|
|
 |
|
|
Volume 4
Issue # 6
August 26, 2003
"Robbing the Cradle?"
By Guest Commentator Joseph Planta
Forget capri pants on men, or women picking up the cheque at restaurants,
the trend du jour is that of older women weighing anchor as it were, with
younger blokes. Cameron Diaz is doing it, so's Gwyneth Paltrow. Lucy Liu
too, Drew Barrymore ditto. Demi Moore is the prototype, resurrecting her
career with Ashton Kutcher by her side, with an adoring ex-husband Bruce
Willis still in tote, and a couple of daughters who have, as Mummy does,
the hots for young Mr. Kutcher. This past weekend, word surfaced that Sharon
Stone, is shacking up with a younger man, something that Susan Sarandon's
been doing for years as have Joan Collins, Carol Burnett and Sandra Bullock.
|
|
|
So that's what the Charlie's Angels
have been up to off camera? |
Liberated women will say that the attention
and derision is unfair. For every man that gets away with dating a perky
young starlet with equally perky boobs, there must be some cougar somewhere
who's got a cabal of younger boys ready to beckon to make merry with. But
it seems that men get away with it more often than not. Look at Jack Nicholson.
Remember when he was dating Lara Flynn Boyle? Nobody questioned his penchant
for younger dames, but rather railed against the very thin, rail-like Boyle
for being damn near anaemic. What about Harrison Ford and his squiring of
the equally hamburger-deprived Calista Flockhart? No one questions that,
but should Diane Lane be seen around with Josh Brolin, then lo and behold,
people will definitely whisper.
|
The sultry Kim Cattrall |
The fact of the matter is, it's unfair.
Christ, life is unfair. But for those lock jawed mouth breathers who dig
their Access Hollywood every single weeknight and their US Weekly every
hebdomad, they salivate at the thought of the latest Hollywood actress seen
around town with a young suitor. We ought to lay all blame on the sexual
revolution. Guys, we lost, and now women are allowed to be as raunchy as
ever. Take Sex and The City. Vagina power, women will scream after seeing
the latest exploits of Carrie, the ever sultry Kim Cattrall as Samantha
and the other two women who aren't that good looking. Men are scum, and
so for every morning when we said we'd call, but don't, or every little
damned occasion we forget, we deserve having the whole male gender emasculated
by slutty Samantha doing everything and the sofa on HBO every Sunday night.
|
Thinking about this trend,
one realizes that it really hasn't been all that new. Remember back in the
1970s when Burt Reynolds was seen all over the place with the broken down
singer herself, Dinah Shore? What about Mary Tyler Moore marrying her at-least-one-generation-younger
cardiologist? It's funny how gender roles, however constructed they may
be, get flouted from time to time. It's funny too, how they switch making
everyone's head snap, especially copy writers at all weekend newspapers
across the continent. Whatever folks may complain about, it's not actually
something new. Older woman nabbing younger guy has gone on for time in memoriam.
Shakespeare wrote about cougar lust and love when Cleopatra and Mark Antony
were doing it on the Nile, and Shakespeare himself must have known a thing
or two considering his wife Anne Hathaway, was older than he. What about
John F. Kennedy, the idol of many a sexually obscene, who once asked the
legendary (and older) Marlene Dietrich, if she had "made it" with his dad,
before making it with her, and in the White House no less. And don't forget
that though Desi Arnaz loved Lucy, Lucille Ball, the red headed and red-blooded
comedienne was older than her Latin heartthrob.
|
1970s - Actor Burt Reynolds and
"broken down singer" Dinah Shore |
Striptease with Demi Moore? |
It isn't in vogue that older broads
are dating younger men. It's here to stay. But eventually Ben and J. Lo
will eventually get married and then break-up, for all of us to take our
attention away from the Demi and Ashton train wreck. The sex icon for the
septuagenarian set, Anthony Quinn, had a kid just before he hit 80, and
he had to die too. Trends tire and fads fade, so we'll see a retreat, and
then Cher and Jack Osbourne will hook up and Whoopi Goldberg will start
dating Jonathan Lipnicki. That couldn't get any worse than Michael Douglas
and Catherine Zeta-Jones now, could it?
|
|
|
Myself, I haven't been in a May-December
romance. And though it would be with rampant whispers that I'd be greeted,
I don't think it should be a whole big deal. Give it a couple of years and
maybe it'll be as rampant as flip-flops or hoop earrings. I mean, for a
while now, I've been bewitched, bothered and bewildered by my favourite
traffic chick, Jennifer Thompson. And if J.T. wanted to fling it, I'd be
ready to be flung. Ditto with Tamara Taggart. She could give me the forecast
twice or thrice a day, if she wanted. Hell, I'd settle for Jill Krop and
her extended hair. That before capri pants, for sure.
|
Tamara Taggart "could give me
the
forecast twice or thrice a day, if she wanted." |
|
***
Here, wraps up my six-week run as a guest columnist at Now That's Entertainment
. . . I thank Michael Kwan for the opportunity. I take my leave pleased
that I'll be able to work with him in the very near future on another
project.
|
