There’s no denying that there’s always been a whiff of scandal about cougar women. You’d expect that the cougar’s story is done and dusted, but here’s the climax: scores of older women today are happily living their lives as Modern Cougars.
It’s a tad presumptuous to assume that modern cougars are the same as the women portrayed as cougars of yesteryear. Those older women that the cougar label was originally attached to were actually wrongly labeled. This came from a male perspective that older women in bars/clubs etc were seen as desperate and dateless and an easy sexual conquest for younger men. This perception was repeatedly portrayed throughout society by the media of the day and unfortunately for real cougar women of today this perception has stuck.
Times have changed and the modern cougar is all about the presence of a woman, the redefining of femininity by women themselves. It’s been all too easy for women to rest on their laurels, or be a tiny bit complacent, or in most cases, socially and domestically emancipated by predigested attitudes about how women should behave and feel, and discouraged from thinking for themselves. It is because of these attitudes, that every choice a woman makes (including who she dates) is therefore a measure of her power. But what happens here is that it sets the agenda for what’s acceptable, what’s cool, what’s sexy and a distortion of who women are.
The modern cougar is a strong and confident woman; she like to play, she dares, she’s a seductress, and she really doesn’t feel limited by society’s restrictive rules. The pendulum has swung in favor of women taking back their power as they are becoming self-appointed guardians of their own destinies. Its life events like that of divorce which are transforming and empowering women to reconstruct their lives on their own terms.
The modern cougar is a woman who knows who she is and goes for it. There is not one image of what a modern cougar is, and that’s the beauty of these older women. They’re strong characters that bear a striking similarity to the fearless feline: The Cougar. And it is these mature women who are bringing the strengths of the cougar into the 21st Century as they step away from all the media posturing, and whispered chattering’s of men who simply do not understand, usually because of their own insecurities which is reflected in their continual control and subjugating women in general. It is men such as these, young and old, that repel real cougar women. Whereas wanna-be cougars, and they are out there… they may have the look, but they haven’t got the attitude… are still caught up in the power play of their male counterparts where they’re wedged between that of an ornamental fantasy object or being an invisible bolster which props up our outmoded traditional society by keeping house and raising the kids.
Modern cougars are breaking the mold and embracing their rights to express a woman’s power as they see fit and this includes coming into their own sexuality. There’s no feeling of permanence and there is no notion of waiting for gratification because the future isn’t set in concrete. Life is simply too short not to enjoy every moment – every single day.
The reality of course, is that modern cougars are letting go of the feeling that they need to push themselves to do things that they don’t want to do – an impulse that has been linked to the feeling of not being ‘enough’. Meeting the modern cougar for the first time, for most people, is like staring at the sun. These are women who have hit their stride and are celebrating for big and small reasons.
For all the hype that surrounds cougar women, its evident how little many of us know about the real cougar woman.
xxx Shele Belle