The dreaded 'C' word: Cougar

 “God, I loathe that term, I really hate it!,” says my single girlfriend, 40. “It’s the image of growling and prowling and pouncing on young men that I can’t stand. It’s a total male fantasy. I’m single. That’s all.”
 A new survey by Prevention magazine has quizzed 1000 Australian women over 40 about their sex lives. Among the findings: “… a third admitted to a cougar experience – having sex with someone at least five years younger” is the way it was reported by news.com.au.
  If I’d had a chance to do that quiz, I would have raised a couple of other points:
*At what age, exactly, does one become a “cougar”?  For instance, a girlfriend of mine in her 30s had a serious relationship with a bloke seven years younger than her. Is there a name for that?
*What is the male equivalent term for “cougar”? Is it “Sugar Daddy”? If it is, why does the male equivalent imply some financial arrangement, while the female term does not? (BTW, I hear the latest internet slang for a man looking for a younger woman is “rhino”. It’s a jungle out there!)
*In the news.com.au report the word “admitted” was used in relation to being a cougar. Is there something shameful about the idea of an older woman shagging a younger bloke?
*Exactly why do older woman hate the term “cougar” so much? Who made it dirty?
 
 In the news.com.au report, there’s also the curious case of one radio shock jock Steve Price and so-called NRL “cougar” Charmyne Palavi. Palavi, mother of three, launched her case for “damages and aggravated damages” after Price and celebrity reporter Peter Ford referred to her on-air at radio 2UE as a “slut” on May 14, 2009. At the time she said: “I’m not a slut. I’ve had past and present (NRL) players, men and women, old people and young contact me and say all you’ve done is gone out as a single person and led a single life – people do that every weekend; why does that make you different to anyone else?” she said.
  “Who determines what is a slut, who determines who is too many, and who knows who I’ve been with? The only person is me. If I had been a woman in her 20s who had no children, you would never have heard of me.”
 Back in April, Price said he felt justified after he and Ford were cleared by a jury of defaming her. After the case, he said: “I used the word slut and by any definition, if you look in the dictionary, it’s what I thought she was and the jury agreed. She should have realised she’d put herself out there…she would have been a lot better shutting up and keeping right out of it.”
  As news.com.au added in their report on the decision: “Forty-one-year-old Palavi, who has confessed to sexual liaisons with several professional footballers, last year split with her toyboy husband Michael Browne.”

“Toyboy”, “cradle snatcher”, “gold-digger”, “slut”, “stud”, “sleazeball”.

 Just who is taking advantage of whom? And why do we feel the need to assign these labels to anyone of any age?

Things that go bump in the night.....

This story was sent to me in an e-mail and thought it was amusing and thought I'd share it with you. Enjoy!

 Ladies, if you’ve ever slept at home sans your man folk, this next little tale with leave you goose pimply. And you will, like me, sympathize whole heartedly with my girlfriend Sarah who, while home alone encountered an intruder and called the police.

  When I’m home alone I have a little ritual. I lock ALL the doors and windows and check them twice, then close all the doors to all the rooms in the house. I put some manly clothes on the line and a pair of big work boots at the front door. I’m told that scares the burglars away as they think a man is home. Don’t laugh- I haven’t been robbed yet so it MUST work!
  Then I grab all the phones and some sort of weapon to sleep with. Not a knife-they may use that against you. I’ve been told a rolling pin is good, but as I don’t own one, don’t cook much, I use a wooden spoon. It comforts me to know that if someone breaks in, I’ll totally surprise them when I whip out the spoon and smack them round the head a couple of times, and maybe call them a naughty boy in the process. That should have them running and screaming out the door, never to return, shouldn’t it? Well my friend Sarah kinda did all of the above and STILL had a man infiltrate the family compound.
  Sarah has a new baby, and Hubby was away on business. She put her little one down to sleep, did the burglar proofing ritual for the home and went to bed. A few hours later she woke to the sounds of a man tapping on the doors and windows and whispering ‘is anyone home?’ Naturally she ‘FREAKED THE HELL OUT!!” She didn’t recognize the voice, and rightly assumed that the Mormons aren’t that desperate to recruit people to Jesus at 2 in the morning.  Besides, it didn’t matter who it was, she sure as hell wasn’t going to answer the door in the middle of the night. So she did what came naturally and hid under the bed. But not before grabbing her iPhone, which promptly lit up like a disco. So here she was, under the bed, in nothing but a t-shirt, lying on her iPhone to mask the light and breathing as quietly as she could, praying her daughter wouldn’t wake and cry alerting the intruder.
  Then the man did something very strange. He turned on the taps outside and started muttering ‘I found you didn’t I, I found you?” So she assumed he may have been either crazy, or crazy. At this stage she realized she needed manly help. So she rang her husband. Fat lot of good he could do in Adelaide or where ever he was. As he answered the phone she hoarsely whispered ‘call the police!’ he answered with a groggy ‘What?” again she said ‘call the police” panicked he asked ‘WHY?” , ‘Just call the police” she urgently whispered one more time and hung up, praying he would.
  He did, and 15 minutes later, 2 police cars, 6 police and one sniffer dog appeared like knights in shining armour to rescue this housewife in distress. Hauling herself from under the bed, in haste she thought, I’m in no state to answer the door. So she ran to the dresser to spritz on some perfume and promptly forgot to put on pants and answered the door in nothing but a t-shirt.
  But the Queensland Police are quite used to people (namely colleagues) running around in the nude-so this didn’t faze them. By now the intruder had escaped, perhaps frightened off by the blaring police sirens, so a few questions were asked and the sniffer dog was off and chasing the scent. Which he cleverly found and it led him next door. The next door neighbours were already awake. It seems the intruder had knocked on their door also. But why? Why was this intruder wandering around the streets of Brisbane knocking on doors and asking is anyone home?
  Turns out Sarah’s dog had escaped. The intruder, now a Good Samaritan, had found him and bought him home. The running water was him giving the dog a drink, and he went to the neighbours after assuming no-one was home to inform them the dog was getting out and to let Sarah know. And then went on his merry way. Utterly dying of embarrassment, in nothing but her t-shirt, but smelling quite lovely, Sarah thanked the police and went to bed. She still doesn’t know who the Good Samaritan is, but she now sleeps with the dog inside and wears pants.

I promise to end the love/hate relationship with the way I look.

Dear Body,  
 I’m writing to you to say I’m sorry. You have copped a major hammering over the years. Honestly, you could take yourself off to a home for battered bodies, on account of the physical and emotional abuse you have endured.
  Oh sure, I’ve never cut you, starved you or shoved heroin into you. But there’s something pretty ugly about constantly comparing you and always finding you wanting. Slimmer, more sculpted, wider-eyed, smaller-nosed, longer legs, less freckly, less spotted, less wrinkled, less….just less, freakin’ less of you. Especially you, flabby stomach – you’ve ruined my life.
  For a very long time, I thought I was the only one criticizing you for your shortfalls. As it turns out, we’re all at it. A new study has revealed that 85 per cent of us are our own worst beauty critic. One in four of us would surgically upholster or deflate our boobs and 40 per cent regard a bit of a nip, tuck and suck as the best way to “improve body confidence”. Ha! I bet you’re glad I’m such a wuss about pain.
  Anyway, you’ve patiently soldiered on for over thirty years now, so it’s time we made our peace. Here goes: sorry for the years I tortured you in the gym and rewarded you with half a cup of yoghurt and a bunch of steamed spinach. And apologies for drinking a Bloody Mary and a Cosmopolitan and believing that they made up five fruit and veg (2 x tomato, 2 x celery, and 1 x lime). There’s more: the cellulite massage (panel-beating at its least effective), and the watercress soup diet (oh joy!).
  The truth is, you’ve done me proud. Haven’t we achieved some stuff? The strength you gave me to endure those long hours before finally arriving at Rome Airport where I was whisked away to hospital to have my troublesome appendix removed, the school running carnivals and races that you endured as a child in primary school.
  Body, at worst, I’ve treated you with cruelty and disrespect. At best, I’ve taken you for granted. I should have been awed by your strength, resilience and amazingness. Take my heart – beat, beat, beat. It never misses.
  You’ll eventually succumb one day (May it be many decades from now!), but until then I promise to appreciate and honour all that you are and all that you do.

 With love, M.

PS: I’ll try harder to remember the fish oil.

How very smart are kids using Smart phones!

 Lately I have been noticing how scarily savvy small children are with smart phones. Like a moth to a flame my three year old next door neighbour can’t resist the magical pull of his mother’s iPhone and within seconds of zoning in on it in her handbag or nimbly pick pocketing it out of her jeans, his little hands seem to have an intuitive sense of how to slide the panels and push the buttons and before I know it he has unlocked the Fruit Ninja app and is playing it like a pro. He's THREE! He’s not alone, look around you, coffee shops, cars and doctors surgeries are filled with children of all ages being quietened and entertained by Mummy’s phone.    In a recent interview in the Sydney Morning Herald Associate Professor Jane Burns, of the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre (youngandwellcrc.org.au) said that ‘We are the last generation to know a world without technology. Kids are far savvier than parents; they can pick up things easily. But don’t just give your phone to your child as a babysitter, chose the apps that will help them learn’.
  That makes perfect sense to me but I still wonder if handing a phone to a child to quieten them while Mummy has a coffee or to make them behave while waiting for an appointment is good for learning social skills and manners? ‘No matter what parents do, (technology) it’s here to stay and parents need to become educated so we can support our kids. You can’t keep your head in the sand’ Jane explains ‘we had the same concerns when television started’
  Fair enough, but I doubt if parents will be so accepting and adapting of technology when in the future phones are being micro chipped into our kid’s eyeballs.....but I digress.  Along with noticing how young our children seem to be mastering the use of smart phones is the worrying trend of how young they own one.  The latest research shows that one in four seven-to 10-year-olds already have a phone. The study, commissioned by the Cartoon Network also documents a 17 per cent rise in phone ownership for children since 2006 and while I understand that in most cases it’s for safety and peace of mind, with phone ownership comes a whole other range of issues for our kids, like stumbling on apps they shouldn’t, social networking addiction, and even phone bullying.
  Professor Burns also stated that phone companies like Vodafone are already addressing the situation. ‘Vodafone Guardian, a new app for Android-powered smartphones is free and allows families to agree on parameters for their children’s smartphone use, including when children are permitted to make calls, receive texts, access the web browser and play games. Plus it’s hugely powerful for children to shut out bullying, allowing the blocking of numbers and bullying messages’
  Apps like the Vodafone Guardian certainly sound like they are needed by modern-day parents especially when bullying is no longer left in the playground and can be carried home in their back packs. It almost makes me mourn the days when mobile phones were only owned by your Dad and needed their own handbag and an antenna just to get reception. But who am I to criticise. There are daily photos, videos, and apps on my own phone. I couldn’t live without it. Plus the look on the faces of my friends and family when I show them the vision of my favourite moments filmed on my phone is priceless and I realise that whether I like it or not by the time young children start learning to read they’ll probably be learning to do so via an app downloaded onto a phone.