Let Us Allow The Word 'Cougar' To Die Instantly And Painfully

Mythical species: If seeing what's attractive about Adam Lambert is what it takes to be a cougar, then cougars don't exist. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

 

by Linda Holmes

It was this Newsweek piece, entitled "Why Cougars Crave 'Idol' Runner-Up Adam Lambert," that finally broke me.

It is time for the word "cougar" to go, preferably instantly.

The Newsweek writer, Joan Raymond, spends paragraph upon paragraph explaining why she and her "cougar court" spent an American Idol season sweating over the heavily hyped, extremely popular, out-without-having-ever-been-in Lambert. How could this be? How could it possibly be that they, as non-teenagers, could be interested in an American Idol who, at 27 years old, was young enough to be ... their nephew, if they had a significantly older sister?

When I first heard it, "cougar" was a crude slam; I think I first noticed it on the "Aldrin Justice" episode of How I Met Your Mother, which aired in October 2006, though this ABC story was chatting it up in 2005, and it surely is much older than that.

But interestingly, as the ABC story notes, it began as a putdown — a term of ridicule for older women who went home from bars with "whoever was left."

We could go through the sexual politics, the cultural baggage that comes with older men and younger women vs. younger men and older women. We could explain why seeing women gleefully referring to themselves the same way Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) did on How I Met Your Mother is kind of disheartening.

But really, it's not necessary. The term "cougar" can be easily retired, simply on the grounds that it's so stupid.

Crazy fans, too many sex therapists, and never calling yourself "punk rock," after the jump...

Maybe there was some cultural moment in which this term had something to do with being self-possessed enough, or in control enough, or financially independent enough that it was no longer necessary to consider the career prospects of blah blah blah yes, okay, fine. Maybe for a brief moment.

But when I saw it applied to Slumdog Millionaire star Freida Pinto — who is 24 — when initial reports emerged that she was dating her co-star Dev Patel — who is 19 — it became clear that whatever minuscule speck of usefulness it might have ever had was gone.

And if it can be applied to a bunch of 40-year-old women because they are shocked by their own ability to be attracted to a physically attractive, heavily marketed, highly talented 27-year-old? It's done. Fully cooked. Burnt to a crisp, in fact.

Perhaps this is true of Raymond and her "cougar court":

When we got together, we no longer talked about good books, North Korea or the recession. We talked about all things Lambert.

But if that's true, and if they're thinking it's weird, then it's not weird because they're 40. It's weird because it's weird. Forty-year-old women who cancel all other conversation for a period of months so they can talk about American Idol aren't cougars. They are overinvested fans.

And overinvested fans have been part of American Idol (and the careers of plenty of other musicians — gay ones, straight ones, old ones, young ones, and Mick Jagger) since Adam Lambert's run on the show was but a platform-booted twinkle in his own eye.

If you want to be an obsessed fan, then by all means be one, and enjoy it, and don't feel guilty, because it's not one of the more harmful ways you could entertain yourself.

But it's pretty silly to promote the idea that your attraction to an under-30 American Idol contestant is something that requires the attention of a psychoanalyst and two sex therapists — as though a woman of Raymond's age should naturally expect her tastes to have turned exclusively Wilford Brimley-ward by now.

What Raymond et al experienced was not a freak occurrence of cougar-osity, of aging female sexuality remarkably brought back to life by the wildly unexpected appearance of a man in eyeliner.

It was, to put it plainly, rather common. Every single year, there are those who say, "I'm a woman over 40, and believe it or not, I LOVE HIM AND CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT HIM."

They did it from Justin Guarini and Clay Aiken in Seasons 1 and 2 all the way up through Blake Lewis and David Cook in Seasons 6 and 7.

Look, you don't need a special word for 40-year-old women who can respond to a good-looking man on television with a healthy "yowza." They're called 40-year-old women. Calling yourself a "cougar" is like calling yourself "alternative" or "punk rock" or "famous." When people start saying it about themselves, it means even less than it did before.

And now it means nothing, so with apologies to the new Courteney Cox sitcom Cougar Town, I must suggest — no, request — that it end here.