The cougar is concerned

Dating a toy boy is not without its problems for the less experienced Cougar. Although one of the joys of getting older is that you do become much more comfortable with who you are, I’d defy any woman over 40 to say that there isn’t the odd day when she doesn’t wake up, look in the mirror and think, “holy crap, what happened there?” .
While, much of the time, we can convince ourselves we are still lovely young thirty year olds, after a late night and a bottle or two of Fleurie, the facial evidence most definitely says otherwise. So, while young Ad Man clearly liked what he saw when I was propped up by half the products on the Bobbi Brown counter in the daytime, I wasn’t so sure that he’d be prepared for the early morning face.. I already knew that, pre Cougar, he’d only dated women in their twenties, who (damn them) would no doubt wake up looking as dewy and fragrant as a teenager, so the pressure was on..
It seems even the celebrity Cougars have the same insecurities. Sadie Frost (former cougar wife of Jude Law) was pictured recently looking ‘fab at forty plus’, even in a bikini. But reading the small print, she has apparently spent tens of thousands on ensuring that her body looks fit and pert still for her current young partner, 28-year-old Andy Jones.
My Features Editor salary was never going to stretch to that, even if I had the nerve to brave the knife, so I had to resort to other tricks instead. Luckily for me Ad Man sleeps, well, like a baby of course, which gave me an early morning advantage. I soon learnt to prepare for a sleepover by filling a handbag with cougar face-saving essentials, such as eye rescue cream, beauty flash balm, and other such tricks we girls rely on. At night, I’d keep my handbag by the bed and, in the early hours of the morning, very quietly ease out said products, and then lie back, head on the pillow again, and start frantically applying creams before he stirred.
Of course, there would inevitably be the days when an overnighter hadn’t been planned, and I’d wake up after a heavy night, almost feeling the weight of the bags under my eyes, but with no emergency beauty kit to save me. I could vaguely remember some beauty editor once telling me that lying horizontally at night (as, lets face it, most normal beings do) allows fluid to accumulate under the eyes and causes the dark circles and bags. So, those unexpected mornings chez Ad Man would find me desperately plumping up the pillow to make me more vertical than horizontal and tapping away at my eye sockets in an attempt to persuade the damned fluid to head south. Then I’d try to slip off to his bathroom and splash my face 100 times with freezing water, in the hope it would, I don’t know, shock my face into eternal youth maybe?
One morning though, when worryingly, I’d not had a chance for any such pillow prep, Ad Man happened to bring the conversation around to his dislike of the high maintenance woman. “What I like about you, “ he murmured softly, “Is that you don’t wear make up, and yet you always look lovely..”
What?! Could he really not see the difference between the bare faced and exposed ‘me’, and the ‘me’ after hours of work in front of the bathroom mirror? It was at that moment I realised that, actually, what young men see, isn’t the small details we fret over, such as the crows feet and the frown lines. They are far more interested in the more general picture, such as how you move and smell, talk and smile. So, actually, the fact that they may not notice that you’ve had your fringe trimmed, or bought a fantastic new bag, is a GOOD thing ladies – it means you can get away with a few bags under the eyes too. Listen up Demi, you could have saved yourself a fortune!
Next time: dating the older woman – what’s in it for the younger man?
..

The arrival of the cougar

I could never be labeled a trend-follower, let alone a trendsetter. I may have erred mistakenly into wearing something 'of the moment'  at times, but that’s usually only because said trends have finally come back round to my way of dressing, rather than as a result of me picking up Vogue and thinking – oh yes, this season I really must invest in those must-have platform killer heels, essential knits or day-glo gloves etc.

So it’s been a little disturbing to find myself not just following one of the latest trends, but actually living it… 

Five years ago or so, I inadvertently embraced one aspect  of typical 21^st century living  when, as statistics would no doubt have predicted, my long-term relationship fell apart, and I  - plus two kids - left leafy suburbia, to set up a new single-parent home in what I like to describe as a tiny urban cottage, but what the kids would probably call, ‘a dump’.

Just to liven things up a little, I decided that was also the time to return to the world of glossy London magazines and take a job as a Features Editor. My plan, if I had one, was not only to get back into doing a job I really enjoyed, but maybe gain some enhanced self respect along the way - and friends reassured me (when I exhibited regular guilt about being away from home a lot more) that, in juggling it all, I was actually being an excellent role model for the children. I don’t think any of us anticipated that what I was actually about to do was turn into a Cougar.

For those of you who don’t read the lifestyle pages of the papers, the word Cougar now refers to rather more than the sleek pumas or mountain lions you see in the wildlife parks.  Rather less flatteringly, today’s ‘Cougar’ is  “a woman of 40 or so who pursues younger men, typically more than eight years their junior” (wikipedia). Put like that, it initially sounds, well somewhat seedy, but then you look at the people who have entered the realms of the cougar, and the list includes Madonna, Demi Moore, Sadie Frost, Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston and more. Apparently, bagging yourself a younger, well MUCH younger man, is quite de rigeur these days… but I didn’t know that four years ago..  All I knew was that I was still spending my days bursting into tears in the office whenever I spoke to any lawyers, and my evenings going to Clapham Picture House for some solitary popcorn. But, that all changed when I eventually, and rather inadvertently, spent a night with a work colleague, who was more than 10 years my junior…

As I’m at risk here of being labelled as some sort of ageing seductress, desperate to gain a final trophy, I think I should make it clear that, when it comes to matters of the heart or even the bed, my past was hardly going to raise many eyebrows. Apart from the inevitably decadent years of student life,  I was your average serial monogamist until finally settling down with someone of a similar age, from a similar background, and having two kids and a cat.

But something happened that night, over a long drunken dinner at St Katharine’s dock with the ridiculously youthful Ad Manager, that opened my eyes to the whole wonderful, testosterone-pumped world of the younger man. I didn’t have high hopes of my first date with someone who was still at primary school when I was starting university, but I spent that sultry summer’s evening with a man who complimented me, listened to me, laughed a lot, talked about his feelings, and – god forbid - even understood my liking for indie guitar bands.  There was no middle-aged talk of house prices, no expanding waistline, and no burden of  responsibility or emotional baggage weighing heavily  upon his shoulders. Finally I could understand why it was that Madonna hooked up with Guy, Demi is more than fine without Bruce,  and  the close-to-forty Moss found it hard to resist Docherty’s more childish charms.

What is rather sad is that the media has seen fit to come up with such a depressingly predatorial phrase for women enjoying such relationships. It’s as if the poor men involved  are the hapless prey and poor Tim Robbins (52) has spent the past 20 years trying to escape the clutches of his beautiful and intelligent wife Susan Sarandon (62). Despite the fact that women since Cleopatra, and even Elizabeth 1, have  favoured the younger man, society continues to treat these couplings with a certain suspicion, while smiling benignly at the older man trading his girlfriend in yet again for the even younger model.

Well, if you’re someone who wants to live by society’s unwritten rule book, that's fine - go find yourself someone more grown up. But if you don't mind, I'm not quite ready to do that yet. I'm still having far too much fun... 

Coming next  – what a Cougar should always carry in her handbag....