Posts Tagged ‘senior sex aging’
Library Journal: “wealth of insightful information”
Martha Cornog reviewed Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty, along with other new books about sexuality and older women, in “The Go-Go Golden Libido” in Library Journal, February 1, 2006:
Our third senior sexpert, health writer Price focuses on a smaller number of women of the 1960s “love generation” who are still having happy and wonderful sex. Drawing on data from emailed questionnaires and telephone interviews, the author shares personal stories and a wealth of insightful information about having good sex; dating; staying sexy; coping with hormonal, physical, and medical problems (including vaginal atrophy); and keeping erotic warmth alive in a long-term arriage. Many of these women have been adventurous and continue to be—their stories are not for the monogamy-at-all-costs crowd. Yet this is the book’s strength: reassuring senior-aged women who feel abandoned by the numerous “coupled through life” books (and perhaps distanced from “vanilla” friends) that they are not freakish or alone. One quibble: it could’ve been more inclusive about safe(r) sex, though there’s an excellent reading list and even footnotes.
What about a man’s book?
I’ve talked to some men who are encouraging me to write a book similar to Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty about men after midlife talking about their sexual feelings, experiences, changes, challenges, and past history, along with advice from experts on male sexual issues. I have some questions for you:
1. Would you be interested in reading such a book? What would you hope to read in it?
2. Would men be responsive to a book like this written by a woman? Would they be honest with a woman interviewer? I thought that men would prefer a male writer for a book on male sexual experiences, but I’ve had men tell me that they talk more easily and intimately with a woman than a man.
3. If I do write this book, and you are a man at midlife or beyond, would you be interested in sharing your sexual thoughts, history, current challenges, and stories? (If so, email me your contact information, please!)
Thanks,
— Joan
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.