Predator and Prey

There was an especially intense electric charge in West Hollywood on the night of Thursday, May 15. The California supreme court had ruled that morning in favor of gay people’s freedom to marry, and the thousands who had gathered in WeHo for a celebratory rally were now pouring into the nightclubs along Santa Monica Boulevard. Among those carousing at Platinum, a popular women’s party at the bar East/West, was Jackie Warner, the star of the Bravo reality series Work Out. Tanned, blond, buff, and 39 years old, Warner was beaming as two of her 20-something ex-girlfriends, Mimi and Brianna, circled nearby.

The following day, Ellen DeGeneres, 50, proudly announced on her TV talk show that she would marry her longtime love, 35-year-old Portia de Rossi. And when Melissa Etheridge turned 47 a few weeks later, she undoubtedly celebrated with her 33-year-old wife, Tammy Lynn Michaels.

The common thread among these high-profile couples is the presence of “cougars”—older women dating younger women, proving that Demi Moore, Madonna, and Ivana Trump aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy the company of a sexy younger partner. Women are extending the prime of their youth well into middle age. Acting their age no longer means being a boring homebody or settling down. As Mariah Hanson, the 47-year-old founder of the modern Dinah Shore Weekend, puts it, “I think women are suddenly realizing it’s not over at 40.”

See JD Salvatore's video of the photo shoot

ON THE PROWL

Cougars are everywhere: At the box office the ultimate chick flick, Sex and the City, features four middle-aged women, including sexpot Kim Cattrall, whose character turned 50 and still eats younger men for dessert. In porn, once solely the domain of women under 25, lesbian cougar flicks regularly join MILF titles in sexy solidarity. Cameron Diaz recently turned in a cougar parody on Saturday Night Live with her current big-screen costar Ashton Kutcher (himself dating the world’s most famous cougar), and The L Word’s last season featured a prominent cougar story line.

Lesbian cougars are more visible these days, largely because lesbians are more visible, but age-disparate relationships among women have “been going on forever,” says Savage Love sex columnist Dan Savage. “That is what Sappho was: an older lesbian attracted to a younger lesbian.”

The lesbian cougar’s motivation is as age-old as the island of Lesbos itself: Being around younger women simply makes an older woman feel young. And, as Grace Moon, a 40-year-old adjunct professor in New York City and the managing editor of OurChart.com, says, “Being able to relate to someone in their 20s—and keeping a flexible attitude—is a healthy thing to do.”

Adds comic Poppy Champlin, who gives her age as “40s,” when you date a younger woman, “you pick up a sense of their youthfulness. And hopefully they’ll want to have more sex—it’ll keep my sexual libido pumping.”

Plus, the younger your partner, the less likely you’ll have to deal with the romantic baggage and bitterness of women who’ve been around the block, says Kennedy Varellas, a Glendora, Calif.–based customer service rep for a prominent straight dating website. Although Varellas is only 31, she considers herself a cougar because she routinely dates women eight to 10 years younger. “They have fewer stories to tell about being screwed over by somebody,” she says.

Varellas also sees her younger girlfriends as a way to balance her own 30-something pessimism. “These women have so much potential,” she says. “They have these huge dreams and goals. As opposed to me—I’m so cynical. They are still so determined in their goals and who they want to be as a person. They kind of string me along for the ride.”

Though older men both straight and gay have long enjoyed the pleasures of younger company without too many raised eyebrows, women taking on younger mates have earned the moniker cougar, a term loaded with aggressive insinuations. Cougars are constantly on the prowl for prey. “It’s about a wild time, even just the word cougar,” says queer sex columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel. “The Demi Moore model is an interesting thing. It’s been an actual relationship, and that sort of throws that cougar stereotype on its head.”

Not every lesbian cougar identifies with the predatory image. Mariah Hanson says that the first time her production managers called her “the Coug,” she laughed. But “I don’t relate to that,” she adds. “I’m in a relationship with someone who has so established herself,” she says of her girlfriend, Kathy Valenti, 34. “She’s so amazing. She’s just very mature and together.”

As Hanson sees it, “someone who’s 25 and taking up with a 45-year-old because she’s got a career path in mind—that’s not a cougar relationship, that’s a relationship of opportunity.”

Kiki Fries, a 30-year-old psychology researcher based in Miami, is even more blunt: “I don’t mind the term cougar, but I hate the term sugar mama.”

Savage points out that the rise of power lesbians such as Hanson and DeGeneres has contributed to the visibility of lesbian cougar relationships. “There are more women out there who can be the set-up, well-preserved, powerful cougar than there could be a generation ago,” he says. “But 30 years ago there weren’t rich and powerful women, let alone rich and powerful lesbians who were out and who you could identify.”