This year for Valentine’s Day my partner gave me a vintage edition of The Perfumed Garden, known as the Arabian Kama Sutra, which was first published in the 15th century. It contains precise, hilarious instructions about how to please a woman. I was thrilled: I’m 53 and he is 49 and sex is better than it’s ever been.
I didn’t expect it to be like this at my age. I thought my sexual prime would be when I was at my most sexy, which is certainly not when I look in the mirror now. But it’s not how we look, it’s how we feel, and at this point in time I feel strong, uncompromising – and up for it. I’m not alone: looking around, the culture seems to be positively vibrating with middle-aged women having the sex of their lives. On screen, Nicole Kidman, 57, seduces anything that moves, the latest Bridget Jones movie sees her have two younger men on the go, and Miranda July’s latest novel All Fours has been passed round midlife book clubs more times than the school gigolo. Fashion designer Phoebe Philo, 51, and a longtime poster girl for this generation, has been employing increasingly sexually suggestive designs, from back seam trouser zips to erotic prints. Then there’s Want, 56-year-old Gillian Anderson’s collection of real-life erotica, imagined by women for women, and published last year.
Has Generation X become a bunch of sexual extroverts? As Anderson observes, ‘It’s, like, right now the lights are on. We are open for business.’
We were always told that the joy of getting older is knowing exactly what you want and not giving a damn about anything else, and it would appear that extends to sex, too. But it’s not just all the freshly released divorcées going mad on Hinge (when my friend Stacey divorced, she went straight to toyboywarehouse.com; a year later the date was still in her bed). It’s married women, too, and if they aren’t getting it at home, they are going out to find it. A male friend who recently divorced confides, ‘It’s a long time since I was out in the field and, wow, has it changed. Women now know exactly what they want and how to get it – the sex happens immediately. But what really shocked me is how many married women are propositioning me. All these women were sleeping with me then going back to their husbands. How did that happen?’
At our age there is no fear of harm, pregnancy or consent, instead there is confidence, experience and an unparalleled knowledge of what works. Sexual capability matures, like a ripe peach in summer, and the better it gets the more you want. Yes, there’s the menopause, but that isn’t stopping us. At a dinner party recently, I found myself discussing HRT with a younger woman. She looked at me pityingly and said, ‘Don’t worry, you can get testosterone to help with your sex drive.’ I replied, ‘I don’t think I need help with that. Sometimes I need the opposite.’
Liberty Ross, 46, modelling Agent Provocateur
What is curious is that this blossoming for women of my age seems to be happening amid a broader sexual decline. According to surveys, Gen Z and millennials are having less sex than ever, something that is being blamed on the endless distraction of iPhones, the overprescribing of libido-crushing antidepressants and the numbing qualities of a steady diet of internet porn.
There are some clues here: our generation, those born between 1965 and the early 80s, were lucky. We were the last to come of age before iPhones and the internet. We slipped in our early sex years after the fear of Aids had passed. We formed our sexual habits in the 90s, a time when Madonna released her album Erotica, ladette culture made us feel strong and equal, girl power gave us permission to ride on top, and brands like Agent Provocateur took sex out of a seedy backstreet and on to the fashion pages. Underwear brand Myla created sex toys with designers Tom Dixon and Marc Newson, and glossy magazines published images that sat on the borderline of fashion and erotic art. Sex and all its possibilities hit the aspirational mainstream. Added to that, we were not settling down and getting married at the ages our parents did. We were living our best Sex and the City single lives: a show where the character Samantha legitimised a sort of voracious sex mania. We may not have had a swing fitted in our apartment (although, goals), but we could certainly slip a Rampant Rabbit into our Balenciaga Lariats.
Then came kids, which dampened things for a few years, but now those kids are growing up. Last month Vogue declared, ‘Agent Provocateur has got its mojo back,’ as returning customers helped drive record sales. Creative director Sarah Shotton, 50, is not surprised. ‘We should be sexy and own it at this age,’ she says. ‘We’re having our moment.’
Nicole Kidman, 57, with Harris Dickinson in Babygirl
Instead of casting young models in its recent campaigns, Agent Provocateur turned to its own customer base: namely Liberty Ross, 46, and Paris Hilton, 44. As Ross says, ‘I feel better than ever.’ What’s more, it’s not the everyday underwear that customers are buying, ‘It’s the really kinky stuff,’ reports Shotton. ‘The stuff you can’t find on the website, that you have to go into the shops for.’ And what about her own sex life? ‘I’m answering the front door to my husband naked again!’ she says.
With all the years of experience we have, the access to fantastic lingerie and sex toys (I give all my girlfriends a pebble vibrator for their 50ths), and a culture that is celebrating sex and the middle-aged woman, is it any wonder that now is our prime time? Even the Good Housekeeping Institute tests vibrators these days. Maybe it was those extended years of adventurous single living. Maybe it was not being raised on a diet of soulless internet porn. Maybe it’s better access to health, fitness and diet, or maybe it’s just the courage to ask for exactly what we want. Are we the luckiest generation on record? Maybe. We’re certainly the sexiest.
The best is yet to come for Boomers
By Liz Hoggard, 62
When I was younger, if someone had told me sex can be better in your 60s than your 20s, I would have laughed. Of course, there’s more body anxiety at this age, but you’re more honest, more ambitious for pleasure. I’ve never been married but have had long-term relationships. I was with my last partner, who I recently split up from, for five years. When we got together, before we even got near the bedroom, we had a chat about how things might not go brilliantly the first time.
‘Or the second or third time,’ he joked.
It was a great relief. If sexual intimacy is a slow burn – and you laugh about it – it can be hugely bonding. But if pleasure becomes your joint project, then hurrah. And that means a greater focus on ‘outercourse’, rather than just the wham bam thank you, ma’am moments. Always better for women.
The interesting thing at 60-plus is that it’s sleep, not sex, that can divide. There will be snoring. And the body is ageing in real time. I owe everything I know about mature love to my friend, women’s hormone specialist Dr Marion Gluck, who introduced me and many others to Estriol cream and Vagifem (quick, easy solutions you carry in your handbag and apply just before liftoff). And my cool young millennial friends are amazed our generation didn’t cotton on to lubricant earlier. Shy and prudish as a younger woman, I feel like I’ve woken from a long stupor, when I could so easily have let that side of things go.
It’s not for everyone, of course. Being single is a valid life choice. Many of my friends are happy with just emotional intimacy. They think I’m mad to be contemplating dating again at the end of a five-year relationship.
‘I love Simon but if he died, I’d never bother again,’ one told me. But after years of believing I wasn’t the sensual type, it’s nice to hope the best is yet to come.
Millennials’ arid sex years
By Alexandra Jones, 36
Many millennials (me included) have recently entered the arid sex desert known as The Baby Years. Yes, we may be falling into bed at 8.45pm but we’re also suffering from the kind of brain-melting tiredness that means every exchange is followed by, ‘Wait, did I already tell you that?’, which doesn’t make for meaningful pillow talk.
It’s fine, though. Millennials have already made significant inroads when it comes to sexual enlightenment. We speak fluent polyamory, we made sex parties cool again and we’re all about open communication (we are, after all, the generation who discovered mental health). Crucially, we’re not as blighted by porn addiction as the generations who grew up after the advent of superfast broadband; as teens, millennials were forced to download porn clips via a dial-up modem on the family desktop and it’s hard to get a proper horn-on when you have to wait three days to watch a 14-second clip. As such, only a handful of my male friends suffer from erectile dysfunction, and they’re generally open to talking about it. And, anyway, you can buy viagra za zene in Boots now.
The truth is, lots of us are a bit short on time. Having said that, my friends who are currently child-free seem to be having some great adventures. One couple I know recently went to a ‘sensual touch’ party, where you take off all your clothes in a darkened room, lie on the floor and have warm extra virgin olive oil poured all over you. Then you writhe around with the other attendees – they said it was brilliant.
If they’re still running these in 2028 when my one-year-old starts school, I might go.
Gen Z, the most sexless
By Olivia Dean, 25
The Victorians had a theory that exercise was bad for you, as the heart only had a limited number of beats to give. Overexertion meant you used up those beats prematurely, leaving fewer for your old age.
It seems that sex, nowadays, has taken on a similar quality. None of the rest of us are having it because Generation X has used up all the available stock.
Headlines scream that my generation is doomed to a life of eternal chastity. A recent survey by dating app Feeld found that Gen Z are the most sexless of all, with 37 per cent having not had a single liaison during the past month, compared with just 17 per cent of at-it-like-rabbits Gen X. The reasons are well reported: porn has messed with our expectations; social media has scrambled our brains so much that we need antidepressants (which kill our libido) and everyone is in therapy (which teaches us that ‘boundaries’ are the key to happiness). Talk about a mood killer.
But it’s the Gen X sex-stealers that are truly to blame for our celibacy. Sex, in the abstract at least, just isn’t exciting any more. The ladette culture of the 90s, Cosmopolitan’s ‘climax your way to better skin’ guides and the Spice Girls all did wonders for the generations before us by bringing pleasure – particularly women’s pleasure – into the mainstream.
They were all doing it and, at last, people were open about it. There was, I imagine, a frisson of excitement purely from the act of talking about it, which made you want to do it even more.
But now the novelty of sexual frankness has worn off, leaving a rather depressing sense of ennui. Real sexiness comes from mystery – it’s why women spend a fortune in Ann Summers rather than just going starkers – and sex is too obvious, too granularly described for it to hold any real allure. Turn on any of your many screens and you’ll be waterboarded with graphic sex.
Does our boredom with sex in the media translate to real life? Maybe not entirely, but it certainly has a lot to answer for. Gen X is still clearly making up for lost time, even if my age group is more equivocal.
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (and aren’t the French just the sexiest?) said that desire differs from need in that it can never truly be satisfied. But he wasn’t living in the age of Pornhub, Bridgerton and Megan Thee Stallion.
We’re absolutely sick of sex.
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The reason why Gen X is having the best sex 2 months, 1 week ago
