"Us women aren't allowed to have power, are we? We're not allowed to make such radical decisions," said the artist Sam Taylor-Wood when I interviewed her before Christmas. She was tanned, glowing; a bit of cream dripped from her whiskers.
Her cougar's whiskers, that is. The "radical decision" involved falling in love with a British actor and teen heartthrob, Aaron Johnson. When it happened, she was 42 and he was 19. She was also his boss: She had just finished directing her first feature film, Nowhere Boy , the story of young John Lennon, who was played by Johnson.
The press was all in a tizzy. She is one of Britain's most high-profile visual artists, while her paramour has not yet voted in a general election, and couldn't order a beer in a New York bar. She probably has a pair of tights that's older than he is. Le scandale! It's a bit of a modern fairy tale, though, because they're now engaged and expecting a baby.
Taylor-Wood, who already has two daughters and has twice survived bouts with cancer, looked radiant the day of the interview. "I try not to care about what the world thinks," she said. You wanted to call room service and say, "please give me a slice of what she's having." It might not be wise to call her a cougar to her face; she'd probably rip out your intestines and pick her teeth with your metacarpals. Just like a real mountain lion, which is, of course, a gorgeous, sleek, lethal creature. This is one of the reasons I don't understand why there's outrage over the word "cougar" to describe older women who like their men a bit wet behind the ears: It's not like they're being called armadillo or three-toed sloth or bone-eating snot-flower. Or that most terrifying creature, the dreaded spinster.
In fact, in the vast realm of unflattering terms to describe women - old maid, fish wife - cougar stands out as quite regal, so I was surprised to find that some feminists were outraged when Air New Zealand promoted one of its contests by using a satirical video about cougars stalking their "prey." The ad shows an attractive woman in a skimpy orange dress eyeing some college boys at a bar (oh honey, go for bigger game!) "Here we see a herd of young males nervously gathering at a watering hole," the voiceover says. "The cougar waits on the edges for one of the young males to foolishly separate itself from the herd." Having grabbed one in her man-hungry jaws, she drags it back to her apartment to listen to "Enya, or possibly the Eurythmics."
Let's see: We're talking about women who are financially independent, sexually confident and attractive enough to win the affections of men who are not yet in need of Viagra. That sounds like paradise, not an insult. These days there are cougar cruises, conventions and dating services, and the Courteney Cox sitcom Cougar Town returns to ABC for a second season this year. I think we're meant to laugh at the idea of these leathery lust-buckets, as if they're Mrs. Roper in her muumuu drooling over Jack Tripper's well-packed cutoffs. The dirty secret is that they've got it made: No husbands, money to burn and Annie Lennox on the iPod wailing that sisters are doing it for themselves.
Two years ago Tilda Swinton showed up at the Baftas, the British equivalent of the Academy Awards, wearing her usual Edith-Sitwell-on-mushrooms finery, and carrying on her arm a lovely accessory: the beauteous Sandro Kopp, an artist 18 years her junior. Apparently Kopp, Swinton and her husband have some kind of mutually agreeable partnership, like the bohemian love equivalent of a Florida time-share. The sound of middle-aged journalists choking on their lukewarm bowls of envy could be heard throughout the land.
I'm pretty sure that envy (and that old favourite, fear of women's sexuality) is at work here. Who are the world's most famous cougars? Madonna, almost three decades older than her boyfriend Jesus Luz. Demi Moore, elder half of the world's most oversharing couple. On screen, there's Kim Cattrall and Courteney Cox. These are hardly women to be mocked or pitied (The exception may be poor Ivana Trump, currently the subject of cougar jokes on Britain's Celebrity Big Brother : Four is the number of her marriages, and also possibly the age, of her last husband.) Women keep their looks for longer and have vastly more sexual and financial freedom than they did when the original cougar, Mrs. Robinson, first swanned around in her leopard skin and icing-thick eyeliner in The Graduate in 1967. Anne Bancroft was famously only 36 (six years older than Dustin Hoffman) when she played the randy middle-aged matron. It's inconceivable now; a 36-year-old actress today would get an Oscar just for trying and would need a full day in makeup to apply prosthetic wrinkles.
"I'm happy to be a cougar, if that's what it's called," Cox told critics this summer when they commented on the fact that she's eight years older than her husband, David Arquette. She's absolutely right. Never mind reclaiming the night, it's time to reclaim the word. And if not, stand back: You really don't want to mess with an irate cougar.