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Rethinking the Older Woman-Younger Man Relationship

The New York Times, 10/14/09

Abstract:

Over the transom the other day came an urgent “Cougar Alert”: There is a new book out, and this one distinguishes the real cougar, a confident, strong, single woman over 40, from the comically desperate predator-seductress depicted in television shows like “Cougar Town,” one of the latest products of Hollywood’s obsession with the older woman.

There is so much cougar hype that we now have a fake cougar and a real cougar. We also have our first Miss Cougar USA, a 42-year-old crowned in August by a room full of “cubs,” men in their 20s and 30s. Cougar cruises are setting sail, cosmetic surgeons are promising to cougarize their clients and online cougar communities are cropping up.

Newsweek, taking stock of the explosion of on-screen romances between older women and younger men, declared 2009 “the year of the cougar,” but then concluded in the June article that “by this time next year, the cougar will be extinct.”

Maybe so — if you’re talking about television or the box office. But behind the unleashing of cougars in pop culture is what a growing number of sociologists say is a real demographic shift, driven by new choices that women over 40 are making as theyredefine the concept of a suitable mate.

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