Oct 9, 2009, 14:40 GMT
Los Angeles - Linda Hunt has been married three times to men about her own age. Now she's lowering her sights.
US actor Demi Moore arrives for the screening of her film The Joneses at the 34th annual Toronto Film Festival in Toronto Canada on 13 September 2009. EPA/WARREN TODA
'Guys my age, which you can just say is over 40, all they want to do is sit on the couch and watch TV,' she complains. 'Younger men have so much more energy. They make me feel so much younger.'
Just don't call her a cougar - the increasingly popular term for women who date younger men.
Urbandictionary.com has 87 user-submitted definitions for the word - mostly somewhat derogatory, portraying older woman as cunning sexual predators ready to pounce on any male young enough to be their offspring.
Some definitions try to bestow the cougar with dignity, describing her as, for example, an 'attractive middle-aged woman who is fit, active, confident, independent; who is attracted to younger men because most of the available men her age are opinionated, lazy slugs with beer guts.'
Hunt, however, is not impressed.
'I hate that word, however you want to slice it,' she said. 'Older men have been hitting on young women for years without being described as predators. Now it's our turn to enjoy the same thing.'
Unfortunately for the blond-haired mother, there's no escaping the cougar term of late, especially when she flicks on her flat-screen TV.
The CBS network airs the sitcom Accidentally on Purpose, about an older woman who gets pregnant during a one-night stand with a younger man, and the supposed hilarity that ensues when they stay together for the baby's sake.
Disney's ABC network went for even less subtlety in Cougar Town, in which Courteney Cox plays an amorous divorcee who takes up with younger men after seeing her male neighbour bring home a series of barely legal teenage girls. With its constant sexual premise and titillating story lines, the show is one of the new hits of the season, pulling in 11 million viewers for its September debut.
ABC says it has sold the 13-part first season to numerous broadcasters in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
Many credit the much-publicized marriage of Demi Moore, 46, and Ashton Kutcher, 31, for popularizing the trend.
The concept of older women dating younger men has been a Hollywood staple since the days of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate. But there's no doubt it's become more overt in recent years, with shows like Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives glorying in the sexual appetites and conquests of its older women.
Several cable channels have been running cougar-themed reality shows, from Ivana Young Man, hosted by heiress Ivan Trump, to the simply titled Cougar, in which young men compete for the graces of an attractive older woman.
Soon, moviegoers will see Rachel Aniston in Pumas, in which she plays one of a pair of older women whose predilection for younger men leads to trouble on a French skiing vacation.
There's even a special 'Cougar Cruise' leaving in early December from San Diego, where older women can expect to find a ship full of younger admirers and plenty of booze to help everyone lower their inhibitions.
While academics say the new new dynamic does signify a growing equality in sexual politics, they do find it demeaning in many ways.
'I thought Cougar Town was degrading,' says Linda Franklin, author of Don't Call Me Ma'am: The Real Cougar Woman Handbook.
Nevertheless, it undeniably represents a cultural shift.
'I think that women are finally feeling empowered enough to admit they do want to have relationships with younger guys and don't care anymore what people say,' Franklin said.
Pop culture professor Jeremy Wallach argues that the phenomenon is a natural corollary of greater economic equality between the sexes.
'There are many single, older women with money and younger men without money,' he says. 'The pairing makes sense in the same way that younger women date older, powerful men.'
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