When the term Cougar was first coined during the reign of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher I thought it was cool, liberating and feminist. I thought it symbolised an extended shelf-life for women, reinventing them into being relevant and sexually desirable no matter what their age.
The thing is, it actually does imply and mean this BUT I've recently realised that that concept isn't feminist all - it's the total opposite - it's totally sexist!! The very notion that women would even need the word is sexist because it suggests that women have a shelf life - which is even
more sexist.
The reality was whammied to me by a Big Brother housemate. Yip! ... yet another reason I love the show so much - it reveals truths in the most unexpected ways.
Celebrity Big Brother's currently airing in the UK so I've been quizzy to see what it's like, what's going on etc. I've been catching clips of it and was intrigued when one of the housemates introduced herself by saying "Please DON'T call me a Cougar."
Her name's Carol McGiffin, she's 53 and one of four regular hosts of a talk show called Loose Women. She's also engaged to a guy who's 31 (see him in the pic above).
She was absolutely adamant about not being called a Cougar when she introduced herself. I can't remember what she said exactly but it was very clear that she sees the term as an insult.
At first I couldn't understand why and then, after thinking about it, it dawned on me that she's right - it's a
huge insult. It suggests she's really old and shouldn't be dating and shagging men, let alone younger men. The very essence of what it means is that women
do have a shelf-life i.e. it's
totally age-ist too.
What I thought was a trendy, fun and feminist word isn't anything that I thought it was. To make matters worse, the word and how it's been so glorified in the media, tricked me into thinking that it represents liberation.
Which seems to be exactly what happened to Courtney Cox and her fellow creators of Cougar Town. They obviously liked the name when the show first started but now they hate it and
they're stuck with it.
They can't settle on another name for it so they're stuck with it. They now rip themselves off for choosing the name with snarky comments about it in the show's title sequence and on their posters:
A poster for Season 3.