Aw. elmwood, I’m so sorry to hear this…we really liked her! I know the distance thing sucked, but I’d kind of hoped to hear that she decided she could still be close to her family without having to physically be close to them.
Anyhow, I don’t know if it is the norm. Back when I was looking, I specified men my age and older, because I really didn’t want to date boys my son’s age, or men who had to have Kent State explained to them.
Cougar is one of those tems like the N word…it’s all depends on who is saying it as to whether it is offensive. I heard three young (early 30’s) women on my shuttle bus talking the other day…they had greeted the third as the “Cougar in Training” which apparently made them all giggly because her boyfriends a tad younger than her. But mostly I hear it as a negative…several divorcees of my age group have gotten termed as cougars because they seem to have lost hold of their senses and are going out partying and running around, when before the divorce they were the most devoted soccer and PTA moms you could ever want. Now they just seem to be neglecting their kids and running around feeling powerful but looking stupid.
And part of the connotation, at least for me, is that they look on men as prey, not as partners. It’s a power game, and yes, they wear too much makeup! I’m sure that kind of fun has its appeal for men and women, but I’d be insulted if someone stuck that label on me.
I had a cougar experience. I was 23, and she was 45, and I have no regrets. There was nothing creepy or desperate about it.
I’m surprised that the normalcy of attractive women in their forties who choose to sleep with younger guys gets called into question. Ummmm . . . they do it, because they can?! I’d say being a cougar is something to brag about, especially if you can pull it off in a society obsessed with looking 18.
When I think cougar, I think hot, older rich lady.
Not sure why that’s a bad thing.
As to the OP. I think the tide is changing.
I was whatching one of these Discovery channel shows about this very subject.
They seem to think the psychology behind it has to do with women making more money in the work place these days. Women (this is what the science says ladies, so don’t flame me.) are intrinsicaly attracted to wealth. Since women are making more money these days; the number of men who make more money than they do, has deminished dramaticaly.
So where does a woman turn to when she can’t find a man who is significantly wealthier than she is? Well, she does the same thing us Dirty Old Bastards have been doing for centuries. They go for the eye candy.
Of course, seeing as that’s pop media product, it’s as likely to be propaganda as straight reporting. There’s zillions of dollars worth of advertising that depends on keeping sex roles more or less status quo.
“Cougar” definitely has negative connotations. If you want a cite, I refer you to that bastion of pop culture, urbandictionary.com, which confirms my feelings about the word. The term implies the predatory behavior of a woman past her prime. SNL has a cougar sketch and all the women are sad/desperate, overly made up or tanned, with deep voices and surgical enhancements. That’s the connotation I think of when I hear that word, and I’d not be flattered if it were applied to me.
That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with women going after younger men. It’s only the word “cougar” that I don’t particularly like. You don’t have to be predatory, trying too hard, or creepy to date a younger man, and thus, the word “cougar” isn’t applicable to any woman who dates a younger man.
I also don’t think that any man going after younger women is called a lech. A man in his late 30s or 40ish dating a woman in her 20s would not be called a lech or a dirty old man. Nary an eyebrow would be raised, and I think he’d be the envy of his friends. There isn’t even really a term for it.
As to the question in the OP, no. I’m 40, and feel no pressure or expectation to be a cougar. Young guys do eye me now and then, but I prefer not to think that it’s because I might fit into their expectation of “older woman” (mostly because I’m not old goddammit). I have exactly ONE friend out of several single oldish women that dates younger men, but then she’s a skank with a license plate that reads NAWTY 1, so she’s not exactly setting trends out there. Being a cougar does not happen automatically, and I definitely wouldn’t say it’s the norm. Surprise- the media often takes a silly stereotype and blow it out of proportion and make it seem like it’s the norm, when it’s not.
And that dream was just a dream- it didn’t mean anything!
Was womens’ hitherto attraction to mature, wealthy, high-status males solely the product of socialization, and will go away as society changes?
It seems to me that there is a strong genetic component to this attraction (because we see the same behavior in females of other species, who are attracted to alpha males, with status in the pack), but “recent” changes in female sexual behavior and attraction patterns seem to suggest that a lot of it may change as society changes.
The next few decades will be interesting, because, once the current generation of girls (who are socialized with today’s values/mores) become adult women, and the existing older women who were socialized with previous social mores die off and are not around to criticize and potentially influence the next generation, we will see how much of the current sexual behavior and attraction patterns of females were solely social constructs or have a strong genetic component that will not go away.
Then again, there is a lot of social pressure - from all around, men, women, the media - to keep alpha and status men on top, sexually as well as financially. It starts with our definition of masculinity itself, as something that must be earned, defended, and constantly proven. Not buying into all this means being less of a man.
Another reason I think it has a genetic component is this: If a man is of limited means and wants to connect with a rich lady, he is usually making a calculated move and is not necessarily attracted to her. He is consciously thinking “She’s rich and I’ll try to marry her to be more financially comfortable”. I don’t think her wealth makes her sexually attractive in his eyes. OTOH, it seems to me that, while there are women that make a calculated effort to get the rich guy, many women are indeed truly attracted to wealthy high-status males and are not trying to be with them solely as a result of a conscious effort to be more financially comfortable.
Another way to find out is maybe look at some societies that are matriarchal (I think there are some isolated cases left). If in those societies the women are attracted to young studs (like men in our society are attracted to young babes) and the mature “alpha male” characteristic doesn’t carry much weight, sexually, then we can see that the current status quo is more of a social construct than genetically based.
I am skeptical about if they are actually more attracted due to an inborn preference for someone like Donald Trump over some cute looking hired helper. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of that “attraction” is a facade because the behavior of women trading sexual favors for financial gain is so heavily stigmatized in our culture, whereas manwhores aren’t really looked at in the same way.
I am getting tired, and also see myself entering rant mode, but I will sign off for tonight by saying that women trading sexual favors for financial gain is stigmatized, but women trading sexual favors for status - in the sense of being the mate of a competitive, proven male - is anything but.
There’s a billboard I see on my drive home, advertising some non-google search engine. It says somthing like
"you entered ‘cougar’
you got ‘graphic of 55yo with too much makeup in clothes that could only be fashionable in the seedier parts of Las Vegas’ "
And a tag line about how your searching would be so much more effective with what ever search engine they are advertising.
Other than that, I’ve mostly heard the term cougar here on the SMBD: WassleKitty, Sir T-Cups, Ninety Wit, Flying Dutchman , Ok, two unambiguously positive uses, Huerta88 and This whole thread, except two posters. I’d continue the list, but I just can’t take anymore.
When I hear the word cougar, it always seems to have the connotation of a woman no longer attractive, trying her best to prove herself attractive by sleeping with as many younger men as possible.
It’s objectifying. And assumes every woman over 30 must be a mother…something I find annoying, being a non-mother myself.
Just for the record, when I hear cougar, I think of a confident, attractive older woman. She might be predatory, but hey, I don’t mind being the prey in this case. The textbook example I’d give would be Jayne Seymour’s character on How I Met Your Mother, and nobody would dare claim that Jayne Seymour is past her prime.
I don’t like the term. It has negative connotations for me. I know some people think it’s a liberating thing, but I never hear it used that way. It always comes across as a mature woman who is motivated by sex and only sex who is acting out of desperation because there are no available men her age or something. I dunno…maybe it’s just me.
