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When American businesswoman Darlene Daggett sued her matchmaking services firm last month for setting her up on a string of horrific dates, the news ricocheted around the world.
And no wonder. For her US$150,000, Ms Daggett, 62, was introduced to, among others, a man who passed out from a heart ailment on their first date, and a convicted felon.
Another potential suitor told her he was waiting for his terminally ill wife to die before re-entering the dating pool.
Ms Daggett and the matchmaking company ended up settling out of court.
Not nearly as fazed by these "dates from hell" was Melbourne-based columnist Helen Razer, who knows firsthand how perplexing — and amusing — dating as an older woman can be.
"I wondered if we would have sex surrounded by stuffed toys and family photos," Razer writes in The Helen 100, the book she released earlier this year, about the dating binge she undertook after her partner of 15 years up and left.
This was not wishful thinking. It's what happened after one of Razer's dates, who had promised the columnist a night of mutually agreed upon "rough sex", sprung on her the news that his babysitting plans had fallen through.
Would Razer, 49, mind joining him and his nine-year-old daughter to see Barbie Live: The Musical?
She did join him. And yes, she did mind.
"I wasn't getting laid tonight," Razer would later write.
"My vagina had fused shut like Barbie's."
The explosion of older women into pop culture
These dating experiences sound made up, the sort of stories you'd expect to see in a Girls for the menopausal set — if such a series existed.
Until only recently, that sort of show seemed like an impossibility, with the sexual and dating experiences of older women having long been considered either worthy of derision (see any Golden Girls episode) or ratings poison.
Just ask Amy Schumer, whose widely praised video skit, Last F***able Day, sent up the previously unspoken Hollywood "law" that women above the age of 40 are as desirable as drywall.
But suddenly, the poignant, heartbreaking and funny (and not-so-funny) dating experiences of women in late middle age and up have exploded onto our screens, and into our reading material.
Netflix has just renewed for a fourth season Grace and Frankie, a show starring Jane Fonda about the unlikely friendship and sexual experiences of two women in their 70s.
Our Souls at Night, a movie about a widowed pair in their 70s who climb through each other's windows for booty calls, has just been released in the US.
And Australian columnist Kerri Sackville has just written a how-to-survive dating book for older women — inspired by her own horrific and hilarious experiences — that is currently sitting on her agent's desk.
It follows numerous recent articles examining the experiences — and cultural significance — of older women, including from Australia's Jane Caro and journalists from the New York Times.
But while commentators say pop culture's embracing of stories about older women is a positive development for a generation that has been habitually ignored by mainstream media, many women on the dating scene say the stories hitting our screens and bookstores don't quite capture how messy it can be to pursue a romantic relationship when you're in your late forties and up.
Older people's relationships are 'juicier'
Professor Imelda Whelehan, an expert on ageing and popular culture at the Australian National University, thinks the trend has resulted in part from the realisation, on behalf of media gatekeepers, that older viewers want to see their experiences reflected back at them.
"When I go to my local indie cinema here in Canberra, I'm one of the younger ones," said Professor Whelehan, who is 57.
"This is a silver tsunami, these are the people with [the greatest] purchasing power, and they're demanding that they see themselves represented."
She notes the current trend comes on the back of recent film and television successes like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the award-winning HBO hit mini-series Olive Kitteridge.
There might also be a growing awareness among writers and filmmakers that older people's relationships are inherently more complicated — and therefore "juicier" — says Professor Whelehan, because their love lives frequently involve more family members.
"A friend of mine who's about my age said she had to have an embarrassing conversation with her quite-old mother about safe sex," she says.
But older men are 'drowning in baggage'
It's a conversation that could've been ripped from the third season of Grace and Frankie, which revolves around a company that Fonda's character and her best friend, played by Lily Tomlin, establish to create vibrators for older women — their kids are embarrassed.
But according to older women on the dating scene, that plotline doesn't even begin to reflect the mountains of drama and humiliation they're routinely forced to navigate while pursuing a relationship.
This is because, compared to men in their twenties and thirties, older men are often drowning in baggage.
"Most of them had lost their house ... many of them had two [marriages], so they'd lost everything twice [in divorce]," says Carole Lethbridge, a 73-year-old woman living in the Blue Mountains.
She said she had dated several men in their 60s and 70s over the last few years.
In practical terms, this meant many of her dates have lied about being in the market to purchase a house, when in reality they were "living in the back shed" of one of their children's homes.
"I just didn't want anybody to land on me, you know?" says Ms Lethbridge, a former advertising executive who regularly travels overseas, has two adult children, and is three-times divorced herself.
"I just wanted my independence."
Then there is the sexual mismatch.
While many women in their 50s and up say they feel more sexually liberated than they did in their 20s — finally released from the worry of getting pregnant, and more comfortable with their bodies — they are frequently tumbling into bed with men who suffer from erectile dysfunction.
"I hear this from a lot of my girlfriends, and it's depressing," writer Kerri Sackville said.
"Finally, [they think] 'I'm going to have great sex', and it's not working, and there's nothing you can do about it."
No wonder filmmakers and TV show creators have come running.
But according to Helen Razer, the reason these sorts of stories are appearing more frequently on our screens and in our books is profit.
Executives have realised older women "are among the society's biggest spenders", she said.
A 2013 report by the Reserve Bank of Australia found Australians aged 55 to 64 owned total assets that far eclipsed anyone younger than them.
In other words, they're cashed up and ready to pay for films and books that reflect their lives.
Younger women are championing older women's stories
But we also appear to be experiencing a perfect storm of sorts, with more prominent older actresses and journalists now happy to put their face to the taboo issue of older sexuality, and a backlash against media companies who are prejudiced against these stories.
It was only last year that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 56, Patricia Arquette, 49, and Tina Fey, 47, signed up to appear in Last F***able Day.
Prior to that, Amy Schumer, who wrote the skit, tried in vain for three years to find a woman willing to be in it.
In Australia, 50-something women in the media such as Lisa Wilkinson and Tracey Spicer have gained major traction for talking about their age.
Spicer's 2014 TEDx talk, The Lady Stripped Bare, has been seen by nearly 1.5 million people.
And on the flipside, when a pair of American morning TV show co-hosts laughed like a pair of nervous schoolgirls and chastised Grace and Frankie star Jane Fonda for repeatedly saying the word "vibrator" on a morning television show, in March, the Today show faced backlash.
"This TODAY show puts America back 50 years. Lighten up NBC!" wrote one commenter on YouTube, echoing the sentiments of many others.
"Jane and Lily are awesome, and THANK YOU for being upfront about issues that women care about," wrote another.
But is the current spotlight on older women here to stay? Or will it sink back into the firmament like so many other trends — Truman Capote films, modern westerns — before it?
One sign it could be the former is that teenagers — the demographic perennially chased by advertisers — have become champions of older women's stories.
Lily Tomlin told the Today show it was the 17-year-old daughter of Al Roker, a Today Show weatherman, who introduced him to Grace and Frankie.
And, in Australia, Carole Lethbridge's 13-year-old granddaughter brags about her grandmother's love life.
"She said to her other grandmother, 'Nonna's still sexually active, you know that, don't you?'" Lethbridge said.
"I told her. And she read my book."
For others, meanwhile, supporting older women's stories is political.
As one young woman wrote below the Today show video: "How Jane Fonda took that hit and said it out loud is why we still need feminism."
Topics: popular-culture, television, divorce, sexuality, women, people, australia, united-states
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