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

Bookmark It

Half the women in the country would give anything to have her stunning good looks. She’s considered one of Hollywood’s sexiest actresses.

In the past, she said the secret to being a sexy older woman was limiting carbs and lots of sex.

“Well, it’s certainly not lots of carbs and limiting sex.”

Susan’s insight amazes everyone.

Technorati Tags: Susan Sarandon, political activist, Oscar, sexy older woman, carbs, sex

Bookmark It

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

Bookmark It

FROM BAD TO VERSE

“I could forgive a sexual slip-up but not if my man wrote poetry for his lover” says screen siren Susan Sarandon who considers a sexual betrayal not the worst thing that can happen to a relationship

By Siobhan Synnot

WOMEN would kill – or at least hire a plastic surgeon – to look like Susan Sarandon. But when asked for the secret of her enduring glamour, the actress rolls her eyes.

“It’s a mindset,” she said. “I had kids late, so that really helped me to stay younger longer in my head.

“You know, there are not that many people in Hollywood over 40 who haven’t had something done to their faces, so people in my age range are shrinking. Maybe that’s why I work a lot.”

In an industry that’s noted for its ageism, somehow Susan makes entering her sixties look like plain sailing.

“Certainly I didn’t find being 50 a problem. Turning 80, that’s going to be interesting,” she smiled.

In the past, she said the secret to being a sexy older woman was limiting carbs and lots of sex. When she is reminded of this, she laughs out loud.

“Well, it’s certainly not lots of carbs and limiting sex.”

But she added: “Really, I feel it’s the way you think, not the way you work out that is the deciding factor.

“I think people who say yes to life have something attractive about them, no matter what shape or age.”

Certainly Susan appears to have said yes to life, but also yes to good personal grooming. Her glossy, tousled reddish-brown hair and virtually non-existent make-up give the impression of an effortless elegance.

Regular workouts are an important part of her regime.

The results are so impressive that co-star Kirsten Dunst has been nagging her for beauty tips.

Susan and Kirsten, 23, have been working together on Elizabethtown, playing Orlando Bloom’s motherand love interest respectively. The Spider-Man star wondered how the older actress managed to stay so young-looking.

Susan’s biggest tip? “Quit smoking.”

Actor and activist, sex symbol and earth mother, over 30 years Susan Sarandon has played all these roles with style, but balancing one against the other is not easy. Long before she became an Oscar-winner, the intelligent and passionate actress was politically aware.

Sometimes this has earned her praise, sometimes – notably at the Oscars – it’s earned her boos.

At school, she was arrested at civil rights demonstrations.

She’s also marched in support of women’s rights and spoken out against censorship and the Iraq war.

She helped collect a million cell phones for victims of domestic violence.

In 1999 she was arrested for protesting the police shooting of an unarmed west African immigrant.

After September 11, she spent 18 days at Ground Zero as a volunteer, cooking meals for exhausted rescue workers.

Even her recent birthday party started off as a fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina.

She said: “We were doing a benefit that my son was involved with, and it happened to be on my birthday.

“I didn’t say anything, then Wycliffe Jean, who I know, wished me happy birthday and sang. So it ended up being a fabulous party with 250 strangers.”

Susan has made close to 40 films, winning a Best Actress Oscar for Dead Man Walking, opposite Sean Penn.

Her partner, Tim Robbins, is a respected actor-director and also an Oscar winner, for his role in Mystic River.

Recently her 19-year-old daughter Eva has also joined them in making movies. Her first major role was playing Susan’s daughter inThe Banger Sisters. Sons Miles, 13, and Jack, 16, have also shown signs of acting interest.

But growing up, it seems her children couldn’t have been less interested in their mother’s career.

She said: “My son Jack came home from school one day and asked ‘Did you really play a lesbian vampire?’.

“Even I had to think about that one. And then I realised he meant The Hunger. So then I had to say, well, yes I did.”

In order to combine work and family, Susan will rarely work on a film that is set outside New York, where they live, and avoids movies altogether during school holidays. At home, the only sign of their day jobs are the Oscars in their bathroom. “They keep each other company. The kids call it the Famous Bathroom.”

But despite their happy domestic life, Susan and Tim have yet to tie the knot.

“We’ve been together 20 years – in Hollywood years, that’s 45 or 50.

“But no, we never did the deed. Not yet, anyway.”

Ironically, in Elizabethtown and her upcoming musical Romance and Cigarettes, Susan plays wives whose happy marriages are rudely interrupted.

In Elizabethtown, her character is suddenly widowed and has to find her own way in life.

In one show stopping scene, Susan amazes mourners at her husband’s funeral by breaking into a tap dance routine to the sound of Moon River, a favorite tune of her husband’s.

It is almost 30 years since she vamped it up as the singing and dancing Janet in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But the tentative tap dance was all her idea.

She said: “We were trying on clothes for my character to figure out what she would wear and when I was wearing this suit I did a little tap dance – and the director liked it.

“I try to do it with a little dignity – but it’s almost impossible. When I tell people I tap dance to Moon River, they laugh immediately.”

Susan has other dancing skills under her belt – including belly dancing.

“I threw my back out after about six lessons. I did it with such a vengeance that I almost crippled myself.

“I just thought it would be fun and it is fun. But it’s like a foreign language – if you can’t use it all the time, what’s the point?”

“Whenever I go on talk shows now they ask me to do some belly dancing constantly – but I don’t.”

Although she doesn’t consider herself a good singer, Susan will be exercising her vocal chords later this year alongside Sopranos star James Gandolfini and Kate Winslet in the musical Romance and Cigarettes.

Directed by the quirky Cohen Brothers, who made Fargo and O Brother Where Art Thou, it will be out next year.

Again, Susan plays an unhappy wife – this time because husband James Gandolfini is cheating on her with Kate’s character.

But Susan reckons a sexual betrayal is not the worst thing that can happen to a relationship.

She said: “I don’t know that having an affair is really as bad as writing someone a poem.That would hurt me more than a sexual slip here or there.”

For her own preference, she says that brains are her top turn-on.

She said: “Somebody has to have a kind of twinkle in their eye. It doesn’t mean that every smart guy turns me on. When I see young guys who are really gorgeous, I might say, ‘Wow, he’s hot.’ It doesn’t mean that I would want to go there, though.”

She added: “I think when you look back on your life, it’s nice to think you’ve put something into the world that has some staying power.

Technorati Tags: article, sexy older women, Susan Sarandon, sexy older woman, Kirsten Dunst, Best Actress, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Rocky Horror Picture Show, James Gandolfini, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini

Bookmark It