Posts by Joan Price
Seasoned Women Spicy in New York Times
The Weekend Arts section of the New York Times, 1/13/06, featured a cover story titled “Post-Salad-Days Women Agree: They Want ‘What She’s Having'” by Dinitia Smith about books and movies that “echo the message that seasoned women can be sexually spicy.”
Better Than I Ever Expected was quoted twice:
Also arriving this month, from Seal Press, will be “Better Than I Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty,” by Joan Price, who spices the book up with her own experiences. (“I rub moisturizing lotion gently into Robert’s skin,” she writes. “I love seeing him standing naked before me.”)
….
By and large, the books carry an optimistic message — that despite age, menopause and wrinkles, women can continue to enjoy sex. “We are having hot, fabulous sex after sixty,” Ms. Price writes. “Society’s vew of aging women as sexless is wrong, wrong, wrong.” Her book includes advice on fitness and remedies for those who can’t achieve orgasm.
The article discusses Gail Sheehy’s Sex and the Seasoned Woman at length, references movies like “Something’s Gotta Give” and “Under the Sand,” and quotes Jane Juska (author of A Round-Heeled Woman and the upcoming Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex and Real Estate), historian Linda Gordon, and NYU professor of psychiatry Leonore Tiefer. I’m happy to be in such company in this well-written, provocative article.
Robert, Joan’s Fiancé , Speaks Out
When Joan was writing Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex after Sixty and reading drafts to me, often I’d stop her and say, “You’re not going to include that, are you?” and she’d say, “Yes, I am.”
A private person, I worried that she was getting too detailed and personal. But I went along with her when she insisted, “It’s got to be told as it is.”
Now I willingly eat my words. The book does exactly what is needed in our lives and our culture. It doesn’t beat around the bush–it is truly straight talk, without in any way cheapening the subject. In fact, it elevates the subject through honesty that can be respected at every turn of the page.
Seasoned Women
It wasn’t until my own book had gone to press that I learned that Gail Sheehy had written about the same subject, and her book would be coming out at the same time as mine. I had no idea, until I saw her title, that the two of us independently had come up with the term “seasoned women” to describe women 60 and older who have a wealth of life experience, self-knowledge, wisdom, sexual zest, and joie de vivre.
In my book, I gave the term “sexually seasoned women” to the women I interviewed, who shared openly and eagerly their past and present sexual experiences and relationships, and their attitudes about life, sex, relationships, and themselves.
At the same time my book was going to press, Gail Sheehy was titling her book Sex and the Seasoned Woman. I hope readers don’t think either of us stole the term from the other. In a way it’s a startling coincidence, but in another way, of course we’d both come up with that term. It’s just right!
An adaptation appears in today’s Parade magazine, and while of course I wish my book had been mentioned also, I’m happy that this topic is finally getting the publicity it deserves.
Newsday: “Sex after 60: It’s good news”
Here’s Peter King’s 12/31/05 review of Better Than I Ever Expected at Newsday.com:
Sex after 60: It’s good news
Guys, leave the room.
“Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty” (Seal Press, $15.95) by Joan Price is for women only. The book is part motivational memoir, part self-help guide and part sex manual in which Price asserts, “Society’s view of aging women as sexless is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Price, 61, writes from experience. The book sprang from her own bout of “post-menopausal angst” when she thought her sex life was over. It wasn’t, although she writes that “changes after menopause make sexual enjoyment challenging.” Even so, Price says her sex life now is better than ever.
“Better Than I Ever Expected” gives older women advice on how to date and how to love. Price, who has written several books on health and fitness, also includes many tips on how exercise makes sex better.
Price recognizes the challenges of older sexuality but revels in the rewards. “We’re the Love Generation – we practically invented sex,” she writes. “We’re not about to shut the gates now!”