gin)

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  3. This is kinda random, related only in the sense of you wrote this post on your ipod, but holly: what kind of music do you listen to?

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  4. This puts Tobey Ziegler and his ex wife Andrea in a different light.....

    /is a huge West Wing nerd

    /leave me be!

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  5. I guess to put my previous semi-nonsensical comment in context. I guess it's that I have in my head a picture of what I want to be like when I"m in my 40's and basically it's Toby Ziegler from The West Wing or Artie from Warehouse 13

    Ornery, Cantankerous, a lovable grump, but respected. If I can achieve that and a full sex life I'll have done a good job.

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  6. Yay! Couldn't agree more.

    I was at the gym the other day and there was this big guy (as in bodybuilder but also just big, if you know what I mean) and he was telling this nice old lady (I love my gym!) how he started training when he was 40. Well, that got my attention, because I thought he was fourty. He ended up telling that it was going to be his birthday in a couple of weeks, his birthday of 66 years. I was completely amazed at how healthy and strong he was. I wanna be like that when I grow up!

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  7. I have to admit that I'm terrified about aging out of sexiness. Of course, I know plenty of very sexy women who are my age and older.

    Also: http://jezebel.com/5620731/hooking-up-will-not-destroy-your-chance-at-love

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  8. Considering that I've been spending at least an hour a day obsessing about sagging and wrinkles since I turned 34, I needed this post. (And if you think you have sex drive now, just wait till your mid 30s. Holy shit, they are right about that whole sexual peak at 36 thing!)

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  9. Wow -- could Holly's sex drive get any stronger?

    shudder

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  10. To any woman who ever worried that getting old would kill her sex life:

    When I left my husband five years ago and wanted to pursue cougarbait-aged guys, I thought for sure they would see me as a pathetic old lady and run away laughing. The media had taught me that men prize youth/beauty/fertility above all else so obviously at 32 I must be totally sexually irrelevant. But nobody laughed at me. Guys liked my age.

    Here is what I have gleaned from the young'uns (who are able to compare and contrast a bit better than an older dude, perhaps, having gone directly from fucking other 22 year olds to fucking me):

    -A young woman's idea of sex is lying back in bed and going "Okay, go ahead".
    -Young women are irritatingly insecure ("Do you like me? Do you? Am I good enough? Would you like me better if I wore something different?).
    -Young women put up with entirely too much shit - guys kind of like being put in their place, strange but true.
    -Young women don't demand orgasms and sure as hell don't show you how to give them, so a guy never really feels confident that he did a good job.

    Obviously, these ideas don't apply to every single young woman out there - Holly doesn't seem to have the insecurity, and I was never the lie-back-and-stare-at-the-ceiling type in bed - but I guess a lot of young women are like that.

    So guys loved my attitude in bed. And none of them ever, ever said anything about my burgeoning wrinkles or my cellulite or the spider veins in my right shin. Dudes are a lot less exacting about a woman's appearance than we are about ourselves. If these guys even noticed any of my so-called "flaws", they probably just saw it as an interesting bit of variety compared to what they were used to.

    So, yeah. I'm 37 now, and settled into a new relationship (with a 26 year old ;)) but my innate old-lady confidence still gets me hit on a fair bit. Age is not a barrier to getting laid. Trust me. :D

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  11. May I suggest that it's not so much that guys like "being put in their place", any more than women like "negs"? I think what people actually like is someone with a reasonable sense of self-worth and social courage. Actions like "putting people in their place" or "negs" are a way to demonstrate or fake this.

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  12. Chickenhawk - Hey now, I am extremely easy to chew on and you know it.

    Anon - I don't have musical preferences. I listen to music, but it's a random hodgepodge of things I heard on movie soundtracks or got from friends. Somehow the "musical taste" lobe of my brain never fully formed.

    PersonalFailure and Jack - The scary part is, my drive and responses actually are a lot stronger now than they were at 20. So oh Jesus, by 36 I'm not going to be able to leave the house. And neither will my manharem.

    Perversecowgirl - What Mousie said. Wanting your partner to have some opinions and assertiveness of her own is different from wanting to be put in your "place."

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  13. Sorry, I meant the "putting in his place" as a shorthand for the opinions/assertiveness thing. But you wouldn't know that because you don't know that in my opinion, a guy's "place" is...next to me. Therefore when I "put a guy in his place" it just means I let him know he's not above me and doesn't get to act like a douchebag. That's all.

    Having said that, I am a top and tend to attract boys who do want to be "put in their place" in a slightly meaner way. And I'm totally good with that. :D

    Oh, and BTW this whole "a woman's sexual peak happens at 35" thing isn't written in stone. I'm pretty sure I had my peak at about 28. Maybe this "peak" thing isn't keyed into a woman's actual age as much as how long she's been having orgasms - and I was a bit of a prodigy in that department.

    Hee hee! "Manharem".

    -perversecowgirl

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  14. oh I'm 41 and having the best sex of my life, and no shortage of add'l offers to decline (gently). But a lot of women my age seem to have given up or lost interest, which is grim (and helps MY odds!)

    flightless

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  15. Yep. The obsession with youth, especially female youth, really sucks especially as our life spans continue to increase.

    Not quite but kind of related but Rabbit Writes has done an article I liked about senior citizens being involved in BDSM:

    http://rabbitwrite.com/senior-citizens-and-bdsm/

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  16. For what one man's opinion is worth, my taste in age of partner has followed my own aging; at 41 I can still admire an 18-year-old's beauty but I just don't feel much interest in sex. A woman my own age, with more life experience, is more interesting. Could be this is a self-training phenomenon. Hasn't been verified with an 18yo throwing herself at me but applies to porn.

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  17. Mousie: I think most people's "target age" of attraction matures at the same rate they do. Mine lags behind, but is still slowly changing... In the past few years I went from lusting after 18 year olds to guys hovering around the 24-25 mark.

    But I still look at the 18 year olds. Oh, god, do I look.

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  18. I still look at the 18-year-olds but in generally "okay, that's attractive but not so interesting" way. I do okay, oddly enough, with the 23-27-year-old market demographic (I'm 39), and also with the 35-42-year-old pie wedge, and rarely but occasionally foray into and do passably well with the 48-50-year-old crowd. Youth has its value but can be overrated (as can be the wisdom of the older); it really all comes down to, you have to test-drive each relationship (be it a casual fling, a marriage, or anything in between) to see if it meets your Happy, and the age is often one of the least-important factors.

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  19. perversecowgirl, your preference for young, slight men fits beautifully with your top personality. Kind of like Holly as a bottom liking men built like a brick shithouse, it just goes perfectly.

    Jack, it isn't odd at all that you do OK with the 23-27 year old demographic; younger women liking older, dominant men is practically a cliche. I don't guess an age difference is likely to be as big a bonus for mdom/fsub as the other way around; men have more physical strength most of the time, so age isn't necessary.

    I'm sure my relationship desires shape my physical preferences; most obvious being approximately equal age fitting a switch and a desire for marriage.

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  20. As a 24-year-old male, I find that I'm attracted to a very broad set of women, loosely speaking from 19ish to 35ish.

    Older women, though... they hit my sub buttons like I didn't even realize. It was kind of shocking when I started talking to one seductress and realized that she was talking straight into my spin, or so it felt.

    So no, 35 isn't over the hill. 35 is pretty awesome, in fact. And so is 30, and so is 25, and so is 20. Though 40 is pushing it just a tiny bit. :)


    Oh, and perversecowgirl - I agree with Mousie. Your desires and traits fit so well, as articulated by yourself here, with your voice and lifestyle. Too bad you're taken! *grins whimsically*

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  21. Mousie: it does kind of seem like a team of scientists genetically engineered me to fit into a certain kink-niche.

    Aaron: Awwwwwwwww. :D:D:D

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  22. Btw, Holly, regarding your Britney Spears comment: her whole schtick in the beginning was that she was virginal and innocently sexy; now she's sexy in a more trashy and self-conscious way and not a virgin. So of course the people who once thought she was hot would view her as "used up". If you fetishize hot virgins, the objects of your fetish are almost bound to get "used up" sooner or later.

    And, really, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who hate the whole coy/innocent thing and find Britney more attractive now.

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