June 9, 2008

Alluring older women: 1

While I'm uncharacteristically writing about the dangers of dating younger girls, I might as well get this out of my system too. Even as a senior in high school, I was pulled toward the freshman and sophomore girls, and my love of younger girls has not diminished since then. However, there have been a few special females who, despite being older, have managed to intrigue me. If they won over someone who has such picky tastes regarding age, they could win over anyone. Aging women, take notice of these traits.

To sum up the series in advance, the three common factors underlying the appeal of these older women are, in order of decreasing importance, 1) looking much younger than they are; 2) maintaining a girly personality, in this sense; and 3) having an aura of reserve and mystery about them. The trend toward a more reserved and mysterious demeanor parallels the steady decline in Extraversion as people age, so these women did not try to reverse their changing personalities but to make the best of them. Becoming witty and urbane had nothing to do with their charm.

As an aside, this explains why cougars fail to interest anyone other than the woefully desperate: they may or may not look fuckable, but they have a manly personality, appearing strong rather than vulnerable, and being too aggressive. Moreover, as exhibitionists, they leave nothing to the imagination -- and at their age, it's really wiser to cover up.

Steven Pinker wrote a book whose thesis was that much of modern life, especially some of the more undesirable aspects of it, could be traced in part to a belief in The Blank Slate. Certainly, the cougar phenomenon supports his thesis, as these women foolishly cling to the ideology of the perfectability of (wo)mankind, and struggle to achieve this Utopian state through top-down social engineering: for example, marshaling a Big Lie campaign that "30 is the new 20" -- a phrase that gets 25,000 Google hits -- spreading propaganda about how older women have higher sex drives (they do not), and burning at the stake any man who would rather taste the flesh of a bright-eyed 22 year-old intern than that of a 48 year-old aspiring senator who graduated from Yale Law School.

Older woman #1 and I were in the same small Arabic language class, where I noticed her mock-flirting with me anytime we worked in pairs. She stood barely 5'0 tall and must have weighed under 100 lbs. Plus she was half-Persian and half-Pakistani, and these women age incredibly slowly (especially Persians). I recall bumping into her many times over the next two years on campus, and she always had an aristocratic aloofness to her -- not a false, bitchy sort of aloofness. Being a foreign medical student, she did not appear nearly as haughty as her American-born Brown peers.

After awhile, I figured why not ask her out -- she told me that she was 27 and preferred to date guys her own age (I was 20). Fooled! I tried to save face by saying something like, "Oh, if I'd known that you were that old, I probably wouldn't have asked you out." And how did she respond to this assholish remark? By apologizing for how young she looked, saying that she still gets carded at bars, etc., ending her email with a smiley face, and becoming more mock-flirty in class.

Even if an older woman is not magnetically drawn to a younger guy, she may still find him promising enough to want to initiate him into adulthood -- not necessarily by seducing him, but at least giving him some valuable sparring practice with a gorgeous female, to groom him for when he reaches full potential. Even attractive teenage girls will engage in this play-flirting with pre-pubescent boys who they sense are a natural lady's man, something I saw at my tutoring center, in the same way that high school athletes will invite the precocious fifth grade boy to toss the football around with them.

Because this behavior of older women toward younger guys is perfectly natural, it should be explained to the guy so that he understands that it is only for practice. If his hormone-soaked brain gets the better of him, as it surely will without being told otherwise, he will think her advances are genuine, and her eventual rejection will leave a sour taste in his mouth regarding girls, as though she were just toying around with his mind. There's probably a small, unstudied tribe of people living somewhere in France who discuss these relationships more openly, but here they may embitter more than they empower.

5 comments:

  1. Your story illustrates the fickleness of some women. Older Woman #1 flirts with you, or at least sort of flirts, yet is not interested in dating men your age. It would made much more sense for her to have refrained from the mock-flirting under these circumstances. She must've known you were several years younger than her, if I'm not mistaken you've said that you look young for your age, and unless she were totally clueless should have known that the mock-flirting would have given you an opening to ask her out.

    In a way she's like these younger women who wear highly revealing clothing but get offended if men leer at them.

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  2. Hey agnostic,

    thanks for a yet another great article.

    I only discovered your blog recently and greatly enjoy it.

    It would help a lot though if you could organise the blog into categories so it is easier for me to read three years worth of posts I missed... Or write an article with links to past best ones.

    Would be very grateful.

    Your loyal reader,
    BC

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  3. Older Woman #1 flirts with you, or at least sort of flirts, yet is not interested in dating men your age.

    [Putting on my best Alias Clio face]

    Oh dear, I should have known my male readers would miss the point. Gosh, Pete, you men can be so goshdurn literal-minded sometimes. (Serves me right for thinking this time would be any different, eh?)

    I should have emphasized that I appreciate older woman #1 for introducing me to flirting with stunning gals. My point, which I suppose I should have elaborated on, is that our lack of supportive social conventions regarding these relationships makes it tough for a gal to teach a young guy a thing or two without him reading too much into it.

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  4. It would help a lot though if you could organise the blog into categories so it is easier for me to read three years worth of posts I missed.

    That's something I've thought about for the summer -- going back and slapping tags on my old posts. We'll see.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This blog is so disgusting and full of misogyny.

    ReplyDelete

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