Den Beste to Olsen: I’m a dirty old man. So what?
Welcome to Blogistan, the only -stan where sex talk is not only allowed, it is strongly encouraged! Den Beste lauded the string bikini. Eric Olsen got all grossed out. At this point, I agreed with Eric; Den Beste was trying to be light and funny, but came off as rather creepy to me. It was kinda like Bob Dole having to hold his ‘dog’ back when Britney is on the teevee, or your parish priest extolling the virtues of the robes they make altarboys wear.
Then Den Beste responded, basically telling Eric to tend his own flock since we don’t really know Den Beste anyway. At this point, I started to wonder if I was falling prey to one of my many prejudices. Old people and sex is just gross. I’m defining old loosely here, and I don’t know how old Den Beste is, so the rest of this post isn’t about him. It’s about anyone (well, most people… somehow some people manage to get old and still seem sexy. Paul Newman and Jessica Lange are exempted from this argument) over fifty, and their sex lives.
Why fifty? Well, hey, my second wife is probably just now being born, so I’ll be fifty when she is my age. Doesn’t that just sound unseemly? But Glenn Reynolds points out that these sorts of relationships do sometimes work out. I would bet that Novembers and Mays find happiness together at about the same clip as Junes and Julys.
So where does the revulsion towards sex and the aged come from? My parents were in their early to middle forties during the first stage of my sexual life, defined here as the period between the discovery of sexuality and the loss of virginity. The penultimate in nasty for a teen is the thought of your parents having sex. The ultimate in nasty is your father ogling girls your age, girls I didn’t dare ogle because some meathead might break my face. This gets lodged in your brain: Old people having sex is bad; old people having sex with young people is worse.
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FYI, I’m 48 (i.e. “under fifty”).
Stephen, old men having sex with women that could be their daughter, I mean WTF? Dude, come one now let’s just call a lech a lech. But hey I like old dudes and I am youngish hottie, but I like young dudes too, hell don’t listen to me I all over the damn map. Carry on.
Matt, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you rule.
When did “watching them at the swimming pool” become “having sex”? When did I say I wanted or expected to end up in bed with them?
I was going to say — jeez, people, just how old do you think Stephen is? But he just told us. Here’s a scoop, you young ‘uns: forty-something is no longer old, at least, not in this part of the world.
Cripes, I just turned thirty-nine. Does that mean next year I can’t ogle cute actors on the teevee because that’s gross?
In my post, I stated that my opinions were a prejudice. Also, my definition of old is informed by my age. And I never said Stephen Den Beste wanted to have sex with anyone.
Andrea: I think you’re ogling of young actors is gross now! I think my ogling of the pop princesses is gross, and they are only a handful of years younger than me. Hell, the truth is, I think ogling is gross, period. One of my many sexual hangups.
I have tried to clarify my position over on our site, and Matt still rules: age isn’t what makes ogling creepy.
Eric’s extremely wrong about one thing: Those young women are, by the one measure that can be separated from personal taste, the pinacle of sexuality. You can wrap it up in all the emotions and spiritual fulfillment folderol you like but ultimately it’s all in pursuit of a single goal, which is to mix your DNA with hers and propagate your line. In short, babies. Everything else is just social bonding and lies we tell ourselves to pretend our species is driven by something special.
Long before it could be proven in scientific terms we’ve understood that youth and reproductive health go hand in hand. There is cultural variance in age preference due to nutritional standard when the culture solidified but in general there is an age range that inevitably draw the most attention. A female who is old enough to reproduce may still be ignored because she isn’t mature to not be at risk in childbirth (one of the nasty bit that doesn’t get mentioned enough in stories of alarmingly young mothers) or capable of sustaining a child. Too old and the eggs are more likely to be overcooked and she may not live long to see the child to a self-supporting age. (Don’t forget these instincts were formed at a time when 30 was OLD.)
The same situation strongly favors older (in a relative sense) males ability to win the interest of young females. The males retain their fertility longer (though it’s now proven that their reproductive defect rate increases with age, too) and have better caves to offer up as homes for her and the cubs.
Is this nice or fair, especially in an era where people enjoy good health into an increasingly older age? Nope, get over it. We may eventually extend actual youth and really complicate things so we have singles bars where everybody looks 25 but the ages range across several decades. Then we’ll have less mature but older just the same men seeking out young women while truly mature men will favor women their own age who just look like they’re fresh out of college.
Those who are just looking to look will still favor youth, real, preserved, or recreated, because of what makes them look at all.
Wow, Eric P. that’s the way to kill a lighthearted exchange. Somewhere, I can’t remember where, there was a discussion about using evolutionary imperatives to make moral decisions about what is and isn’t appropriate… geez. I’m getting too old for this.
And there’s a lot of sexy men in their 50s.
“Ogling” is creepy? Day-um, I’ve got my hangups, but that’s not one of them. Now, whimpering, drooling, and pawing at the teevee screen or hotel room window every time a pretty body passes by, that’s creepy.
BTW, the actors I tend to “ogle” are mostly my age or older. Ew! Creepiness alert!
Most reasonably well-educated people are aware of the biological/genetic predispositions of our species. No one doubts these are true, but unless you are a determinist, they can be overcome.
Is everything I said a gross generalization? Yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
The evolutionary imperatives have nothing to do with appropriateness. That is purely a cultural add-on. Sometime it’s in response to an important condition, sometimes it’s just a dumb meme that outlived its usefulness. We’ve got a heavy duty meme running through our culture thanks to the constant Hollywood depiction of twenty-somethings as high school students. (Hard to avoid if you’re making an R-rated flick but for TV?) Think back to that first time you happened to drive by a high school just as class was letting out for the day, realized, “They’re children!” and suddenly felt really old even though middle-aged folks still saw you as a youth. The audience that seems most fond of this Hollywood age offset are kids of the depicted age. That inbetweeen child and adult age can be a major annoyance so I can see why the fantasy is engaging.
None of that changes the fact that however much you intellectualize your sexuality the basic wiring doesn’t care and will continue to pursue its imperatives. In other words, the sweet young thang is always going to turn heads.
One thing I disagree with Den Beste about is the commonness of such females. While all attractive the young women pictured are nothing extraordinary. Any good sized high school could produce a similar crop without a Cinderella’s slipper survey of the entire female student body. Check back ten years later and many of them will have suffered the effects of time and tide all humans must eventually acknowledge. Sometimes it’s just hard living, others have a genetic time bomb embedded that makes them take on mass at a ferocious rate the first time they get pregnant and it never goes away. One of nature’s crueler moments. Some it seems peak early and fade fast regardless of life experience.
Others look just as good ten years later and are more interesting people. Some never looked good at that age but become amazing later on with still more brains thanks to a lack of distractions at that early age. The sweet young thang is pleasant to behold but those late bloomers are by far the most interesting women.
My wife is a dozen years my junior.
You can call it creepy if you’d like, but the guys in my fraternity think I absolutely rule!
Dunno if that biological skew to younger women always works. I’ve met a number of guys who found older women attractive (I mean 10+ years older than them).
I prefer men near my age, but I admit it’s an ego-boost to have a younger guy drooling.
I’m not quite as old as the Captain, but I’m not that far behind him. (Just added that to gross out Mr. Moore at the thought of me even thinking about sex…)
Perhaps it’s time to quote 80’s rock God Moe Berg, of the Toronto-based The Pursuit of Happiness, and perhaps Steven’s new guru:
I can’t even look at young girls anymore
People will think I’m some kind of pervert
Adult sex is either boring or dirty
Young people they can get away with murder
I don’t write songs about girls anymore
I have to write songs about women
No more boy meets girl boy loses girl
More like man tries to figure out what the hell went wrong
From “I’m An Adult Now”, featured on the album, “Love Junk”
Funny, I just heard that song the other day on the radio. Ahh… the Eighties.
Namesake,
The song that pops into my head is The Who’s ‘Dreaming From The Waist’