Posts Tagged ‘media’
Healthy Life: “a celebration of sex”
I was interviewed by Jennifer Margulis, author of Why Babies Do That and editor of Toddler: Real-life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love. She turned the interview into a marvelous feature story for Healthy Life, a quarterly health supplement to the Greenfield Recorder which circulates to about 50,000 readers in Massachusetts and Vermont.
The article is not available online, but here are some excerpts:
Fitness writer and former high school English teacher Joan Price has finally found her calling. At 62, Price now identifies herself an “ageless sexuality advocate.” What’s that? A spokesperson for the sex life of aging Baby Boomers.
Her advocacy has come in the form of a 269-page book, just released from Seal Press, “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty.” The book is divided into 15 chapters—everything from “Plug In, Turn On: The Quick Version of Everything You Need to Know about Sex Toys” to “When You or Your Partner Can’t.” Price also includes advice for spicing up long-term relationships, reentering the dating scene, fitness over 60, and other topics.
The book is a celebration of sex by a woman who writes frankly about her own sexual awakening over the years… “Juicy is an attitude,” Price writes in a chapter entitled, “It Ain’t Easy After Menopause,” “… based not on the flow of our vaginal secretions but on physical well-being, emotional state, mental attitude, and love of sex. Here’s to post-menopausal zest—and understanding lovers!”
The idea for the book came out of the relationship she was having with an understanding lover….
“I went looking for good sex books, both fiction and nonfiction, specifically aimed at my age group. I was surprised – and turned off! – by how few of these books existed, and how dry and unsexy most of them were,” she says. “Some were much too academic to bring into the bedroom, many were outdated, and some were supposed to be titillating but weren’t—at least to us.”
So Price decided to write the book she wanted to read…. And her book—which is full of exclamation points and positive affirmations about ageless sex—reads like it was written by a woman on a mission.
Price’s mission is to celebrate, enhance, and affirm the sex lives of women (and men) over 60.
…Of course, sex after 60 isn’t always easy, as Price is the first to admit. In Better Than I Ever Expected Price includes a chapter about when one partner or the other is not able to be sexually intimate. She also talks honestly about the changes wrought on women by menopause and on men by aging, gravity, and prostate dysfunction.
… “Our hormonally deprived bodies challenge us with less lubrication; thinner, less resilient vaginal tissues; and often less physical sensation,” she admits. “Our bodies are slower to respond, and we may have more trouble reaching orgasm.”
Some of Price’s solutions to our body’s changes? Lubricants, vibrators, a sense of humor, and a very patient, loving partner.
“Sexual response is in our brains more than our genitals,” Price insists. “My lover and I are as turned on by each other as a couple of teenagers, but with the juicy addition of decades of life experience, self-knowledge, communication skills, and a ense of humor.”
She says sex over 60 has made her both adventurous and accepting: “We’re willing to experiment and stretch our boundaries. Men will be relieved to learn how accepting most women are about men’s changes and how to have great sex even when some parts aren’t cooperating.”
Throughout the book Price includes quotes from women who took her survey—women in their 60s who are having great sex. It’s a pre-selected group, which Price herself points out. When she sent out a call for interviewees she stated she was looking for “sassy, sexy women, age 60+ to share feelings and experiences openly and anonymously” so any women who didn’t fit that description would not have responded.
…If you’re looking for great sex over 60 but not yet having it, this book might make you feel rather alienated and depressed (wow, all those folks out there getting their groove on, where’s mine?). But maybe, just maybe, it’ll get you into your first sex shop purchasing your first sex toy. After all, it’s never too late to start.
For more information about Price, visit: http://www.joanprice.com/.
Ottawa Sun: “right into the nitty-gritty”
I love this article by lifestyle columnist Ann Marie McQueen in the Ottawa Sun today!
Ageless Sex Advice
Author touting the benefits of nookie after 60 during stop at local adult shop
By Ann Marie McQueen, Ottawa Sun
After I suggest to California author Joan Price she seems to have landed the world’s greatest sixtysomething man — scratch that, the greatest man of any age — she launches right into the nitty-gritty.
They’re out there, says the author of Better Than I Expected:Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty, who is coming to Ottawa this weekend to give two workshops on the topic at downtown sex shop Venus Envy.
The men she speaks of, like her Robert, came of age in the 1960s too, and many of them want to be with their female contemporaries, want to find ways to make sex good with them, no matter what their aging bodies say about it, says Price.
She gathers steam as she describes such men, who will listen as women say things like, “let’s see what we can do about my thinning vaginal tissues, about my lack of lubrication.”
She stops suddenly.
“This may be too frank for you.”
“No, no,”I say, realizing I had starting chuckling out loud right about the time Price said “thinning vaginal tissues.”
“It’s fine.”
“You all right?”she says once more, sweetly, before forging ahead ” — what can we do about my slow arousal, what can we do about the time it takes to reach orgasm?”
If you are below 50, and before you start going ‘ewwww’ at the priceless Price, it might be time to think about where your own life is headed. That’s right. Straight to 60, and beyond. Might be time to pay attention. And ditch the attitude, such as the kind embodied in Louise Rafkin’s article for the San Francisco Chronicle magazine, headlined “Now that Baby Boomers have discovered there’s sex after 60, could they please stop writing about it?”
It’s not very likely Price is going to do anything of the kind. In fact, she’s made it her mission to speak on it as much, and as frankly, as possible.
“If you want to be a sexual person, you’ve gotta really make a commitment to it, you’ve really gotta say, ‘I’m gonna love my wrinkles, I’m gonna love my sags, I’m gonna love my partner’s wrinkles and sags and we’re gonna find ways to rejuvenate the relationship,’ ” she said.
While the one-time English teacher, fitness professional and author was penning Better, Gail Sheehy would be building on the success of her book Passages 30 years ago with Sex and the Seasoned Woman, which was all over the morning TV shows, Internet and newspapers when it came out in January.
Fitting, really, considering Price blames the media for the dim light cast on aging women.
“It has never portrayed the older woman as sexy, understanding herself, self-confident, self-knowledgeable, self-affirming and that that’s a good thing,” says the California-based Price.
If women are shown as sexual when they are older, it’s either perceived as ground-breaking (Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give) or predatory and pathetic (a turn by actress Holland Taylor on Boston Legal’s predecessor The Practice). They are invisible in magazines, says Price, who is determined to build on the current wave of awareness.
“I want it to seem normal for one,” she says, “and I want people who have not come out of the woodwork to talk about it, and they are.”
Price’s perky, inspirational book offers not academic theories but practical expertise. It is filled with concrete tips — say, instructions for how to use a vibrator — and she’s-been there-anecdotes about everything from exercise, to hormone replacement therapy.
She’s even delighting in holding her Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty workshops in new-generation adult stores like Venus Envy. Drawing people who’ve never visited them, helping them realize the sex-related treasures they hold, is another of Price’s goals.
“They are places filled with joy and laughter, and the attitude that sensuality and sexuality are great pleasures for us,” she said. “And they are just showing us ways we can enhance those pleasures.”
Price will give two workshops this weekend, each from 6:30-8:30 p.m. Saturday’s is open to women and men, while Sunday’s is limited to women. The cost is $25. For information, call the store at 789-4646.
No, We’re Not Shutting Up
I had two very different experiences on Sunday, Feb. 12.
1. I read Louise Raflin’s petulant plea to Boomers to hush up about their sex lives in the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine.
2. I spoke to a full house at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA, talking about and reading from my book, Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty. The women and men in the audience displayed an attitude that was far from the “it’s-all-about-me” egocentrism that Rafkin condescendingly described. They were thoughtful, communicative, vibrant, funny, and passionate.
“Could they please stop writing about it?” Rafkin begs. Not a chance. We’ve only just begun.
Pacific Sun: Tips for Older Lovers
I was interviewed about love in later life by Jill Kramer for the Pacific Sun (Marin County, CA), Feb. 10, 2006, under the title “Tips for Older Lovers“:
I think later-life love is the best. We come to each other with decades of adult life experience, including many relationships that may have helped us grow to the next stage when that person doesn’t fit any more — so then we’re ready for someone who can match us at that next level of growth. So I think it’s natural for us to grow into and grow out of relationships until we get to the point where we really know who we are and what we’re looking for and what we have to give.
It’s harder when you’re older to find the right person. And it’s hard to hold out for someone who’s got everything you’re looking for. So sometimes people get into relationships that are only partially fulfilling because they figure, “Well, I’m not going to do any better.” Yeah, you are! Don’t settle! Do the things you love to do and look around at who else is doing them. Be yourself, don’t put on any kind of an act. Be the person you hope to find.
