Angela Mollard 1 year ago On normalising the sexuality of ageing women Share

 Angela Mollard 1 year ago

On normalising the sexuality of ageing women

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Fit, strong, self-sufficient and emboldened, ageing women are finally gaining sovereignty over their sexuality.

Naked but for a strand of pearls and a slash of red lipstick, Miriam Margolyes poses naked for British Vogue with only a couple of artfully placed cherry buns protecting her modesty.

Even a decade ago such an image would have been considered transgressive but in these gender-fluid, politically-progressive times only a dinosaur would tut at the 82-year-old Harry Potter actress getting her kit off.

“I can’t resist naughtiness,” she tells Vogue while pointing out that in later life she’s learned to be kinder to herself about her body. She doesn’t, for instance, love her boobs or her droopy belly but “you just make the best of it.”

Margolyes is just the latest woman of a certain age to step into her sexuality. Gone are the days when slackening skin and wrinkles were a sign that women had to tuck their bodies away from sight and stop talking about their intimate lives lest they give anyone the “ick”.

Witness 61-year-old Jennifer Coolidge in White Lotus lying back to receive oral sex, and Emma Thompson, 64, showcasing the glorious patina of a midlife body in the enthusiastically received Good Luck to You, Leo Grande. As the Oscar-winning actress, playing a retired teacher who’s hired a sex worker to explore her sexuality, points out in a 2022 article for Vogue: “Does anyone know or care if middle-aged women are getting any sexual satisfaction or pleasure?” She goes on to write, having been nagged in their youth by the likes of Cosmopolitan magazine to have better orgasms and then positioned as cougars if they have a sexual appetite in later years, women’s sexuality has been largely unexplored.Not now. More than a quarter of a century after Meg Ryan illustrated how easy it is to fake an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally, women are finally gaining sovereignty over their sexuality. Fit, strong, self-sufficient and emboldened, they’re not prepared to descend into a grey, sexless old age characterised by elasticised slacks and a sensible haircut. Half a century after Mrs Robinson seduced a young student in The Graduate, an older woman with a sexual appetite is no longer seen as aberrant.

Quite the opposite; they’re having fun. While Margolyes, who has been with her partner for 54 years, writes engagingly about her sexual exploits in her memoir, This Much is True, it was the amusing and playful relationship between Heather Mitchell, 65, and Hugo Weaving, 63, that elevated the recent Australian drama, Love Me. Likewise, the rebooted Sex and the City franchise, And Just Like That, is revisiting Carrie, Miranda et al, as they traverse their fifties. Same-sex relationships, issues with ejaculation, menopause and later-life dating are not just normalised but applauded, as we cheer on these characters we have grown up with.While porn is now ubiquitous, mid-life women are challenging transactional depictions of sex with a fresh agenda. Not prepared to accept the orgasm gap – the disparity between the percentage of men who orgasm versus the percentage of women – they’re communicating what they want. Outercourse, the non-penetrative pleasure that goes beyond cursory foreplay, is seen as important as intercourse, while researcher Elisabeth Lloyd has identified the “golden trio” of deep kissing, genital stimulation and oral sex as the key to women’s pleasure.

What’s more, 25 years after Viagra hit the market, vaginal rejuvenation procedures such as Cliovana have now hit our shores, with the non-invasive soundwave technology promising to increase blood-flow to the clitoris, reduce dryness and heighten orgasms.

In essence, women want good sex not to boast or because they’re performative but because it’s part of a suite of joyful experiences that make for a happy and contented life.

As Margolyes says: “I’m still ducking and diving. I’m still open to new experiences.”