How to View Aging as Sexy
According to Cindy Gallop, feminist self-esteem icon
We don’t see enough media representation of women over 50 enjoying themselves as sexual beings — and being desired for it, rather than the brunt of a lazy joke. Influencer and business innovator Cindy Gallop is at the forefront of working to change that. Not just through her own substantial online presence and openly talking about dating younger men, but through founding MakeLoveNotPorn, a social sharing platform where people can share and upload their real-world (and real-bodied) sex.
I wanted to pick Cindy’s brain on how she got so confident — and get her advice on how I might continue to embrace my own aging as sexy.
Embedded below is our full audio interview on my podcast Help Existing, followed by a condensed print version of our conversation.
Rachel Krantz: How have you been able to embrace aging as sexy?
Cindy Gallop: The older I get, the better life gets. I think it’s really all about your attitude and your mindset around aging. I’m 62, so I absolutely see the signs of aging — wrinkles, age spots, gaining weight, all of that. That’s a fact of life. And I accept that.
I am somebody who would never consider getting work done — and I hasten to add, by the way, that I absolutely do not critique people who choose to do that. If doing something makes you feel better about yourself, then you are absolutely free to do it. But personally, I just look at what happens to my body as it ages, and I know that’s a fact of life, and I’m fine with it.
Because at the same time, everything I gain in life experience and confidence and the ability to take a perspective on life events from the vantage point of experience — I consider a very beneficial trade-off.
RK: I really loved the video you did with StyleLikeU, and how you said, “what makes you sexy is you.” I was wondering if you could reiterate that idea — that it’s really not about the way your body looks so much as the person inside it, and the body is attractive because of that.
CG: Sure. So, I get to see the evidence of that every single day. I designed my own business, Make Love, Not Porn, because when we don’t talk openly and honestly about sex in the real world, porn becomes sex education by default — which I’ve seen through my personal experience dating young men.
MakeLoveNotPorn shows what people really find attractive in the real world. As the world’s first and only user-generated human-curated, social sex video-sharing platform, we celebrate real-world everything. Real-world bodies, real-world hair, real-world penis size, real-world breast size. And the reason that’s so crucially important is that you can talk about body positivity all you like — you can preach self-love till you’re blue in the face. But at the end of the day, nothing makes us feel great about our own bodies like seeing people who are no one’s idea of aspirational body types getting turned on by each other, desiring each other, and having an amazing time in bed.
And it’s crucial because all around us, every day in popular culture, we are surrounded by messages that tell us you are not sexually attractive unless you are this skinny, have six-pack abs, etc. And our members tell us all the time “you made me feel better about my own body.” And all we’re doing is holding a mirror up to the fabulous, messy, funny, wonderful, comical, awkward, hilarious sex we all have in the real world. And we are holding a mirror up to what people actually find sexually attractive, desirable, and hot in the real world. And what people really find attractive are people. And therefore they bloody love those people’s bodies because they happen to be theirs.
Unfortunately, male-dominated industries and popular culture, the male lens everywhere, seeks to persuade us differently. And the enormous irony is, I’m talking as much about what men find attractive in the real world. What is held up as aspirational in popular culture is absolutely not what is incredibly hot and desirable and attractive in the real world.
RK: I was listening to a podcast a few weeks ago, and they were interviewing a social scientist who said offhand, “in this study, men always rated younger women’s faces more attractive.” And he was like, “and that’s because women lose their fertility sooner.” He just kind of said it like as if it was just this incontrovertible reason, and the otherwise intelligent interviewer didn’t question him at all.
And it was very frustrating because it reminded me of how, since I was in my twenties, I’ve felt that the pressure of — the clock is running out! Your attractiveness is defined by your fertility. You have less time than men to be desired.
CG: That is total fucking bollocks, and you can quote me on that. I think it would enormously behoove everybody to remove the social conditioning from their minds — which is why, by the way, when men are shown photos of women in a research setting and asked to rate them in terms of attractiveness, they’ll rate the young women more attractive. They have been socially conditioned by the patriarchal lens in every single aspect of popular culture — movies, television, advertising, publishing, journalism, et cetera, to think that younger equals more attractive.
I’m very open about the fact that I date younger men casually and recreationally. I can tell you, as a 62-year-old woman who has never hit on a younger man in her life, and only ever responds to maybe 1% of all the approaches I get on cougar dating sites — there are a ton of younger men out there who find older women staggeringly hot and desirable. But social conditioning in a research scenario means that they will mark younger women as more attractive.
In the StyleLikeU video you referenced earlier, I, as a 62-year-old woman, stripped down to my underwear and put my body completely on display. And I have to tell you — the number of younger men who slid into my DMs, messaged me on every possible social channel, wanting to date me — is flabbergasting. I can promise you what makes you sexy is you. Watch that video, feel free to look at my body and critique it, and know that a shit ton of men watched that video, and thought “she’s hot as hell, I wanna date her.”
People think I look great because they know the whole, holistic person.
They appreciate everything I stand for, what I’m all about, and what I’m doing. They bring that knowledge to any viewing of me. And exactly the same goes for you and everybody else. You know, realistically in life, the people who find you attractive find you attractive because you are you. And this is what you happen to look like. Think about it that way around.
RK: Yeah, I think of that Carrie Fisher quote: “Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.” And I find myself returning to that a lot, because of course we see the incredible double standard. It’s normal for older men to go out with younger women. And there’s plenty of representation of aging male action stars, and men being considered sexy with salt-and-pepper hair. It’s considered distinguished for them — instead of something to be eradicated. Men don’t look better as they age — they’re just allowed to.
CG: It’s all bullshit. Women age just as well as men do. Which is to say, we all age.
RK: The story of the soulmate, and the story that you need to have children, is such a big part of what feeds the fear of aging for women. Because implicit in that is a very tight timeline. Even when you’re not sure you want kids, that timeline is placed on you. I’m wondering how much you think your confidence has been aided by the fact that you’re not looking for “the one,” and you’re not looking to have kids. The kind of freedom that has afforded you in escaping the entire mentality.
CG: This is why I say to women that it’s so important that you look into yourself and identify what really makes you happy. Forget what your parents are saying, what all your friends are doing, what everything around you tells you that should be doing — what would really, really make you happy? And when you stop and look into yourself, and ask yourself that question, you might be quite surprised by the answer.
RK: Do you have any advice for women who want to date younger men, but fear the stigma?
CG: As somebody who champions the older woman/younger man relationship model, even I am gobsmacked on Cougar sites by the number of younger men who want to date older women. And by the way, I mean, date. These are not just younger men who want to have sex with older women.
It’s astonishing only because of the appalling double standard that operates in popular culture: older man/younger woman, nobody bats an eye — older woman/younger man, somehow deemed less socially acceptable. Know that there are so many younger men out there who do not want that to be the case and are very happy to completely challenge that ridiculous notion.
RK: I wish I were as confident as you about aging — and my self-image in general. Do you have any advice for me, as someone who wants to firmly put themselves on your path rather than succumbing to the larger culture’s mentality?
CG: I would just say, imagine how differently you’d feel if every single industry in popular culture — movies, TV, advertising, publishing, journalism — was female-dominated at the top, and female-led. And how much we would therefore have amazing older female role models represented on screen, on streaming, in magazines, and online — demonstrating many different ways of getting older. You would have a completely different mindset to the one you have now.
I was staggered by the response to my StyleLikeU interview. I went viral on TikTok, with over 4 million views. There are something like 900 versions on TikTok of Gen Z repurposing my voiceover. Lots of, “I have seen my future and it is bright.” Young women are saying, “I am desperate for older female role models like this one.
In one comment I found particularly moving, a woman said: “imagine if we had all grown up seeing and hearing women live and talk like this. Imagine how different our lives would be.” Now, that’s the point. Fortunately, today, we have more and more visible examples emerging, empowering, and affirming what else is possible.
