Kicking. Squealing.
I’m sure you guys will be able to add to this. I’m thinking the over-sexualization of really, really old women. In particular, I have Cloris Leachman and Betty White in mind. Joan Rivers might qualify as well. If you have any other examples feel free to add.
I overheard a TV show on some channel with heavily gay imagery in which Cloris Leachman was involved in some sort of jokey game show spoof in which her co-guest was supposed to randomly choose a male Hollywood celebrity and guess whether or not Leachman would have sex with him. The male co-guest (who was gay; I’m not sure if that matters) guessed that Leachman would have sex with all of the guys on the list. For her part, Leachman wasn’t familiar with a few of the candidates. She said she’d have sex with a few of them – and, of course, Obama but not Romney.
It all struck me as odd and forced. If someone like Leachman is supposed to be “something”, in Hollywood terms, why is she reduced to her sexuality? Why do we pretend that someone like Betty White is actually horny all the time? I do take slight pause here though. My grandmother had what I’ll go ahead and call a crush on the golfer Greg Norman. We sometimes see this behavior in old women. It is labeled “weird” and such, though it is considered almost endearing whereas any halfway sexual remark made by an old man is considered the height of creepiness. I don’t really care to explore that particular double-standard, just to acknowledge that it exists.
Anyway, as we see in some of the clips below, Leachman is playing almost like the gawking, teenage nerd who might sometimes venture into harmless exhibitionism. There is the hope that someone might dump a pity fuck on them – all of this is an acknowledgement that there is unmet demand. But, again, I have a hard time believing that old women (despite my grandmother’s crush on Norman) think like this at all. They certainly aren’t at the same level as the group which they’re intended to mirror (pimply teenage boys).
I’ll toss out a loose connection which I do think is at play here and let commenters run with it if they like. There has to be a connection between this sexualization of old women and camp, the genre. I don’t buy into the whole Gay Mafia thing, nor do I typically buy into conspiracies. Just that over-sexualized old women are kind of a sanitized female sexuality. That, and it can be openly mocked while also not being too mean about it.
The reason it can be treated this way is because we know they’re out of the sexual market. It’s sort of analogous to “everyone loves you when you’re dead” – because you’re no longer a threat to their status. When a person’s sexuality is dead/they’re not in the market, they’re no longer a threat to our place in the sexual market so we don’t need to observe norms of overvaluing others/undervaluing ourselves.
I never participate in these “who would I sleep with” conversations. I’d be setting myself up for an insult to my attractiveness.
The Dr. Ruth Principle. If you’re old and female, society allows you to behave in a manner and say things no man or younger person would. Old men are allowed to pinch waitresses asses because we know or believe they are no longer capable of an erection…so it is just a funny remnant from their former sexual power. With women, you get much the same.
When I see women’s daytime TV, the magazines they pick up at the checkout and read their essays in The Atlantic, etc., I am disgusted how they are plummeting into societal irrelevance. There is no “rise of women.” Only a war on men and a cultural and commercial imperative for women to become a pack of feral, stupid sluts.
Gays love to flatter women while simultaneously mocking them. The old broads are stand-ins for old queens who really would want to have sex with those guys.
Gays view it as camp, and women, the most important target, have been trained to perceive it as a variety of “you go girl”-ism.
Here’s a lousy performance from the 1970′s. She was in her 80′s at the time.
I see this as a sub-genre of the “hey, being old rules” (or, at least, has no downsides whatsoever) bullshit that we’ll have to endure more and more of as the Most Narcissistic Generation Ever inches its way all-too-slowly into the grave.
Boomers have spent their entire lives being told that they’re wonderful, and they’re not about to let it stop now.
None of these comedy bits are as funny as when real-life old ladies worry aloud of being raped by burglars. Betty White’s “suck my dick” line was funny as hell in Lake Placid (1999), but having to see her like this now, I wish it had never happened.
i think you are over analyzing what essentially is just another trope (dirty old women); a quick and easy cardboard cutout to be inserted into comedy bits for a cheap laugh
At least as far as Betty White goes, I don’t think it’s “safe” just because she’s old, as much as because she’s old and seems so incredibly sweet otherwise. If she came out looking like some worn-out old hooker, with a voice wrecked from years of smoking and drinking, I don’t think people would find that very amusing at all. It’d be either a bit creepy or just plain sad, depending on your point of view.
Do you remember that scene in the movie Airplane! where the woman who played June Cleaver came out and started jive-talking to those black guys? I think the humor with Betty White is just supposed to be like that. The incongruity of it all. The problem is, that sort of humor is funny for about two minutes. If June Cleaver tried to make a career comeback as “The Jive-Talking Granny”, it would’ve gotten old pretty fast.
Now, if you really wanted to be paranoid about it, you could make the claim that it’s an attempt to appease the fears of women about to hit the wall, that the Sex And The City lifestyle is going to keep being as satisfying as ever, since women in their seventies are still promoting it. But that would probably be a bit of a reach.
This is just pushing the transgression of “radical liberation” to a new low. If we see the desire for “radical liberation” as analogous to the desire for better drugs then the idea of your granny getting balled out by say, Ray Lewis, becomes the next “high” in radical liberation. It is on its way to being “normalized” as a simple fact of life. Our grannies “love” to let “it” get “beat up” by big black male.
And what do you know???
An epidemic of grannies getting brutally raped by young black males and barely a peep from anyone?
This is just “art” imitating life.
Are you kidding? Cloris Leachman was doing the “horny old woman” bit as far back as 1971 in “The Last Picture Show”—at 45!!
We are talking about 75 year old grannies thinking it’s cool to act horny PUBLICLY.
It is repulsively transgressive especially in light of the heinous epidemic of extremely old WHITE grandmas getting brutally raped and murdered by savage young black males.
The radical autonomist never wants to be forced to add two and two together.
That’s Greg “the shark” Norman to you
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Betty White is merely trading on her old, man-hungry Sue Ann Nivens character on TMTMS. That said, I’ve never cared for sexually aggressive female characters like Roz on “Frasier.” It’s a turnoff.
@Hammerhead
I was thinking the same thing. I just can’t buy Betty White in the sexpot role. To me she just seems like that sweet old aunt who makes cookies, gets you sweaters for Christmas, and always tries to talk you into finding a “nice girl” and settling down.
This reminds me of the Mona Robinson character in Who’s the Boss?, from 1984 to 1992. There was a similar character in Golden Girls.
I never thought Cloris Leachman was the least bit sexy, even in her younger days. She might be a nice person, but her voice and mannerisms always turned me off.
Anyway this reminds of the 2′s and 3′s going on slutwalks, It also reminds me of the time I was browsing our library catalog and found a listing for a book of photographs of older women (60 and over) who were dressed in ways that the male photographer thought would make them look stunning. I thought the guy either had a granny fetish or was pulling my leg, so I looked at the reviews on Amazon. Most of them were by women who actually took it seriously and seemed to think if they just dressed right, and displayed the haughtiness of a hot 20 year old, men would start ogling them again. Well men will probably look at them but only because they find that the vanity of women leads to ridiculous and embarrassing spectacles.
Also Florence Henderson as Drew Carey’s lover a few years back. I think Adrienne Barbeau had a similar role on his show (unrequited adolescent crushes, anybody?). Adrienne Barbeau was in her 50′s and still hot; Florence Henderson not so much.
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