Mary Kay LeTourneau raped a child. Let's not lump her into some group of enlightened, or bored, older women.

Absolutely - this post was great until you put a teacher to took advantage of her much underaged student in the same catagory with adults chasing and catching other (yes, younger, but still) adults. I don't think being a pediphile is what you want to tie with discussing that older women still have sex drives.

Did Cher really have an affair with a 12-year-old baker in the 80s? Do 12-year-old boys often get baking jobs? Was he an apprentice?

It was a joke. He was actually in his early 20's.

I'm unsure what the thesis of Ms. Traister's article is -- on the one hand she says "every time we treat post-menopausal libido, or the story of an older woman dating a younger man, as a news-flash revelation, we are just amplifying assumptions about how unlikely these scenarios are". On the other hand she then cites about 7 movies that depict older women in sexual relationships with younger men, and seems to be doing so as a means of making the point that it's not all that post-menopausal libido is alive and well.

Face it, it IS somewhat unusual for older women to ring the bells of sexual congress with younger men. It's not unusual for younger men to go after older women - it happens to me all the time - but it's unusual for older women to take them up on their offers. The movies are depicting a news flash revelation, that it's possible for older women to have casual, revivifying sex with younger partners. And I'm all for it.

The scenario of older guy with younger woman has become so commonplace in the movies as to be passe. In fact, it is presented as the norm, and without warranting any comment. Last night I went to see "You, Me and Dupree". It was a soap bubble of a movie - that aside, Matt Dillon was married to Kate Hudson. Beg pardon but isn't he 15 years her senior? I know almost no couples in real life where the 45 year old husband has a 25 year old wife, but in this movie it was presented as completely unremarkable. The fact that they'd have different tastes in music, likely very different political and social values and experiential frameworks for problem-solving etc.. was not even remotely addressed. They were just presented as average Joe and his average wife (albeit stunningly good looking average Joe and wife). Just like Woody Allen with Mira Sorvino, Michael Douglas with Gwyneth Paltrow, Tom Cruise with Michelle Monaghan, and pretty much every male star with any leading lady. If you believed Hollywood, women pretty much cease to exist after the age of 30, except as de-sexed caricatures (Sigourney Weaver's boss lady in Working Girl, pretty much any mother, Sally Field as Tom Hanks' mother - though she must be about his age). 8% of the roles for women are over 40; for men the figure is 80%.

We've become so inured to seeing this on the screen that it seems perfectly normal, though it's plenty unusual in real life to see May-October romances like this actually working out in committed relationships. So I"m all for the constant celluloid depiction of older women behaving as if they still have needs and desires south of the belt buckle, and like their graying male counterparts, are aesthetically drawn to the collagenic charms of younger lovers. With any luck, in a few years it will be so commonplace to see such a thing on the screen and on the street as to be unremarkable, and no one will even question if art followed life or the other way around.

And by the way, the title of the article, "Hot Grannies Won't Stop" promulages the idea that we should be a bit grossed out by the idea of older women having sex. What is a 'granny' after all? I know plent of granmothers in their 50s who are still quite good looking and fit. I'd never dream of referring to them by the desexualizing, caricaturing term 'granny'. They're women - sexual, vibrant, fully realized women. Not chicks, not girls, not cougars, not grannies -- *women*.

I cannot believe you put a child molestor in the same group with women who were going after adults, not 12 yr old boys that they continued to manipulate even while in prision. Just because she's married to him now does not make what she did to him right and does not equal her to Demi and Ashton or Cher and her 20yr olds.

they'd never have any trouble getting as much as they want. It's perfectly understandable why they don't but we should be clear on the nature of the situation.

what's an 'indie boy'?

I suppose had the genders of the movie been reversed, we could have expected a diatribe against sexual imperialism as older, wealthy Western men wing Southward to enjoy the young tropical beauties of an economically disadvantaged society.

I was wondering who would be the first to class Mary Kay Letourneau as a feminist hero. I don't know if Ms Traister is the first to do so, but she's the first that I've read. I've suspected that this not a terribly rare women, though one they are generally afraid to express openly. Kudos to Ms Traister for being honest. Her many [I suspect] sisters ought to show similar courage and come forward. I don't know that the world would be a better place if more women wrote and spoke openly about their admiration for female rapists, but it would certainly be a safer place. A safer place for boys, at least.

[Take that, all you who thought Ms Traister would never do a favor for the male of the species!]

In addition, Ms Traister describes 'Heading South' as "a new Charlotte Rampling movie about 50-something women who travel to Haiti in the 1970s to have boy-toy flings." I don't know whether Ms Traister's omission is the result of ignorance or dishonesty, but the 'boy-toy flings' actually involve male prostitues -- young Haitian males too poor to do anything but sell their bodies to wealthy and wrinkled women from North America and Europe. Yeah -- that is HOT! Never has the grinding poverty and hopelessness of the Third World ever been so damn sexy, baby. The elderly woman quoted in the NY Times article and by Ms Traister was disappointed for a good reason. The movie is about neo-colonialism and the casual way rich foreigners come to the Third World and wreak havoc upon the lives of the poor. The director is a [French] man, naturally, so he callously ignores the plight of wealthy women who want easy sex from dirt poor black men. I know -- what a chauvanist pig!

Another great addition to Salon, Ms Traister. Keep up the great work!