Fizgig

Today’s word comes from wordsmith.org. The theme of the week was words that have unrelated definitions. The definition of fizgig that sticks with me is “a flirty, frivolous girl.” Another definition of fizgig is “a squib: a type of firework made with damp powder that makes a hissing sound when exploding.” One might say that the cougar meme is a fizgig as this is the way the meme ends, not with a bang but with a hissing.

Michael Dunn isn’t buying it. A noted psychology researcher at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, Dunn has just released a study that he insists renders the cougar craze a “myth.” After examining the age preferences expressed in 22,400 singles ads on popular dating websites in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, he found no sizable cohort of women seeking younger men. To the contrary, the lioness’ share wanted men their own age or older. Nor did he find evidence for the proliferation of cubs: the overwhelming majority of men displayed their eons-old preference for younger women. “I do believe the cougar phenomenon is a myth and, yes, a media construct,” Dunn, who specializes in human evolutionary psychology and mating behavior, told the Australian Associated Press.

Say it isn’t so, Dunn. Or don’t. These crepuscular predators are not out for validation. That is why the media has not been flogging us to death with stories about cougars for years now. It is also not the reason that career women in Hollywood have kept Ashton “Mouth Breather” Kutcher in work. Older, single women are strong and independent. They are happy they never settled down. They’re better in bed. They have money. Their seething sense of longing for what could have been is not at all on parade.

“I get angered by this silliness,” says Valerie Gibson, the British-born, Toronto-based journalist whose best-selling 2001 book, Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men, is considered the first to identify the wave that Dunn now wants to debunk. Gibson, a self-described cougar who is over 40 but won’t reveal just how much over, sees in studies by investigators like Dunn – who last year presented research that men who drive expensive cars really are more attractive to women – an anti-cougar bias. “Society has always told us that the older woman who is still sexual isn’t supposed to exist,” she says. “We should be wrapped in a shawl baking cookies for our grandchildren and all that crap.”

My first child was conceived in the kitchen while dinner was cooking. True story. Guess this Gibson woman is too old for such adventure and thinks that one cannot be interested in both sex and cooking. More germane, the bias appears to be her own. She’s the one getting all huffy about older women and sexuality. Dunn’s research made no mention of shawls and cookies, he just noted that older women seemed to prefer men their own age or older. Dog bites man story or cougar bites cub story, you decide.

[A] 2003 study by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) found that while a not surprising two-thirds of U.S. men over 40 were dating younger women, an unexpected 34% of 40-plus women were dating younger men. And 35% said they preferred it to dating same-age or older men. That study offers a more valid picture than Dunn’s, Gibson insists, because it reflects who older women are actually dating these days as opposed to what they’re socially conditioned to tell dating sites they’re interested in.

As is always the case with these stories, there are no numbers. If a 45 year old woman is dating a 44 year old man, a cougar she not be. Surely women like Gibson and her cohorts would not use misleading lies, damned lies, and statistics in order to feed their fragile egos any more than they’d project their desires onto others.

Miss Cougar Canada, Alison Brown (who “won’t admit to being anything more than 45″), is a divorced single mom in Toronto who has her own online art gallery and is a personal trainer. “What I’ve noticed on online dating sites today,” Brown says in response to Dunn’s study, “is that younger men are coming on to me, and it’s not just because we’re ‘easy marks’ for sex. It’s because we’re successful, intelligent, looking great and we don’t play games like so many of the younger girls they date.”

Then again, Gibson adds, “it’s also because we’re great in bed.”

Personally, I am a fan of intelligence. Intelligence is not age specific. I don’t much care about the successful part. Everybody plays games, unless by “don’t play games” Brown is signalling that she is an easy mark for sex. Also, am I the only one who is finding dissonance between the words “hot, sexy, great in bed” and “online dating.”

Sometimes when I joke with Penelope, or purposely rile her up, I mention that my second wife hasn’t even been born yet. I can joke thusly because Penelope and I have been together longer than 2 seven year itches. We may not have gotten together during the puppy love phase of life, but we got together when we were young. Suffice it to say, though, that if we broke up, I would not be big game hunting, nor would I be the hunted. I would be all about the fizgigs. Forget successful and fabulous, give me flirty and frivolous.