Name: Tess
Home: St. Louis
Rant about Newsweek's Cover Story: Sex and the Single Boomer
Let's start with the cover of Newsweek itself: Why must the image representing sex ALWAYS be a naked woman? Okay, she looks a teeny bit older than most cover models, but she's in the usual seductive pose, and she's naked (although seen through bifocals). We've been through how many decades of feminism, and we're still seeing women as sex objects from a (presumably) male gaze? Come on! And she looks like a Barbie--no hair (except on her head), no nipples, and, thanks to the bifocals, she even has a line through her waist like Barbie does!
The boomer-sex-trend stories annoy me on many levels. (Parade magazine did one a week or so ago, and I'm sure many more will follow.) They seem to be largely based on Gail Sheehy's new book. Everyone keeps quoting Sheehy about the "seasoned woman, marinated in life experience." Ugh ugh ugh. How wonderful--women are like cuts of meat! I'm all for portraying postmenopausal women in a positive light--I hope to be one myself some day--but phrasing it that way is ridiculous. It's a horrible metaphor, and it leads to all kinds of silly images: "The seasoned woman, marinated in life experience, needs to be slowly roasted for three hours at 350 degrees. The dish goes especially well with a side dish of wild rice and green beans." Yes, let's depict women as something to be consumed.
And sometimes I just wish the media would SHUT UP ABOUT THE BOOMERS for a little while. Don't get me wrong; I love some boomers dearly, but I'm sick of the whole "Boomers are changing everything!" angle the media has been pursing since my childhood (and probably before). I don't believe for a second that all the boomers are that narcissistic, but the media is happily following their every possible trend.
(I'll admit another reason the boomer-sex stories bother me is that I'm a child of boomers, and no one wants to think about their parents' sex life. But that's a neurosis pretty much everyone has to come to terms with, and I can't blame Newsweek for that.)
Both the Newsweek and Parade articles portray these swinging singles in a glowing light--these older people are empowered to date and have fun! They use the internet! They have sex! Now while I think it's great that they're doing that--I don't want to be ageist and discount older people's sexual identities--I'm also amazed at the split in our culture. Some people are vigorously teaching teenagers that abstinence until marriage is the only option, while we're celebrating promiscuous sex among people in their fifties. What?!?
Another thing that annoys me about these articles is they glide over the pain that most of these people must have felt on their way to becoming swinging singles. There are only two ways that I could be single in my fifties, and both of them are too horrible to think about. Joe, the lead in the Newsweek article, came home to find that his wife of 17 years had dropped dead of a reaction to medication. Luckily, by the end of the article, he finds a new love.
The article is full of dubious statistics (could someone fill me in on the methodology of that AARP study?) and lots of anecdotal evidence. For example:
The longer they're single, the harder it is for boomer women to settle down. Cecilia Mowatt, 45, a lawyer turned consultant, always thought she would be married, but time passed quickly. "I was busy leading my life, doing my corporate career, all the Junior League stuff and philanthropic stuff to give back, and I kind of forgot about what I want to do for me in terms of a personal life," she says. But she admits she has become accustomed to her freedom and has come to cherish it. "Marriage is no easy thing," she says. "That partnership requires work every single day, and a commitment that's incredible."
I'm sorry, but it seems to me like the author has squeezed Mowatt's words into the straightjacket of trendspotting. In the actual quotation, Mowatt sounds regretful, and we don't hear her say anything about cherishing freedom. But those words don't fit the trend of happy single women!
For more on fake trendspotting in Newsweek, read this article from Slate.com, or this article from GQ in 1998 (although the author can't help indulging in trendspotting about trendspotting).
posted by Tess | 8:07 AM
5 Comments:
You make such good points. That just isn't reality...even if she's a teeny bit older, the _average_ women my age (nearly 45) don't LOOK like THAT.
Born in 1961, sometimes I am called a Boomer and other times (in books/online) I am in a limbo without a title.
Clearly, the time in which I "grew up" and that shaped me (until I graduated from high school in 1979) make me different than the person born in '46 at the start of the boomer-years.
I think it's just odd to lump such a big variation in years and experience together...and to assume we are all the way that photo, which you so accurately picked about, depicts us.
This is a pithy, well-worded double standard you mention here :
Some people are vigorously teaching teenagers that abstinence until marriage is the only option, while we're celebrating promiscuous sex among people in their fifties. What?!?
That's another good point. Do as your 40/50ish parents say, not as they do, right?
http://www.bbhq.com/whatsabm.htm
TAG
What a wretched piece of pseudo-journalism. Thanks for reminding me why I no longer subscribe to Newsweek. I stopped reading it back around 1999 when they featured an article about s book (totally escapes me now) where this parenting guru insisted that raising children has to do with making enough money to put them in the right school system so they can make the best social connections. Everything else - love, discipline, attention, and all the other things parents stress about providing - was irrelevant and evened out in the end. The whole decision to feature such a radically self-serving no-guilt parenting book clearly smacked of an attempt to relieve boomers from how badly many of them have raised children, where their offspring suffer from parental selfishness and narcisism. Horrible!
American boomers have changed and will continue to change the world, with their excessive use of natural resources, inability to plan for their own futures (Social Security), let alone the futures of their progeny and the rest of the world, material greed, and overall hypocracy - especailly considering the leftist principles that shaped their youth and changed this country. You're right Tess - these people are the same ones who look at their teen children and grandchildren and tell them to abstain. But of course, that only applies to virgin youth. For everyone else, it's still the moto of free love and the myriad complications of morality and self esteem that follow. Really disturbing.
My mom and dad, 1953 boomers, are annoyed by their generational compatriots as well.
I had no idea that trendspotting had a name. Must be a trend. :)
Really, though, it is funny how many stories in the media are "TRENDS!" and "CRISES!" It is odd that editors (and I had one like this) feel the need to make any story into a trend story, when in fact there may not be a trend at all.
I particularly hate it when statistics are molded to fit the story: As one of the articles you referenced suggested, "Drug arrests are up 25% in our area!" may mean that there are more people using drugs in the area, but it also may just mean that another policeman was hired and they are now CATCHING more of the people using drugs... or that the number of drug busts dropped precipitously last year, so a return to normal levels now looks like a huge increase. Duh!
Anyway, I like your ranting posts. I'll have to try to tick you off just to elicit more of them. :)
"Some people are vigorously teaching teenagers that abstinence until marriage is the only option..."
- not newsweek! :) I'm not suprised at the split.
sex sells I guess?! Is it really news that people have sex? Duh?!
I'm sure displayed nipples would have been deemed inappropriate by the 'powers that be'. I'm also guessing hairy nakedness wouldn't have sold so many copies. While I think hairy nakedness with average bodily dimensions would have possibly been less stereotypical, there probably would have been a roar by the people that took issue with the Dove real beauty campain models being "too naked". I think the cover takes a classic pin-up model, adds some age and uses bi-focals to stress the age factor and (by it's placement) makes the cover "appropriate" for the newstands. The pin-up reference didn't bring the same 1940's connotations for you as the audience I thing they were aiming for!
I'm not sure I would have caught the line through the waist like Barbie! Great post!
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