During the past few years, I took a long, much-needed break from serious dating and relationships. Maybe there's another post someday in exactly why I did this, but the short answer is that I just needed some breathing room in which to grow and make choices without having to worry about anyone else's needs and choices alongside them.

It was a strange space to find myself in, with my sexual libido remaining more or less intact, but my relationship/dating libido simply disappearing into thin air. But that's also another post.

This post is about the fact that lately, I've found my dating libido is slowly waking itself up. And while the thought of starting up anything serious and long-term still seems highly undesirable, enjoying the benefits of solicitous, varied male company and attention on a more regular basis has become a very, very enjoyable idea again.

When I moved into my era of elective solo-flight, I was in my mid 30s. I've now hit the big 4-0. And I've begun to realize that during those five years of dating self-exile, something significant seems to have changed in the dating world.

When I was growing up, hetero women of my generation were generally given the messaging that if a woman hadn't "found a man" (a.k.a., a husband) by 40 she was out of luck. There was a sense of pity that surrounded the idea of a woman still trying to date in her 40s. Her choices, it was implied, were minimal. The prevailing "wisdom" (and circumstantial proof often supported it) was that:

1) Young men should and did prefer young women their own age, and wouldn't even bother to consider an older woman an option. She'd be more or less invisible to them at best, disgusting to them at worst.

2) As for men her age, she was also out of luck. Older men her age, the wisdom went, if they were any "good" at all, had already been snatched up for marriage. This left her with the "broken," never-married men who were so undesireable no woman had had any interest in them, and dropped them in the reject pile. Except of course, for the playboys and the rich, successful divorced men. And the playboys and rich, successful divorced men, of COURSE, only wanted much younger women.

3) At best, it was implied, if she was lucky, she might be able to date a man many years her senior. Someone post-retirement age, perhaps, who would see HER as a young woman, and therefore, find her not completely undesireable. (That is, if she didn't mind geriatric dating and all.)

Of course, I'm exaggerating slightly here for sarcastic effect, but in truth this was a generally held mythology. And as with so many cultural myths, people often felt pressured to follow these rules. Women dating younger men and men who desired older women were made fun of or treated as freakish fetishes. Women would lie consistently about their age. Asking a woman how old she was was considered an insult.

Now, I've never been one to hide my age or be ashamed of it. I'm pretty proud of it, in fact. And I've always realized, of course, that the prevailing "wisdom" is not always wise. I absolutely didn't want the above to be true. And I knew there were certainly exceptions. But in my 20s and 30s, public evidence of the exception was pretty thin on the ground, while evidence of and support for the rule was everywhere.

So, stepping back out into the scene as a 40-year-old woman interested in dating, I felt somewhat trepidatious as to what I'd find. I certainly wasn't going to accept the stereotypes for myself, but would everyone else still be accepting of them?

What I've found so far has been kind of interesting. I've noticed a switch in something since I've been gone.

It does seem so far that many men of MY generation and older are still buying into the whole younger woman/higher value thing we were taught all those years ago. When I look at personals sites, for instance, or when I go out and talk to guys of my age or older, most of them list women younger than them as the desired goal. At most, the majority of them seem willing to consider women UP TO their age, but no further.

BUT.

The younger guys seem to be all over the older women. While they're not ruling out women their own age or younger, they appear to be casting their desired age ranges way above and below their own age. And when I've been out on the town lately, I've been hit on consistently by men easily ten years my junior or more. And the fact I'm older than them doesn't seem to phase them at all.

I'll grant that I have always looked younger than my age, so that may be a factor. But this feels somewhat different to me than just that. There seems to be a more general openness there by younger men to considering older women that didn't used to be there before.

I think I may be right in believing that this is not just something going on for me, but a wider cultural phenomenon. For instance, I just recently ran across this article by Tristan Taormino in the VIllage Voice called "The Rise of MILFs and Mommies in Sexual-Fantasy Material":

In the past several years...MILF porn has become a viable niche. On the Adult Video News (avn.com) bestselling DVD chart for October 2007, there are 13 MILF movies...They make up less than 15 percent of the titles listed, but in such a crowded field, that is significant. In fact, AVN.com now devotes an entire monthly sales chart just to MILF titles.

...Because of a demand for MILF porn, though, older performers are getting more work than ever before. (Some are first entering the biz at 35 and older.) The plots may be predictable and the dialogue cheesy, but it's a refreshing change to see women with sexual confidence and maturity on-screen.

...At 48, Nina Hartley (nina.com) has made over 650 movies in her 28 years in porn. She says that after five years in the business, the amount of scenes she shot declined (typical for a female performer)—but when she hit 40, there was a serious drop-off. However, in the past three years, she's seen a dramatic spike in her workload, primarily thanks to the rise of MILFs.

Now, technically, the term "MILF" does not generally imply a single, childless older woman. But let's face it, you don't see any kids or husband in MILF porn, so for all intents and purposes, this is a genre that is about the sexual attractiveness of older women in general. Older women are becoming objects of desire in some greater way than they have been in decades past. And I'd guess that the fact that the industry is using the term "MILF" for these titles supports my theory that the primary audience and admirers of for these films are NOT men the same age as the women in the films, but younger men. After all, men my age wouldn't think of me as "mom age." For them, women in their 60s and 70s are "mom age." (Note also that Nina Hartley points out that she's noticed much of this change within the same time frame I mentioned noticing the change out in the dating world.)

It would be interesting to know what the target age of the MILF buying audience is for certain. Are just younger men watching them, or are older men enjoying them in secret, too?

In any case, this certainly indicates that the eroticism of older women is on the rise. Of course, to some extent, there's always been an "older woman as sexual teacher" story theme out there in porn, Hollywood, and fiction. But this is just one part of it. This phenomenon of late seems to go beyond thinking of older women as merely erotic. So far, my personal experience leads me to believe that many younger men these days not only see older women as sexual possibilities, but actual, viable relationship possibilities.

Has anyone else noticed or experienced this change? What brought this on? Could just a few simple cultural shifts like the "Stifler's Mom" scene from American Pie and Ashton Kutcher's unabashed, and seemingly frighteningly normal, marriage to Demi Moore have so quickly opened up younger men's minds to the possibility of enjoying the company of an older woman? How has it happened so fast? Is it new, or did it just open up the permission door for something that was already going on, but men were afraid culturally to be open about?

And when are men my age going to catch on to what they're missing out on? Who ever thought the young guys would be the wiser of the two groups?

And, uh, where do I address my thank-you note to Ashton?