“Melanie!” my friend messaged me, “the U.K. tabloids LOVE you!”
I first found out I’d become international tabloid news when this message along with a screen grab of an article from the Daily Mail popped up on my phone. The headline included a picture of me riding my bike and the word COUGAR. In all caps.
I immediately googled myself, my screen flooding with similar headlines next to grainy pictures of me taken from my Facebook page. The Sun, The Daily Star, The World News—over a dozen tabloids (so far) have picked up my most recent Glamour article pulling salacious quotes from the story I wrote about my sex life as a 41-year-old single woman. My personal favorite was the headline for The Mirror: “Cougar, 41, says sex life’s better than ever with ‘lonely cub’ tinder hook-ups.”
Earlier this month, I wrote about my dating life, which is apparently so shocking it’s newsworthy. As a woman in her 40s on Tinder, I quickly realized men my age, true to stereotype, weren’t interested. But after lowering my age minimum on the app, my inbox flooded with messages from twenty- and thirty-something men seemingly dying to date me. As I wrote about in my article, I have never had this much sex—let alone good sex—in my life. The international tabloid media apparently can’t handle this.
After discovering that my name would be associated with the word cougar (ALL CAPS) in any google search of me for all of eternity I felt a little violated (and slightly worried that all the press would ruin the hot streak currently tearing through my dating life…). One tabloid reached out to extend the courtesy of at least letting me choose the photos that would run with the article, rather than picking at random from my Facebook page, at the same time reassuring me they wouldn’t make me sound like a terrible person.
I know I’m not a terrible person! I know there’s nothing wrong with me or the relationships I share with other consenting adults, but apparently others think there is indeed something terrible about a woman in her 40’s having satisfying sex with men who think she’s amazing and treat her well. The fact this cougar story made headline news to begin with—in not just one but over a dozen tabloids in different countries—is what I find unbelievably disturbing. I knew the patriarchy is still alive and well, but I didn’t fully comprehend just how much our society hates aging women until my active and awesome sex life became a scandalous headline. Have none of these people ever seen The Graduate? Dating younger men isn’t new! Women have been doing it since the beginning of time.
The obsession with analyzing older women dating younger men is baffling—this isn’t National Geographic and women are not animals.
It sure seems as though society thinks we are, however. If we’re fat, we’re whales (or cows, depending on just how fat). If we’re assertive, we’re bitches. If we are any type of woman under age 35, we’re chicks. If we disagree with women, we’re catty. If we’re young and horny, we’re vixens. And if we’re horny, over 35 and prefer men who aren’t too damn tired to have sex now, we’re cougars. When society talks about women’s sex lives and our relationship statuses, they constantly rob us of our humanity and complexity and instead reduce us to a trait that has absolutely nothing to do with who we actually are, whether it’s our age, size, or sex drive.