SEXIS WRONG

A Middle-Age Manifesto
How I Stopped Worrying and
Learned to Love the Lube
Debra Hyde
It hardly seems possible that years have passed since a movie
made waves with its portrayal of older people having sex,
but that’s what Something’s Gotta Give did in 2003. Granted,
the thought of Jack Nicholson getting it on has a certain
gross-out factor to it, but I felt the same way over 30 years
ago when I saw a much younger Nicholson bed a very busty
Sally Struthers in Five Easy Pieces. But that’s a Jack Nicholson
thing, not an old-people-sex thing.
The public response to the consummation of Nicholson’s and
Diane Keaton’s characters was, however, revealing. It told us
that we’re far more inherently invested in our youth culture
than we know. It showed we think more of a man seeking
young trophies over engaging in a peer pairing. The movie
spoke volumes about our attitudes towards sex and aging.
Certainly, the under-35 crowd reacted as if they’d seen their
own parents going at it, and perhaps they did experience a
generational culture shock when they saw that (gasp!) a body
goes flabby before the sex drive does. But it also showed us
that we have, on the whole, such little respect
for and understanding of the human life cycle
that we prefer denial and shock to awareness
and acceptance. We remain too keen for bodies
that are perky or taut in all the right places. Mothers I’d
Love to Fuck (MILFs) count only if they’re relatively younglooking,
thin, and insatiably horny. Grandmothers remain offlimits,
even if they’re out looking for it.
However, Keaton’s and Nicholson’s aging bodies held forth a
truth and reality: Most of the American population looks like
them. Not like Pitt and Jolie. Or J-Lo and whomever. Most of
America is growing older. Fact is, of those born during that
post-War population bulge that made demographers bugeyed,
the eldest are now nearing 60. And most sport bodies
akin to Keaton and Nicholson.
Yes, I know. We’re all tired of “boomers this” and “boomers
that,” but the fact remains that there’s a reason HBO’s Real
Sex doesn’t always show lithe, svelte bodies. Most of America
is flabby, fattening, and horny—and you’re going to see
it reflected in everything from documentaries about swinger
events to commercials hyping erectile functioning.
I know; I’m among those aging boomers. Born smack-dab in
the middle of boomerhood’s near-20-year birth span, I was a
child when the Beatles came ashore, a (now so-called) tween
when the Monkees were over and Woodstock was happening,
and a young woman when women’s lib, the sexual revolution,
and gay rights converged on my consciousness. I went
through my teen years and into early adulthood loving sex and
hating disco with the best of them.
But as the 1970s ebbed and college ended, I shrugged off
drugs and shrugged on a corporate suit, then cast the career
aside to become a suburban mom (perhaps of ill repute—I
A body goes flabby before the sex
drive does.
never entirely gave up my contrary, iconoclastic ways). Today,
I’m slouching towards a life event that a mere 20 years
ago seemed implausible: menopause. More specifically, I
have a front-row seat to that dazzling pre-show called perimenopause.
Certainly, life has always presented bodily challenges. It
wasn’t a delight when my body began to shed its tautness as
my twenties waned and when multiple childbirths hastened
changes in physical appearances during my thirties, but it
was another thing entirely when my first hot flash forced me
A MIDDLE-AGE MANIFESTO 47