Cougar Fatigue: Desire Isn’t the Problem—Hollywood’s Lens Is

Middle-Aged Women Get Their Young Lovers on Screen, But They Deserve So Much More In Amazon Prime’s The Idea of You, a 40-year-old single mom falls for a 24-year-old boy-band idol. And the internet loses its mind. She’s called a cougar, a stalker, the “sleaziest mom of the year.” He’s questioned about the relationship, while […]

Cinderella’s Got an OnlyFans—and the Other Princesses Aren’t Far Behind

From MLMs to Menopause, the Disney Princesses are Back—and Way More Relatable At this point in my life, I don’t want the Disney princess dream of a tiara and fairytale romance. I want the version where I sleep for eight uninterrupted hours and a woodland creature scrubs my toilets. Because let’s be real here. How […]

Why Midlife Women Still Love Bridget Jones

  I didn’t want to see a sad Bridget Jones. I wasn’t ready to watch my fave frazzled fictional friend become a grieving widow with two kids and a stack of unopened sympathy cards, which is where she’s at when Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy—now streaming on Peacock—opens. Despite all her diary confessions and […]

Pretty Woman at 35: Unpacking the Myth of the Girlfriend Experience

The last line of Pretty Woman is that “Some dreams come true, some don’t; but keep on dreamin’.” It’s quintessentially Hollywood, the place where dreams are made and sold. The girlfriend experience (GFE), a niche brand of sex work, is a fantasy, and the Hollywood version is the fantasy of that. It’s a reflection of […]