{"id":5469,"date":"2015-08-13T09:18:51","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T14:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=5469"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:13:14","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:13:14","slug":"cougar-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2015\/08\/13\/cougar-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Cougars: Literal Mountain Lions, Not Sexual Predators"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Even<\/a>
Even the show cringed at its title, making new jokes every week. Image via Slacktory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Television and movie relationships between a middle-aged woman and younger man, like those on TBS\u2019s Cougar Town<\/em><\/a> often appear glamorous and dramatic, but are they accurate depictions? Milaine Alarie<\/a> and Jason Carmichael<\/a> tell Pacific Standard<\/em><\/a> that the stereotype of wealthy \u201ccougars\u201d who \u201chave been able to surgically turn back time with their looks\u2026 or literally buy young men\u2019s attention\u201d is more a myth popularized by shows like Sex and the City<\/em> than reality. First, they find in a survey of Americans that \u201croughly 13 percent of sexually active women between ages 35 and 44 had slept with a man who was at least five years younger,\u201d meaning that sexual relationships between middle-aged women and younger men are not rare. The bigger surprise is that women sporting diamonds and Chanel are less<\/em> likely to be in that 13 percent than low-income women are. Additionally, rather than a steamy fling, these relationships tend to be long-term, with most lasting at least two years. \u201c[A] sizable share of \u2018cougars\u2019 are married to their younger partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Media portrayals of a woman\u2019s midlife crisis or frantic clamor to cling to youth do not represent most women\u2019s experiences, highlighting a cultural problem: a stereotype like the \u201ccougar\u201d \u201cencourages aging women to doubt themselves.\u201d Alarie and Carmichael hope that dispelling the cougar myth will \u201cmotivate us to reflect on our society\u2019s tendency to (re)produce sexist and ageist conceptions of women\u2019s sexuality, and women\u2019s value more broadly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Television and movie relationships between a middle-aged woman and younger man, like those on TBS\u2019s Cougar Town often appear glamorous and dramatic, but are they accurate depictions? Milaine Alarie and Jason Carmichael tell Pacific Standard that the stereotype of wealthy \u201ccougars\u201d who \u201chave been able to surgically turn back time with their looks\u2026 or literally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2028,"featured_media":5470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,55],"tags":[44,38148,39112,39114,99,10068,407,94],"class_list":["post-5469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-gender","tag-age","tag-cougar","tag-culture","tag-gender","tag-relationships","tag-romance","tag-stereotypes","tag-television"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2015\/08\/Cougar-Town-title-card-joke.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5471,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5469\/revisions\/5471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}