I think the term Cougar is demeaning to women. I understand why she wouldn’t want to be called that. It strikes up an image of a horny older woman who wants to recapture her youth thru younger men. Why can’t an older woman be with a younger man because there is a mutual attraction and sometimes chemistry is timeless. Why does the woman have to be viewed as an oversexed predator.
A couple of weeks ago my mother who is 78, told me she had read that Conchita Cintrón had died. I asked who this was. My mother had been brought up in Buenos Aires in The Argentine. After she came to England at the age of 21 spent much time on holiday in Spain. When in Spain she used to hang out with the bullfighters who would show her passes [and I’m sure make passes too!] At that time there was talk of Conchita Cintrón the only female bullfighter.
She was a gringa, with a Puerto Rican father and an Irish-American mother; this accounted for her fair northern colouring, which earned her the name “Golden Goddess” in Mexico, where she made her reputation. Conchita had not intended to work with capes or muletas. She had started as a horse-rider, until the day when her riding master encouraged his pupils to stick banderillas in an old chair from horseback. She took to the new game so eagerly that, at 13, he tried her talents on a frisky bull that was being driven to the local slaughterhouse. Her horse, as she gave it rein and raced forwards, leapt “like a swallow” with fear, but she saw her banderilla planted firmly for the first time in the black, mountainous neck. That was it. At 16, though her parents wished she would do something ladylike, such as learning French, she was touring professionally round the bullrings of Latin America. She was known especially for her verónicas, slow backward swings of the cape with both feet rock-steady as the bull raced towards her, almost upon her.
How incredibly brave! I said to my mother that she must have admired her courage. She replied that life was different for women in the 50s and at the time she was seen as stepping out of her place. Women weren’t supposed to do that. Although, with the perspective of now, she could see what a courageous and talented woman she was. I find it amazing how much attitudes have changed in half a century.
Bullfighting was, and is, a man’s world. Conchita had been trained as a rejoneadora, in the Portuguese version of bullfighting, and was supposed to stay on her horse. Men went on foot to do their duelling with the bull, and to kill it; this was not women’s work. But Ms Cintrón found her horse got in the way. “Twos always work better than threes,” she liked to say. In her rejoneadora gear—no flashy suit of lights, but a silk jacket, leather chapped trousers and a wide-brimmed hat—she would slide from her steed and right into the close, bloody dance.
One late fight, in Jaen in 1950, was especially famous. Women were forbidden to fight on foot in Franco’s Spain, in case they were gored in unseemly ways. (Ms Cintrón was often injured and twice gored, once in each thigh, but managed to finish off the bull after fainting briefly.) On this occasion, having slipped illegally from her horse, she snatched a muleta and sword from the waiting novillero, raised the sword as the bull charged, and then dropped it, instead caressing the huge black neck as it hurtled past. For this “burst of glorious criminality”, as Orson Welles described it, she was instantly arrested and as instantly pardoned, as the crowd rained down hats and carnations. That final caress, with her delicate fingers, was a gesture only a woman might have thought of making.
By Julia
For the full article http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13217817
