And What Are the Chances for the Rest of Us? By Dish Stanley
As a single woman in my 60’s, at first blush this had me bothered.
Candace Bushnell, original icon of the New York Observer Sex and the City column from the mid-90’s, reported in New York Magazine this week on sex in the city for women in their sixties.
Candace Bushnell
As a single 60-year old woman myself, no subject interests me more these days.
To summarize her account: The City is full of single wealthy women over 60 looking for a proper boyfriend or husband. (By ‘City’ she includes all the glamorous hot spots where exorbitantly rich Manhattanite-types go, Aspen, Palm Beach, the Hamptons.) Their failed luck at finding a man is not for lack of trying. She recounts many illustrations of this, including a particularly elucidating example from three years ago involving ‘Eddie’ who, at 77, was 14 years older than she. Fixed up by a mutual friend, Eddie texted her to ask where she wanted to have dinner. She “suggested Y and Z, two well-known restaurants” near her. He responded by telling her they were going to X, a restaurant inconvenient to her (which he knew), but close to him. In a similar vein, at the restaurant he asked what she wanted to eat but before she could answer he told her what to order. When it came time to leave, she asked to be driven directly home but he drove her to his house to take a hit off a joint. Worse than that, the next day he pulled into her driveway uninvited to insist that she join him for a ride on his boat. She says no, she doesn’t want to go, he asks why not and she responds with this:
“Because I don’t want to have sex with you. I can tell you’re the kind of guy who needs to have sex because you feel entitled to have your needs fulfilled, and that’s great. But I am absolutely not the one to fulfill your needs. On the other hand, you’re a handsome, wealthy man with at least two flashy cars and a house with a great view. So I know there are plenty of other women out there who would love to fulfill your sexual needs, and you should go after one of those women.”
There are many further telling interactions between her (and her similarly situated friends) and the men they date. The tone throughout the piece veers from her insisting that she prefers not to date at all (because she is happily single) to wondering whether some part of her actually does want a man to maintaining that all old men are horny and just want to get their “wienie waxed.” There are a lot of characters, including menopausal women who don’t want sex, men with E.D., older men dating significantly younger women.
The bottom line, if it’s not clear, is that Candace Bushnell is not having any sex in the city.
My guess is that there will be a lot of reaction to the piece from SATC fans, AJLT hate-watchers, midlife dating guru’s and those, like me, over 60 and in the dating pool themselves. I am cogitating over a more considered response to Bushnell’s article myself.
But in the meantime, my immediate thought was: what might this say about my own chances in the market? If Candace Bushnell isn’t getting any, then what are my chances? First off, take a look at those legs CRUSH Readers — they’re nine miles long, not to mention thin and toned, with none of the visible veining, dimples or stretch marks that so many of us near her age fret over. Plus, look at the toes. She’s obviously been religious about wearing yoga toes, something I had laughed at until I noticed the beginnings of a hammer toe last year.
And then there’s the many decades of experience that she’s had as a first-rate seductress, which I decidedly have not. I read her column in the 90’s (which was a period during which I was also single living in New York). I was a junior attorney at a large Wall Street law firm then, so while she was out clubbing in her Manolo Blahniks until the wee morning hours I wold have been at my desk reviewing yet another round of edits on an SEC filing. I have a friend who lived down the hall from Bushnell‘s Upper East Side one bedroom apartment during that period and when I asked her about it, she said that Bushnell’s apartment was busy, as in “busy.” “Wild,” she reported. My friend, an economist, eventually moved to a climate more conducive to the pursuit of her serious profession and far less conducive to wild sex parties. Boston. (I thought it an extreme overreaction myself.) But the memory of Bushnell’s famous escapades is pretty concrete.
To make up for lost time, before reading Bushnell’s recent piece, I was going to sign up for Shan Boodrum’s MasterClass on The Art of Sex Appeal. I wonder if I should bother at this point because Bushnell’s article suggests there’s little hope.
But before I give up entirely, I have to wonder. It’s clear from her article that, as a writer, she is keenly observant. She sees all the behaviors that would scream ‘red flag’ to anyone with a fraction of her dating resume, but sallies forth with the offenders anyway. (Remember that after asking where Bushnell wanted to go to dinner, ‘Eddie’ not only ignored her response but suggested some place inconvenient to her and close to him, a red flag that would have had me politely backing out of a first date.) It all makes me question whether she is actually dating in order to ‘find a match,’ or at the very least to genuinely enjoy an evening of good company. About the fact that her dating is not yielding much by way of results, she says that she could “care less.” I have a hunch that she may be dating primarily to get material for her stories.
In which case, she’s nailing it.
I hope that she writes more. As depressing a picture as it paints of the dating landscape for women in our sixties, it is far more entertaining than its television version, And Just Like That.
I do think that points to me continuing to throw myself out there, self-doubt and all. I’ll be carving out time for the Sex Appeal Master Class this week end.
The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
