I have to admit that I’ve never been a fan of The Graduate. Great comedy? No. There was something so incredibly creepy about the 42-year-old married Mrs. Robinson’s relentless pursuit after Ben Braddock. I’ve never been a fan of the American Pie movies either, primarily because of the obnoxious references to and immature guffaws about Stiffler’s mom being a MILF. Even if I looked like Stiffler’s mom, I would not be interested in fulfilling the fantasies of boys half my age.
In Tom Junod’s In Praise of 42-Year-Old Women in the latest issue of Esquire, I almost winced at his celebrity references of 42-year old women – Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vergara, Leslie Mann and Amy Poehler. As successfully as they have broken the 40-plus barrier of attractiveness in the entertainment industry, not every 40-plus woman looks like them.
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However, Junod redeems himself in this passage:
There are many reasons for the apotheosis of forty-two-year-old women, and some of them have little to do with forty-two-year-old women themselves. In a society in which the median age keeps advancing, we have no choice but to keep redefining youth. Life lasts longer; so does beauty, fertility, and sex. And yet forty-two-year-old women are not enjoying some kind of scientific triumph but rather one of political and personal will. A few generations ago, a woman turning forty-two was expected to voluntarily accept the shackles of biology and convention; now it seems there is no one in our society quite so determined to be free. Conservatives still attack feminism with the absurd notion that it makes its adherents less attractive to men; in truth, it is feminism that has made forty-two-year-old women so desirable.
Then there’s Stephen Marche’s companion piece in Esquire, It’s Officially Time to Kill Off the Word ‘MILF’ . He points out that MILF is one of the top search terms on sites like PornMD and PornHub. So is Lisa Ann, the 42-year-old actress best known for spoofing Sarah Palin in porn clips.
Trends in sex and porn are fluid and change over years, sometimes months. As Marche puts it:
We assume that sex is a biological function, and therefore both beneath and above the mere flutterings of style. The men searching for Lisa Ann in private, online, are not doing so because they think they’re more sophisticated than men 15 years ago. They’re doing so because that’s what they want. Perhaps the change that is arriving is so powerful exactly because it’s coming from above and below. But there’s another explanation for the rise of 42, one that’s even more revelatory. Maybe it isn’t fashion at all. Maybe it’s what men wanted all along.
As a 49-year-old woman, I’m not convinced that 42 is not the ideal age or number. For the past 2½ years I’ve been having the best sex of my life with a man loves and lusts after me like no other. The same goes for my 50-give-or-take-a-few-years female friends, all of whom look pretty damn good, if not better than they did in our high school and college days.
And for a lot of you 42 and older men, you have a lot going for you, too.