WHEN DID IT BEGIN?

Talking to an old friend recently reminded me of a time, when I was much younger, when my parents were still living and when both of our mothers started to show signs that they were getting older.  Neither of them got up in the morning to jog, go to the gym, lift weights or do any of the things that so many of us take for granted as necessary to keep our own aging at bay.  Don't get me wrong - both of our moms took care of themselves; they colored their hair, ate a lot of vegetables and fiber, bought fashionable clothes, never went out without lipstick on and generally took pride in their appearance.  I remember as a little girl being dragged through Bonwit Teller (my mother's favorite department store) as she examined, touched, tried on and sometimes bought the merchandise.  Sometimes, back home in our apartment, she placed a chair in front of the TV and kicked her arms and legs in the air along with Jack LaLane, but she never actually made it through the entire show because she and I would crack up over the silliness of it all.

When I was a little girl the aging process seemed, to my recollection anyway, to be
about regularity and how many prunes it was necessary to eat in order to achieve it.  Granted, it was a million years ago and there wasn't the knowledge and medical advancements that are available to us today, but there wasn't the desperation either to fend off the inevitable.  Movie stars had facelifts of course, but regular women maybe got their noses fixed at best.  One of my girlfriends got a nose job for her sixteenth birthday, but given the size of her original nose you could see why her parents agreed to it.  But bigger breasts? Brow and chin lifts? Botox and other fillers?  Liposuction?  Butt lifts?  Nobody back then would ever have dreamed of most of what women do routinely today to avoid looking their age. That's not a criticism, by the way.  If I had the money I'm not sure I'd stop at anything to make myself look and feel better, younger, more Barbie-like.  But then I am from the generation that's been brainwashed to believe that showing one's age is worse than actually dying and I'm just wondering when that shift took hold of our collective consciousness.

But other, shall I say more accessible and more life affirming, shifts have taken place as well. For example, older women who haven't married are no longer referred to as old maids.  Women who have chosen not to have children are, for the most part anyway, no longer regarded as freaks.  Older women can very comfortably and happily live alone, live with a man without the pressure to marry him, live with (or marry if that's their choice) a significantly younger man or decide, later in life, to make another woman their life partner. Being shamed for making a non traditional life choice is no longer something most women today - of any age - have to fear.  Hallelujah!  Look at the statistics about who is getting divorced these days: couples over 50, with the majority of these divorces initiated by the women.  We haven't yet achieved the landmark of equal pay for equal work but we have certainly come a lot farther in the area of our right to make choices that, whether anyone else likes or agrees with them, work for us. This is progress.

Now that we are enjoying greater freedom as well as living longer, it might be time to look at some  even more previously unimaginable choices available to older women who have the courage to make them.  Like the one made by  my friend Debbie, who at age 66 decided to give up her home and live a vagabond life that would take her to faraway places around the world, doing whatever jobs were available in exchange for room and board.  At 66!  Now that, in my opinion, is the real definition of a cougar.  An older woman who has the courage, the vision, the willingness to live fearlessly - with or without a younger (or any age) man.  Why limit the definition of 'cougar' to women who partner with significantly younger men?  Is that really an older woman's only recourse to a life outside the box? We all need to expand our vision, to see that there really are new avenues, new options, new vistas and new ways of expressing who we are and who we - even as we age -want to become. That's what COUGARLICIOUS  LIVING is really all about.