Letting Go of Believing That You Have to Be Young to Be Sexy
By Dr. Charlie Glickman • Jan 14th, 2010 • Category: BlogIt’s hardly news that US culture is obsessed with youth. The massive amount of advertising for products to make us look or feel younger is ample evidence. While we generally think of this as more of a factor in terms of how we evaluate female attractiveness, the fact that we often consider men to be more attractive when they have less body hair (something that generally correlates with youth) or have more hair on their heads may point to some ways that this plays out differently for men.
Given that there’s a strong cross-cultural tendency to view youth as attractive, I tend to think that that’s indicative of something wired into us. I don’t have any concerns with it, as such, but I think that the fact that we tend to devalue age is a problem.
In his book The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life, Hillman writes:
When “old” gains its definition only by pairing, it loses its value. In a culture that has only identified with the “new”…”old” gets the short end of the comparative stick, and it becomes ever more difficult to imagine oldness as a phenomenon apart from the lazy simplicities of conventional wisdom.
In the last few years, I’ve had conversations with a number of friends about how they feel about getting older. One of the common themes has been that while it would be nice to be able to have the resilience of an 18-year-old, none of them would be willing to be turned back into an 18-year-old again if it would mean losing their experience. The wisdom that has come with getting older is worth the price, as is the unwillingness to create and tolerate as much drama as our younger selves put up with. Granted, this is among folks in their 30’s and 40’s. Perhaps older people with more physical limitations or medical issues would respond differentially.
But what does that mean in a culture that mostly promotes people who look like they’re in their early 20’s as sexy? When we do talk about older folks as being sexy, why is it usually in the context of how young they look? What does it mean when media pundits micro-analyze celebrities for wrinkles or other signs of age? And what are the implications for how we think about sex?
One effect is that we tend to desexualize older people. Rather than seeing people of all ages as sexual beings who deserve the freedom to express their desires, fantasies and preferences, we act as if gray hair takes away sexuality. Focusing so much on this idea that being young is a requirement for being sexy shames people for being older because we tell them/ourselves that they are not desirable as they are. And that reinforces the sex-negativity that traps us all.
Another effect of our cultural obsession with youth is that we forget that our sexual experiences are supposed to change as we move through life. I once heard Joseph Kramer point out that the food that we enjoy when we’re young is different from the food that we enjoy when we’re older, so why should we expect sex to be any different? But rather than embracing this perspective, we reinforce the idea that we’re supposed to be having the same sex at 60 as we had at 20. This ignores the diversity of sexual possibilities and as Gayle Rubin points out, when we negate the spectrum of benign sexuality, we strengthen sex-negativity.
I’m not suggesting that we need to stop seeing youth as attractive. Rather, I think we need to embrace the beauty of age. When we allow ourselves to only see younger people as sexy, we create a situation in which we must either continually strive for youth or see ourselves as non-sexual beings. Changing our thoughts and attitudes is an essential part of the process. As the Buddha is reported to have said:
The thought manifests as the word,
The word manifests as the deed,
The deed develops into habit
And habits harden into character
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings.
It’s easy to see someone in their 20’s as a sexual being. I invite you to do the same when you see an elder. Or strike up a conversation with someone in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s or older about sex. Or when you’re sitting on the train or bus and find yourself fantasizing about that cute 20-year-old, try imagining what the gray-haired guy a few seats down looks like when he’s enjoying himself. If you find it difficult, or if you find yourself having a negative reaction, take some time and ask yourself why that is.
For that matter, when you catch yourself saying that someone looks good “for their age” or when you see an older couple kissing and say “Aww! That’s so cute!” try reframing that. How about “that person looks good!” or “That’s sexy/beautiful/wonderful to see.” When we gently reframe our thoughts, we set larger changes in motion. And as long as we do it with compassion for ourselves, rather than blaming ourselves, it can have some really positive effects.
Besides, sooner or later, you may find yourself with gray hair & wrinkles. If you change your attitudes about elders and sex now, it’ll be a lot easier to have fun when you’re older.
Dr. Charlie Glickman >> Dr. Charlie Glickman has been working at Good Vibrations since 1996, when he joined the staff at our Berkeley store. Currently, he is our Education Program Manager and (among other things) runs our in-store After Hours workshop program, our Off-Site Sex Education Program, trains our Sex Educator-Sales Associates and writes copy for our website. In 2005, Charlie received his doctorate in Adult Sexuality Education from the Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio. In addition, he offers classes on sexuality for psychotherapists and workshops on teaching for sex educators.
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Great article!
As someone who is *cough* *cough* a middle aged woman I appreciate very much what you’ve written here. Too much of what we see and hear in society is based on outside beauty and age when it comes to sexuality. Something which drives me crazy.
For me personally it is a matter of self esteem and being happy with who I am at this point in my life. Thank my therapist for that one
I feel more sexual at this point in my life than I did when I was much younger and less aware.
Thank you for this Charlie!
I was once in a marriage & couple’s counseling class with a wonderful therapist as our guest speaker. The therapist was describing to the class one of his recent experiences working through infidelity with clients of his. The point of the lesson was about working with a couple through this type of deception and hurt. Of course I couldn’t focus on what I was suppose to as I became too distracted when I learned that the partner that cheated was 80 years old. “He was 80?!?” I repeated out loud expecting others to react as well. Not one person in the class could understand why I found that fact so incredible. My whole life I had been fed (and swallowed) the idea that sexuality ends at some point after 50 or 60 at least. What a load of crap that idea is and I feel very grateful that I have been able to learn otherwise both theoretically and thru hands-on experience. I think humans are a lot like wine-we become better and more refined as the years go by as long as we take care of ourselves
‘Older and wiser’, the saying applies to sex as well as anything else but the superficial emphasis on sex as surface means we tend to leave sex out of the picture when we think of wisdom. We should get better at sex as we age and in fact most of us do, we just don’t acknowledge it. I interviewed an artist the other day about sex in art and he said to me ’sexy doesn’t look like anything’. He meant that you can convey sexy in a painting but it doesn’t mean it has to look like anything conventional.
And hey Charlie I agree, telling someone they look great for their age sucks.
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I am 50, my lover 53. It took us this long to find one another. We finally found ‘the one’ in one another. And the sex between us is the best we’ve ever had. I am finding the journey of getting older a fascinating one and couldn’t agree more with what you pointed out…A wonderful article, and THANK YOU for writing it. People dismiss older people too fast. I grew up around grandparents and many other elders in my community and they rocked!
I guess I’m in the camp of not being terribly fond of aging and its effect on sexuality, and I’ve often said I’d give several years off my life to look like I did in my early 20s. How to make the mental adjustment to accepting ones body as “sexy”, not to mention the bodies of those your age and older once you hit mid-life? Easier said than done, really. Its one thing to see older people as fully sexual beings, its another to see them as “sexy”. The latter involves the extra step of attraction, beyond just recognition of one’s sexuality. It seems that you’re saying, coming from a kind of quasi-Buddhist psychology, feel that one can “psych” oneself into feeling attraction where one has never felt it before. Personally, I’ve never been able to make myself feel attraction to anybody who I didn’t feel drawn to in some kind of immediate pre-conscious way.
On an added note, sorry the previous post was such a downer. Its just my honest take on the problem, though. Having to adjust one’s attractions as one grows older is beyond difficult, and a lot of the sex positive writing suggesting its an easy attitude adjustment seems disingenuous to me.
@Iamcuriousblue I agree that much of the writing makes it sound much easier than it actually is. I suspect that part of that is because it’s hard to give actual tips or suggestions, sort of like the sex advice writers who will say that it’s important to communicate with a partner but don’t give you ideas for how to develop the skills to do it.
I see a few different pieces here. First, there’s the question of what you mean by the effects of aging on sexuality. It’s certainly true that most people experience physical changes that add challenges to sex such as finding a comfortable position, physical endurance, needing more time and stimulation for erection/lubrication, etc. At the same time, I find that as I get older, my ability to navigate through those challenges and my capacity to experience pleasure have increased tremendously. Some of that is from my having shifted my thinking about what sex means to me and what I want to get out of it. If I were holding onto the goals and expectations that I had at 20, I would be really unhappy with how things have changed.
Second, like you, I wonder how much it’s possible to shift attraction. After all, we each tend to have our favorite (or most likely) turn-ons. It certainly seems like some of them are wired into us, although each person has a slightly different version. And yet, it also seems to me that some of them are either reinforced by, or are the product of, long-standing habits. Some of those habits can be changed, which is what I was trying to explore, although others really can’t. My experience is that more change is possible than we sometimes recognize, and I also acknowledge that not all desires or attractions are open to being changed. So I think that part of the question is how we can look for the places that are more flexible, while making room for those that aren’t.
Third, does physical attraction need to be the entirety of sexual arousal? Is it possible to enjoy a sexual connection with someone who doesn’t necessarily fit one’s preferences for physical appearance? Is it possible to cultivate desire or attraction based on other characteristics, such as a mental, emotional, or energetic connection? Again, I think this is a place where we can seek whatever flexibility there may be.
I don’t think there are really any answers since we each come to this with our own experiences. But it does seem to me that there’s often more room around this than we realize, even when there are ways in which things don’t change.
Great article, as a woman in her late 40’s I have never felt sexier in my life! I know what I want and I am not afraid to ask for it!
I so totally agree. We should get sexier as we age. We get better at doing a whole lot of other things so why no sex.
I think the way we conflate youth-beauty-sexy has a lot to answer for.
I met a woman at a party on Friday who said that she has more sex than her children in their 30’s and I do believe that is so for a lot of people in their 30’s.
What we are supposed to think and what actually happens can be very different.
I am going to add a link to this article from my web page. thanks charlie
I’m a 47 yo gay escort with a number of senior clients. My case is unusual, I know, because it’s my job to at least pretend to be turned on. That said, as we know with sex, start by pretending and you won’t be pretending for long. In any event I can say that sex with older guys is as mixed a bag as it is with young men. The main difference being that it tends to be less dick-centric because they tend not to get as hard or stay hard as long – even with viagra. This opens up a lot of opportunity for more sensual, less urgent making out and caressing, which, generalizing again, often leads to deeper connection. Turns out to be a lot more sexy for me when the boom boom pow takes over.