Sex and the Seasoned Woman; Pursuing the Passionate Life

New York: Random House, 2006. Reprint. Third printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xii, 354, [8] p. Illustration. Boxes. Appendix. Index. Signed on title page. Gail Sheehy (born Gail Henion on November 27, 1937) is an American author, journalist, and lecturer. She is the author of seventeen books and numerous high-profile articles for magazines such as New York Magazine and Vanity Fair. Many of her books focused on cultural shifts, including Passages (1976), which was named one of the ten most influential books of our times by the Library of Congress. Sheehy has written biographies and character studies of major twentieth-century leaders, including Hillary Clinton, both presidents Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon-increased vitality in women's sex and love lives after fifty. Boomer generation women in mid-life are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women-married and single-who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don't have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women-once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers-find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. This book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women-married, divorced, widowed, and long single. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure, and examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women's sex lives. In these portraits, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives. Extracted from an article in Publishers Weekly: Sheehy, a self-described seasoned woman, set off in search of others like herself. Her premise? There's "a new universe of lusty, liberated women, some married and some not, who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age." Older women (especially Europeans) have known from time immemorial that age has nothing to do with desire and an urge to live passionately. What makes a difference these days is the opportunities afforded by online dating sites. Short on research, Sheehy, best known for Passages, presents colorful stories of the women she interviews, drawing conclusions from their lives and claiming it all as part of yet another passage to Second Adulthood, with phases like "the Romantic Passage" and "Soul Seeking." Sheehy provides the name of a doctor who employs a nonsurgical method of rejuvenating the vagina, making it just as pink and open as it was when you were... that's right, young.