Thanks to the booming divorce market, we now live in an age when more and more 35-and-older women are both single and financially independent. Add image-enhancing prospects created by fitness, diet and plastic surgery, and you have something approximating a new species of woman. And every new species needs a new name, in this case homo cougarus – The Cougar.

This is the Golden Age for mature women and we not just talking on the Hollywood scene. You have Katie Couric presenting the news to the nation every night. Women such as Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton on the political front and fabulous Hollywood ladies such as Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon all have some things in common. Most are highly intelligent, and most are glamorous. These women and the breed of women they represent have their own money, their own power.

Backing up the cougar craze as the buzzpoint of a larger population shift are the statistics cited in the new book Microtrends, which features a chapter on cougars. Among the book’s findings:

U.S Census bureau statistics show that the number of couples in which the woman was significantly older than the man shot up by more than 3 million between 1997 and 2003.

Technorati Tags: divorce, plastic surgery, mature women, Hollywood, Katie Couric, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, cougar, Microtrends

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When questioned regarding the age difference between he and Demi – “The number is so inconsequential,” he groaned. “I know 40-year-olds who act like they are 10 and I know a lot of 10-year-olds who act like they’re 40. They should change the measure from how long you have been here to how much responsibility you have taken on in your life. “That should be the age barometer. You fill in a docket, send it out to them and they send you back something that says ‘You are actually 50′.”

Ashton say the reason they’ve defied the critics and stayed together is because they have realistic expectations about marriage.

“The biggest problem in general with relationships is guys are raised with a goal of having sex,” he grinned. “But for women, they have these goals of ‘I’m going to get married, then I’m going to have kids’.

“What we’re missing is no one has the goal of being married. They think about the wedding, so no one’s working towards being married as a goal.”

Incredibly, Ashton even claims he didn’t even know the identity of stunning brunette Demi when they first met.

“The first time I ever saw her, I didn’t know who she was,” he smiled. “I sat and talked to her, not having the slightest idea I was talking to a famous person.” Yet when he made his debut red carpet appearance at Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle with Demi and her ex Bruce Willis, this became bigger news than anything he was doing on screen.

Technorati Tags: Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, cougars, marriage, relationships, Charlie’s Angels, Full Throttle, Bruce Willis

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Those rewards are not only tangible, she says, but human: “I have a wonderful marriage, I have three wonderful daughters, I have an incredible extended family, and I have loving, wonderful friends.“

As a result, she says, “when I look back in the mirror, the reflection I see isn’t so bad, because I’m seeing the beauty of my whole being and my whole life.”

I think Demi’s been spending too much time at the damm mystic Kabbalah Centre (a controversial California-based organization which alleges that it teaches Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism) she and Ashton frequent.

The famous sky high salary actress of “Ghost” fame needed to spend hundreds of thousands on plastic surgery only to discover what any mature woman could have told her.

Technorati Tags: Demi Moore, Kabbalah, Ghost, plastic surgery, mature woman

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Hollywood makes it official: Older women are sexy

By Bonnie Erbe

May I have the envelope, please? Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the verdict is in and Hollywood has decided: Older women are officially declared sexy. At least that’s the media’s response to two major releases this holiday season. The media have ruled it so (and they always know, don’t they?) due to the success of “Something’s Gotta Give,” starring Diane Keaton, rejuvenating her career after a decade or two of semi-retirement, and “Calendar Girls,” starring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters – British actresses of a certain age.

In the former, Keaton plays a fabulously successful playwright in her 50s who dumps Keanu Reeves, a hunk of a younger lover, for Jack Nicholson, who plays a terminally single, senescent playboy. In the latter, a sweet group of polite British 40-to-60-something ladies pose nude (or almost) as a fund-raising stunt to drum up money for one of their cancer-stricken spouses.

For the longest time, stretch marks and wrinkles were beyond passe. They were verboten, terminators, as it were for women’s acting careers. Now (we can hope at least) they’re in vogue.

It’s about time the reel Hollywood caught up with the real Hollywood. In their private lives, older actresses are pairing up with younger male stars at unheard-of rates. Look at a sampling of Hollywood’s hottest couples: Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher- she is 16 years his senior. Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake – he is 9 years younger than she. Then there’s 44-year-old Madonna with her director-spouse Guy Ritchie, 10 years her junior. There’s Julianne Moore, who trumps her mate, Bart Freundlich, by nine years.

Long gone is the time (1967 was the year) when “Mrs. Robinson” was new to the Hollywood lexicon and the idea of older woman with her “spring rooster” was shocking, jaw-dropping, and bizarre. Even into the early ’70s, the movie-going public was still incredulous when Burt Reynolds, then a major sex symbol (but God knows why) had a four-year romance with singer Dinah Shore, who was 20 years older.

But is this progress, or is it Botox? Are younger men just more accepting of white hair, yellowed teeth, wrinkles, and sagging skin? Or have Botox, hair dye, tooth bleach, and plastic surgery merely transformed 60-year-old women into 45-year-old look-alikes?

Novelist and columnist Amy Sohn makes a fabulous point on her Web site. “Women in my mother’s generation are supposed to be happy that there are more and more roles for middle-aged actresses, but there’s not much to applaud for when the actresses look like mutated freaks. When my parents see a movie and my dad admits a crush on the 52-year-old, nipped-and-tucked, female star, my mom’s not going to feel flattered. She’s going to feel majorly dissed – because until she pays the 20 grand to get the work done herself, she’ll never be able to compare.”

The question is valid: If middle-age and older actresses merely cut and paste themselves into looking younger, are they really leading us into a new era, or just reinvigorating ancient stereotypes?

While we are not yet riding the crest of a tsunami, the data tell us we’re moving forward. The Screen Actors Guild collects data on diversity in filmmaking. In 2001, the guild reports actresses landed 38 percent of all movie roles and actresses over the age of 40 landed 24 percent of all film roles. That, while women overall accounted for 51 percent of the U.S. population, and women over the age of 40 represent 22.6 percent of the population. In 1992, actresses secured 29 percent of total roles and women over the age of 40 landed a mere 9 percent.

Actress Rosanna Arquette released a documentary earlier this year called, “Searching for Deborah Winger” in which she interviewed 25 leading (or formerly leading) actresses including Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Sharon Stone, and Vanessa Redgrave. They talked about the consequences of aging and trying to stay alive professionally in an industry that so worships youth. Said Whoopi Goldberg, “I’m being stalked by my butt. It’s gotten bigger since I hit 45 and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Ah, Whoopi! Lead us to truth, once again.

Technorati Tags: Hollywood, older women, article, sexy, Diane Keaton, Helen Mirren, Keanu Reeves, Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Madonna, Julianne Moore, Rosanna Arquette

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The buff and beautiful Demi’s strategy to get herself back into the limelight appears to have failed as the big-money parts she had presumably hoped to win have just not appeared.

At one time, Demi’s salary for a Hollywood film was $12 million. She told Red magazine she wanted to overturn the belief that juicy roles should not be given to older actresses. “If we are told we are not valuable once we hit 30, it is a problem,” she said. “We all have more to give. We can’t just wait for something to happen. We have to say, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more‘.”

“It’s been a challenging few years, being the age I am. Almost to the point where I felt like, well, they don’t know what to do with me. I am not 20. Not 30″.

“There aren’t that many good roles for women over 40. A lot of them don’t have much substance, other than being someone’s mother or wife.”

After a string of flops in the 1990s, she took a career break, during which time she met her current husband, 29-year-old Ashton Kutcher.

Demi returned to the screen in 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, emerging from the sea in a skimpy bikini which showed off the results of a her cosmetic surgery spending spree.

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Demi said: “Somehow movies with real-life partners never seem to work in Hollywood.”

“We are very happy and very much in love. Ashton has many wonderful qualities and he is the ideal man for me.”

Demi – who has three teenage daughters from her marriage to Bruce Willis – said: “We would love a baby. It would just be fantastic. We are doing lots of practising. And you can’t complain about practising with him!”

Basically Demi likes to rub it in that she’s snagged one of the the hottest boy-toys in Hollywood. She’s also quick to point out that Ashton’s a great lay. So the next time your husband enters the room in his yellow polyester pants scratching his belly and passing gas – think about Demi.

Technorati Tags: Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, boy-toy

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