Thursday, May 13, 2010

Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson

Not that I normally go out with much younger men, but here's an analysis of how the word 'cougar' has become gendered...and since it's associated with women...I bet you can't guess...a bad thing.

A cougar is an older woman who dates a younger man. There isn't an equivalent term for men who date younger women (unless the difference is so great that the Brits award the title 'Dirty Old Man'). According to the article, it was a positive term for a while and then turned negative, but I personally missed it being positive.

The article focuses on a study that says older women who marry younger men die early. But what the media isn't reporting is that women who marry older men die early, too.

That puts a different, non-judgmental spin on things, no?

"The other pattern (women with older men) deserves more attention, because it is much more common," he says. "Women that are much older than their husbands are very rare." Yet, this didn't stop the press from issuing broad cougar advisories as if Maggie May marriages were the new swine flu."

Very interesting article on Forbes here.

1 comment:

KaliDurga said...

On the one hand, I guess I should be glad I didn't marry either of the last two men I dated (one was 7 yrs younger, the other 15). On the other hand, our society is way too obsessed with quantity of life over quality of life. Why do the folks conducting all of these studies assume that we all want to live forever? Where's the study on that little phenomenon?

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