Despite the warnings from the big screen, young men in real life do look to older women for mature and experienced love. But what do the older women get from the younger men? Simple, in archetypal language: young men can play the Lover to the hilt, without the distracting and irritating need to be the King, the Magician or the Warrior. Today, more and more women find the men of their generation stuck in outdated patriarchal mode and the men of the next generation more eager for gender equality.
Out here in the three-dimensional world, September-May relationships stand a good chance of working, if the aging woman can stop taking too seriously the messages from the movies that tell her that men naturally want younger women. Real men want women of any age who like them, who want to make them feel good and who raise their testosterone level.
The advantages of a September-May pairing for the young man are obvious: she is a mate who is broken in but not broken-down, who has sexual experience, wisdom, power, competence and perhaps even gratitude. The woman who chooses a younger man may have to work hard to keep him from feeling like her son, and this effort will keep her young. But--and here's the great advantage for her--at least she won't have to keep him from feeling like he's her father.
As for the movies, they're still lagging behind the progress we've made in real life. If we are to achieve the gender equality we've been working toward for these last 40 years, we need the movies to provide a better set of myths about gender, age and relationships. With Mrs. Robinson, Margo Channing and Norma Desmond firmly in our psyches, it will take more than one Stella to create a widespread sense that older women can be sexy, desirable and, above all, safe for younger men. Men well know that older women can be these things, but the movies have not helped post-pubescent women themselves to feel that way. It is high time we had some sexy, loving, passionate older women in our movie mythology.
PHOTO (COLOR): WARRIOR WOMAN: Stella (Angela Bassett) got her groove back--with the help of a younger man(Taye Diggs).
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): QUEENING IT: Gloria Swanson gets ahold of William Holden.
PHOTO (COLOR): WITCHY WOMEN: Nicole Kidman seduces Joaquin Phoenix in To Die For (above)
PHOTO (COLOR): Anne Bancroft tempts the newly-minted Graduate, Dustin Hoffman (below)
Adapted by M.D.
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