Sex and the Septuagenarians

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, In These Times. Posted March 9, 2006.

When I grow up, I want to be old. Old as in proudly, imperiously fat like my grandmother, free from the need to do "something" or be "somebody," and definitively, unmistakably, not sexy.

Why fear aging when the golden years offer a well-earned rest from the struggles of career, marriage, parenting and -- most importantly -- being a woman? I battled self-loathing in my teens, figured out the orgasm thing in my twenties and spent my thirties mastering intimacy in my marriage. And if I get lucky, the coming year will bring with it the next great challenge of my sexual life: a baby. After decades spent scaling this particular mountain, who can blame me for relishing the prospect of being, finally, over the hill? Time to hang up the heels and bring out the chocolate.

So imagine my horror when I picked up a copy of Gail Sheehy's new book, Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life, which seems intent on shaming women like me -- or, at least, the kind of woman I hope to be when I am a "golden girl." Dedicated to promoting the virtue -- nay, the absolute necessity -- of "post-menopausal sensuality," Sheehy recasts life after 50 as the Second Adulthood, a new life search for meaning, purpose and, inevitably, sex, because "sex and the passionate life go together."

Forget about giving your creaking bones a break, it's time to get right back to the grindstone. The task at hand: to reinvent yourself as a "seasoned woman," who is "assured, alluring, and resourceful" and "committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of her life, despite failures and false starts." If it sounds like work, well, it is -- both the physical and emotional kind.

Sheehy's ideal woman is a "Passionate," who is bold, sexy and sexually active. She kicks off "middlesex" -- a coy term for sex in your middle age -- by getting herself a brand-new lover. Nothing gets those juices flowing like romance, which makes you eat less ("You can lose weight, which is nice"), work out more, buy new clothes and stimulate your brain ("You will probably read more."). Sixty isn't the new forty, it's the new twenty-five.

Candidates for that first "pilot light" lover to reignite a dimming libido include married old flames, any willing young man in near vicinity -- and there are many, if Sheehy is to be believed -- or for one lucky gal, an online suitor with a penchant for tantric sex. I guess the latter explains why Sheehy urges online dating on her readers with the fervency of a Match.com marketing executive. Judging from the experiences of the women in the book, dating is no less perilous for a woman in her fifties, but all that rejection is a small price to pay for the joy of entering your "Romantic Renaissance." Yes, that "pilot light lover" will dump you, as may the others who follow him, but heartbreak just allows you to "transcend" the need for something more lasting.

Sheehy often veers wildly between insisting on sexual independence (while presuming the financial kind in focusing primarily on middle class women) and rhapsodizing over soulmates, but she is clear about what makes a seasoned woman superior to her younger peers: "She is less likely to have an agenda than a young woman: no biological clock tick-tocking beside her lover's bed, no campaign to lead him to the altar, no rescue fantasies." Gee, why don't I just shoot my thirty-something self already?

There are some married Passionates in the book, but they've usually traded in the old hubby for a new one in their middle age. Those of us unfortunate enough to hit old age in a long-committed relationship usually end up in Sheehy's less admirable categories: Women Married Dammit (WMDs), Status Quos and Low Libidos. WMDs are women stuck in really bad marriages who are too angry or "emotionally dead" to change their fate. Single and married Status Quos are resigned to sex-less lives, lacking the courage to sacrifice security for the emotional risks of a Romantic Renaissance. Low Libidos rank the lowest in her estimation because they're simply not interested in having a lot of sex: "they don't take hormones or use vaginal estrogen and rarely even use self-stimulation or try to introduce novelty into their marriages."

The book can be silly, earnest and often insightful in turns, but Sheehy's downright scary when it comes to menopause, which she frames as an affliction to be fought by all medical means necessary. It's where she crosses the line between affirming the sexual needs of older women and insisting that they must have sex -- lots of it -- irrespective of their physical or personal inclinations.

While Sheehy throws in some platitudes about platonic soul connections, she spends more time scolding married women who've lost interest in doing the deed. She approvingly offers up Dr. Allen, "the wise and witty New York gynecologist" who bullies a stay-at-home mother into "rehabilitating" her vagina so her husband can "get something out of" supporting his wife and kids. Here's the kind of incentive the good doctor offers her:

I know Robert. He's a good-looking guy, and he's in the city sixty hours a week with hot babes. Unless something is wrong with him, sooner or later he is going to get tired of your obligatory sex.

Lakshmi Chaudhry is a senior editor at In These Times and a former senior editor of AlterNet.

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