I think I should be a paid blogger for the London Times, the BEST source of progressive, insightful thinking about women, sex, relationships, aging, body image in the world. Bravo LT.

Their recent article is Madonna: sexual and proud.

Like India Knight, I’m bemused by the Madonna haters who can’t deal with the reality that a 50-year-old woman is on top of her game. Last year, I was pretty aroused — and not sexually — when Washington Post write Robin Givhan wrote:

We have nothing left to ask Madonna. The only questions left are those that we hope no one has the audacity to pose. But of course, eventually someone will. And we’ll be left with our hands pressed against our ears desperately trying to block out some piece of information dropped into the middle of an unassuming story the way Jennifer Lopez told People how her twins were conceived naturally with that hungry-looking Marc Anthony rather than artificially. We. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. That.

Givhan thinks that Madonna should act her age, whatever that is. The success of Madonna’s global tour leaves Givhan the odd person out on the Madonna topic, but she does speak for a branch of feminism that seems to suggest that being sexy and ‘acting one’s age’ apply to women over … not sure.

India Knight picks up the same strain of thought as my own — suggesting a lot of women of every age just can’t deal with the fact that Madonna is still so darn hot, so full of energy, still asking, growing, reaching for whatever it is that she still wants.

Madonna is not a woman who worries about aging gracefully. Madonna is engaged with living life on her terms.

It’s not for us to judge why Ms. M had a fling with her Jesus boytoy. That’s between her and the sweet young thing, who couldn’t wait to get in bed with her.

Ladies, you can butcher up the woman all you want. Carve her to pieces, so that you feel higher and mightier.

Publish whatever photo you wish. I hate to tell Madonna-haters of every age, but 30-year-olds can look pretty trashed in the face, when the lighting is poor and they haven’t had enough sleep. If they smoke, forget it. Take a mirror with you into a darkened corner and you might not be so quick to delight in an unretouched photo of Madge.

via Vanity Fair Magazine

India Knight writes: Because, while one part of Madonna was all about the ambition, the second, equally important part was all about the sex. And, let’s be honest: the thing that some people find uncomfortable about her is still the sex. Specifically: she may be old enough to be your granny, but she looks like a woman who is having sex, and who is, to use a grim expression, comfortable with her sexuality. Who’d have thought this would — still! — be so disturbing to so many people? We’ve been here before, of course, with her 1992 book, Sex, but that was a long time ago, when Madonna was in her perky thirties. The fact is, we are still supremely uncomfortable with female sexuality, and specifically freaked out by women over the age of 40 expressing themselves as sexual beings.

We aging ladies are dividing around the topic of sexuality, as we women have always divided around feminist topics for decades.

One branch of feminism told feminists like me that we can’t be smart and sexy at the same time. We can’t be at peace with men and movers of the movement at the same time.

Yet, some of us are unifiers. Without being doormats to men or other women, we seek consensus and a morelaissez-faire attitude. It’s called independent thinking, not playing by someone else’s rules. We believe in genuine, custom-tailored self-realization, and not reaching our potential with another woman’s playbook.

The subject of the sexy, older woman is heating up among women.

Many of us don’t want to ‘age gracefully’ whatever that is. Robin Givhen will write that book for us, how to go quietly into the night. Perhaps I’ll write the alternative vision.

Like it or not, style and fashion are having a Mrs. Robinson moment. For all the young women’s bravura about proudly proclaming themselves as ‘sluts’ and liberated women, the real word out there is that older women can teach our young friends a thing or two about pleasure in the bedroom.

Or so men tell me … a lot of them.

As much as we want to be warm and cozy on this topic, the most confident older women among us do have a pretty strong opinion on the Madonna-bashers, and the Helen Gurley Brown bashers and all the girl bashers of confident, sexy older women, who aren’t at war with men.

Writing about Madonna, India Knight says: And so what if people make the usual woman-hating “Put it away, Grandma” remarks about your fishnetted legs in that Louis Vuitton ad — legs that would put a 20-year-old’s to shame? “F*** ’em,” I guess she’s thinking, and I can’t say I blame her.

Knight sums it up for me, too. You can print that. Anne