If you think sex isn’t part of life for women in their 50s and 60s, think again. Candace Bushnell (Is There Still Sex in the City? Grove, Aug.), perennially tuned into the zeitgeist of her peer group and inspired by her own experiences as a divorced woman who just turned 60 last December, decided to write about a part of life that she believes isn’t given enough attention. “Your 50s is a period of time that nobody thinks about. We all know what your 40s is supposed to look like—maybe you’re working on your career or doing what I call ‘the reproductive lifestyle,’ when you have kids, and after that you’re supposed to disappear and slide into old age.”
She laughs and points out, “At the same time, it’s just not your mother’s middle age anymore, because we look younger, we’re more vibrant. But we’re also going through what I call middle age madness, when lots of things hit you at once. If you have kids, they’re moving out of the house. There’s menopause. There may be divorce. There’s definitely going to be some death in there—just statistically speaking, chances are one—or both—of your parents is going to die in that time period. There’s a certain kind of loss, but it can also be a time of reinvention.”
Bushnell, known the world over for Sex in the City—the 1995 book, the TV series, and movies, which all grew out of her New York Observer column, would—of course—weigh in on the dating scene for women in their 50s. In the past, she explained, people dated to find family and reproduce. Here you’re not. And that’s the question: What are you looking for?
“One of the shocking things for women when they first start dating again is how much the men haven’t changed,” Bushnell says. “But there is something new, what I coined ‘cubs’ and ‘catnips.’ Catnips are women who are just innocently minding their business and younger men, ‘cubs’ are going after them. When I look at Sex and the City,” Bushnell continues, “those single women in their 30s were really positive and gung ho. The 1990s was a very feminist time if you lived and worked in New York City. Those women were fierce, feeling like they could have it all. The reality is that when you get to be in your 50s, you understand that striving for that is not going to satisfy you for your entire life.
“In your 30s,” she adds, “you think you know everything, but there’s so much you haven’t experienced. And when you get to be in your 50s, you have some broken dreams. For me, the book is about not having the answers—we don’t know what the answers are, but we’re still looking and still trying.”
Today, 4:15–6:30 p.m. Candace Bushnell will sign ARCS at the Happy Hour signings in the ABA Lounge.
