I could have gone the rest of my life not reading this. It is one of those car wreck things, however. Esquire’s 56 year old Tom Junod has declared that a woman’s desirability expiration date has risen from 40 to 43…
Let’s face it: There used to be something tragic about even the most beautiful forty-two-year-old woman. With half her life still ahead of her, she was deemed to be at the end of something—namely, everything society valued in her, other than her success as a mother. If she remained sexual, she was either predatory or desperate; if she remained beautiful, what gave her beauty force was the fact of its fading. And if she remained alone… well, then God help her…
Of course, they have to work for their advantage; they have armored themselves with yoga and Pilates even as they joke about the spectacle. Still, what has made them figures of fantasy is not that they have redefined the ideals of female strength but rather their own vulnerabilities. Go to a party: There is simply no one as unclothed as a forty-two-year-old woman in a summer dress.
Well, this “expired” woman thinks you are a douchebag with a dash of creepy.
well a heck of a lot of women are/ act like/ seem to be treated as / want to be treated as / ‘cougars’ nowadays. There’s a lot more of them who are fit and exercized than there are foxy silver haired dudes (with beer guts) about, AFAIK.
He’s got a bigger problem than age. He obviously expired into a soulless husk long ago. Why isn’t he out with the garbage?
So there’s no longer any tolerance in our society for shallowness? If not then lots of plastic surgeons will soon be out of business. Here’s a question, what percentage of cosmetic surgeries for non-medical reasons are performed on men? Here’s another, how old is 80 year old Clippers owner Don Sterling’s mistress? And another, will a 70 year old egomaniacal women make a good president? Perhaps 56 year old Junod should answer that last question??
Shorter deconstruction: Esquire markets fashion. Fashion exploits fear. Esquire author lets readership know what to fear. Article isn’t reality, article is a feature length ad. Esquire author equals advertising agency hack. Fuck him.
I read Charlie Pierce but that’s all I can stand from Esquire. They currently have a top-10 hot blondes photo essay or something. The whole set-up – a magazine for men who consider themselves a separate race I guess – is disturbing.