Why I am not a cougar
All the publicity surrounding Cougar Town the forthcoming series with Courteney Cox has brought out in the open again the whole debate about the term Cougar, a word the media has adopted for women who date younger men. I’ve always objected to it because while I wouldn’t deny that a cougar is a beautiful animal, I’ve never felt predatory and don’t like the idea the image promotes of a woman stalking her innocent victims.
All of my boyfriends have been younger than me [from 2 to 12 years] but it’s not because I’ve been hunting ‘fresh meat’ but more because that’s just the way it worked out. They are the ones I found attractive and vice versa. I was probably also influenced by my mother who only dated younger men after her second divorce. When I left university she was having a relationship, which lasted several years, with a man my age. I moved back into her house when I was back in London and so did he. We all got on very well and I remember it as a very happy period.
What I really object to with the cougar word is that it is such a stereotype. It’s the image the media love of the older predatory woman who ‘eats’ her young prey. There may well be women like that, but it’s only a fraction of the women who date younger men. There are probably as many different reasons why a woman might prefer a younger man as there are relationships. In 2007 I started www.toyboywarehouse.com in the UK because there was no dating site catering for women and younger men in a non-sleazy way. The sites out there, often incorporating the word cougar, were all tacky with an over emphasis on the purely sexual side.
I suppose it’s inevitable for any minority group whether racial or sexual to go through a stage of stereotyping before society at large accepts it as normal, like the gay community or even the black community in the US.
I was interested to read that New York Gov. David Paterson said that the media has exploited racial stereotypes in coverage of him, President Barack Obama and fellow black Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. I can see the parallels with sexual stereotyping.
Paterson said in the written statement. “What I did point out was that certain media outlets have engaged in coverage that exploits racial stereotypes. That’s not only unfair – it’s wrong – and it sends an objectionable message.”
“We have a long way to go to achieve a truly post-racial society,” he said.
We have some way to go before a woman who dates a younger man needs no label and it’s as normal as it always has been for a man to date a younger woman.
By Julia
Tags: cougar, Dating, toyboys, toyboywarehouse
