Can it be true that one of the reasons Nicole Kidman’s marriage to Keith Urban fell apart was her “bottomless need for sexual attention”? It’s a peculiar turn of phrase, freighted with judgment and shot through with opprobrium.
It was credited to an unnamed “Nashville source” who obviously doesn’t approve of 58-year-old women wanting to be, oh I don’t know, treated like actual women. If I may intervene; it’s a damn sight preferable to becoming invisible.
Note if you will that he (definitely, incontrovertibly a he) uses the word “attention”. Now if he’d said “gratification” that might have raised eyebrows, but what is so wrong with wanting to be noticed, even noticed a lot, past the age of 50?
Kidman is an Oscar-winning actress (for playing Virginia Woolf in the 2002 film The Hours) who can boast a prolific body of work and a determination not to fade into the background on or off screen as the years pass. Me, I’d call her a role model rather than a show-off.
In last year’s Netflix romcom A Family Affair, she played a widowed writer who embarks on a passionate relationship with her daughter’s self-absorbed movie star boss, Zac Efron. In real life she was 57 to his 37, a glaring age gap that was evident in the movie, giving rise to earnest discussions about courageous taboo-breaking and middle-aged desire.
But that was nothing compared to the erotic thriller Babygirl, in which Kidman was cast as a chief executive who has an affair with her much (much) younger and, if I may say so, bumptious, intern. I watched it in the cinema and aside from finding it a bit icky that he makes her lap up milk from a bowl on the floor, I felt it was a long overdue riposte to the Hollywood convention of powerful older men lustily wooing lassies who could be their (grand) daughters.
Kidman is not the only one flying the flag for female pleasure. In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Emma Thompson hires male escort Daryl McCormack to kickstart her libido after decades of unsatisfying marital congress.
Released in 2022, it’s a funny, poignant, unflinchingly honest portrayal of a 60-something woman negotiating the embarrassment, awkwardness and ultimately joy of sex with a ridiculously handsome man in his twenties. I’ve never heard so much wild cackling at the Odeon – female liberation comes in many guises.
I used the term “taboo” earlier, but quite honestly that only applies to Hollywood and mixed company; I lost count of the number of friends who glowingly recommended last year’s frisky book club must-read, All Fours by Miranda July which follows the sexual awakening of a 45-year-old perimenopausal woman.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I ordered a copy and still haven’t got round to even opening it. Probably that I am too tired come bedtime to appreciate any sort of awakening.
Still, how bizarre that it’s 2025 and midlife women are still having to explain – even apologise – for having carnal desires. At the other end of the spectrum, not so long ago we had MI5 wanting to recruit more middle-aged women as spies because we’re so frumpy and unmemorable. Ouch.
Frankly I don’t see why we can’t combine one with the other. Imagine it; a spy d’un certain âge in mum jeggings with a bottomless need for sexual attention. Now that’s what I call feminism. I do hope Nicole approves.
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