Here’s something in the Daily Mail that I actually agree with:
Ignore this hyped-up nonsense about women’s sex lives
Turn on the TV or flick through the pages of any glossy magazine and you’ll get the impression that women in their 50s and beyond barely have time to catch their breath between steamy sex sessions with their (more or less) significant others.
Visions of flowerbeds abandoned, knitting unattended, reading glasses discarded, Marks & Spencer shapewear scattered underfoot as the nation’s menopausal matriarchs maintain meaningful dialogue with their nether regions. The only trouble is, it’s all hyped-up nonsense. This notion that our sex lives begin at 50 is not borne out by the facts.
And while I don’t doubt that Carol Vorderman et al are having a super time boudoir-wise, for most women the reality is rather less thrilling.
A survey of 5,000 Brits has found that 47 per cent of women aged 50 to 54 had not enjoyed any intimacy in the previous three weeks, rising to 52 per cent for those in their late 50s. Among women in their early 60s, that figure rose to two-thirds.
Three weeks? Among women of my approximate vintage, I’ll wager that the time period can be measured more accurately in months — except that most people lie like Clintons about their sex lives. They may be too ashamed that the last time they had any nookie was New Year’s Eve, and even then it was more like a drunken fumble before both participants passed out. So when asked the question, they’ll cross their fingers and say “Quite recently, actually.”
Considering that most of the women in Sarah Vine’s article can most charitably be described as whores (media, attention-seeking, gold-digging, power-chasing whatever), it doesn’t surprise me that their concomitant sex lives with toyboys, ageing billionaires and their male celebrity counterparts are going off like alarm clocks.
And still more to the point: when did the details of people’s sex lives become anyone else’s business? I know it pays to advertise, and if I know anything about men — and I do — it’s obvious that by these women blaring out the workouts that their well-trodden pudenda are willing to offer, at least some guys are going to go after the well-aged honey in those wrinkly pots.
But as Mrs. Vine points out, that’s not the way to bet when considering normal, non-celebrity women.
