Cougar phenomenon: Demi Moore’s New Love Vito Schnabel

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Cougar phenomenon: Demi Moore’s New Love Vito Schnabel
 

– Reported, November 29, 2012

 

A UK study recently revealed that 280,000 British women over 45 are keen to date a younger man. Specialist dating websites have sprung up to satisfy the new demand and the phrase “cougar” has been coined suggesting the predatory nature of older women dating younger men. A cougar is simply a woman who is doing what men have done through history – going for a mate she finds most attractive, regardless of age or convention. She is usually a woman over 40 who is extremely attractive, intelligent, independent financially, has a powerful career and knows what she wants.

He’s no stranger to living the high life around larger-than-life personalities as the son of outsized artist and director Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and Butterfly). But now that he’s been linked to Demi Moore, 26-year-old Vito Schnabel may just get a taste of fame on his own terms. The eldest son of Julian, Vito grew up around art world and Hollywood royalty before eventually making his own name as a curator and art dealer as a teenager. “They are just constantly around beautiful and fabulous women and run with a very cool crowd,” a source tells PEOPLE of the Schnabel family. “They’re fun people.”

Vito’s late-night bashes at the W Hotel during Art Basel Miami have been well documented and, apparently, very well attended by celebrities and art aficionados who attend the annual festival, which kicks off again in December. If past guest lists are any indication, look for high-profile revelers such as Naomi Campbell and Stephen Dorff to mingle (and dance) among the artists and buyers Schnabel represents.

Vito lives in the colorful Palazzo Chupi, a controversial pink condominium designed by his father (who also lives there), which towers above New York City’s West Village. Neighbors have described the place as “an exploded Malibu Barbie house.” He was an early bloomer:Schnabel curated his first group show at age 16, and by 23 he was showing artworks around the world. According to his official website, he represents some of the top names in contemporary art, including Terence Koh, Rene Ricard and Dustin Yellin.

Before discovering his love of art, his primary interest was athletics, according to a profile on GalleristNY. Even today, he’s still known to dominate during his rooftop basketball games at Art Basel Miami.Before Moore, Vito was linked to Elle Macpherson and Liv Tyler. Meanwhile, his sister Lola once dated The Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen.
While estranged husband Ashton Kutcher has long since moved on with former “That ’70s Show” co-star Mila Kunis, Demi Moore has remained relatively out of the public eye since separating from Kutcher in November 2011. Now the New York Post reports that the 50-year-old actress has been flirting with another much younger man: 26-year-old Vito Schnabel, the art collector son of artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.

The publication claims that Moore and Vito were seen “dancing and grinding all over each other” at Naomi Campbell’s lavish birthday party for her boyfriend in Jodhpur, India, in early November. And while vigorous dancing doesn’t a relationship make, a source said that the pair had been “quietly spending time together” since.

Think Madonna, Demi Moore and Joan Collins and you get the picture.None of these women look and behave their real age and dating an older man would not reflect their sexual power.Cosmetic procedures are more available and affordable and can be used to preserve our youthful looks.Traditionally, a woman’s role after the age of 40 is to be motherly or homely- certainly not a sexual being.Younger men are usually attractive and are seen as a “trophy” or a reflection of an older woman’s worth and power.

It is psychologically proven that men are drawn to young, beautiful women.It is one of the laws of procreation.Now there are gyms, beauty procedures and flattering clothes to help the older woman stay young and attractive.So, older women attracting younger men are dependent on the premise that younger men actually want to date them and are attracted to them.

Psychologist Dr. Faye Barkely says,”The younger men who are inclined to date older women tell me that women their age are boring, manipulative, game playing, self centered, and shallow. They are attracted to the depth, maturity and spirit of the older woman.”

When an older man marries a younger woman people hardly notice or comment. However, when an older woman marries a younger man there is lots of conversation. Many times these relationships work out and the couple live a happy and productive life together. And, many times these relationships do not work out.
There are many couples with an age difference, and very often men select an older woman because he feels comfort in the relationship. Very often these women do not even look young for their age. When a 30 year old many marries a 40 year old woman she still is looking pretty good, if she has taken care of herself. However, as the years go on the age gap becomes more apparent. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Women do tend to live longer so this could sometimes even that gap. If a man does not want children he can marry a woman past the child-bearing age. Very often couples who have had one marriage and children are grown can meet and fall in love, regardless of the age disparity.

Some marriages with big age differences are doomed from the beginning. Demi Moore got 6 years with Ashton Kutcher. However, it was inevitable that a hunky 30 year old guy is going to notice the 20 something beauties, and take advantage of easy situations. Moore is headed pretty close to 50, and though she looks outrageously gorgeous–maybe not first thing in the morning.Age is not always the major factor for relationships coming to an end. There are many factors involved. However, as years go on problems to seem to appear. Relationships where both are close in age can be special…since you have always danced to the same music.

The scientific data are scant, but anecdotally at least, it appears that the ‘cougar’ phenomenon—relatively older women choosing sexual relationships with younger men—is experiencing a flowering of sorts.
There are a number of plausible reasons for the uptick in older woman-younger man couplings. Some sociologists speak of the ‘marriage squeeze’—the fact that single, middle-aged women have a shrinking pool of potential conventional partners (ie older, educated men with high incomes) and are thus compelled to seek alternative arrangements. Others point to increased, rather than decreased, opportunities. After all, women are more financially independent today than ever before. In the U.S., for the first time in history, the number of women in the labor market exceeds the number of men. In addition, the wage gap between the sexes has narrowed and even reversed in certain sectors. Young women (ages 20-30) now earn on average more than young men, mainly because they are more educated. Women now constitute a majority in universities, medical and law schools, and doctoral programs. In roughly a fifth of American families, women are the main breadwinners.

When women are more independent financially, they have more power, more choices, and more influence. Social change invariably begets a change in consciousness. The classic wife narrative (find a husband, have children, raise them, then go knit in the rocking chair) is all but extinct. Those with money, knowledge, social freedom and confidence can realize broader aspirations, and shape their own paths regardless of their gender.
“In the past women had to partner up with a man who could support her,” said Susan Sarandon, currently in a relationship with a man 30 years her junior. “Now women are quite financially independent, so we partner up with someone because—radical thought—we like him.”

In this new arena of increased gender equality, it seems that many women—like many men—find the company of a young and beautiful partner appealing and rewarding. Attractive young men can play the same role long assigned to young women, entering into the unspoken agreement: “Be sexy, beautiful and obedient and I’ll teach you a little bit about how the world works, show you off to my friends, buy you nice clothes, and have sex with you.” An eye-pleasing younger partner may eventually become a status symbol for the hard-working and powerful older woman.
In this context, it appears there are many young men who could learn a thing or two from mature and experienced women. The New York Times recently published an interesting article about an advertising executive named Cindy Gallop, a successful businesswoman in her fifties, with the means and the appetite for action, who has turned her sexual experiences with young men into a protest of sorts, along with, of course, a TED conference talk and the obligatory web site. Her chief insight—and complaint—is that young men nowadays tend to learn about sex from pornography on the Internet. Consequently, their understanding of what real sex looks like in the real world aspires to zero. A whole generation is coming of age knowing how to do porn, but not how to make love.

Gallop’s qualms are not directed against pornography—she watches porn herself and appears to regard it as a legitimate auxiliary entertainment. Her criticism is directed instead mainly at the puritanical American society, which refuses to educate and teach young people about real sex.
Due to the sexual education vacuum, pornography has de facto turned from entertainment to education. In the lives of many young men, porn has taken over the role that parents, schools, and the innocent, halting experience of young romance were supposed to fill: real-life sex prep. Pornography’s vision of sex has usurped real world sex in young people’s consciousness and imagination.

This has some dire—and/or comical, depending on your temperament—consequences for women. For example: in porn, all women love, desire, cannot wait for the man to come on their faces. In the real world not everyone does. According to pornography, no women have pubic hair. In the real world not quite so. In the world of porn, women have orgasms all the time, every time, at a moment’s notice, in all positions. In the real world most women need proper clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm. In porn everyone is begging for anal sex. In the real world some are and some are not. The main and often only contact in porn is between the participants’ genitals. In real sex, however, partners often enjoy touching each other all over their bodies, before, during, and after genital contact. In porn, all women crave deep, choking and gagging oral sex, and can’t wait to swallow the male’s ejaculate. In real life, not necessarily so. In porn all the women scream and squeal with delight constantly. In real life sex you sometimes need to go quietly, so as not to wake up the children.

The problem with using porn as sex education is that not everything that’s fun to watch is also fun or sensible to do. Even those who love to watch car chases in the movies may not want to advocate that young people learn how to drive from the movies or engage in wild car chases around town. Porn is sexual entertainment, titillation, distraction, or self-medication, but it’s not supposed to be taken literally as an account of how people generally have sex. Those who follow the teachings of porn are more likely to get a concussion than have an orgasm. Cougars, says Gallop only half in jest, can teach some sexual sense, manners and real world skills to today’s clueless youth and thus serve a useful social function, all while having a rollicking good time.
Still, many see the cougar phenomenon as unnatural, in part because it appears to violate the basic tenets of evolution, by which men are supposed to like younger women because of their fertility while women are expected to prefer older, high-status men, better equipped to provide for the offspring.
But biological logic is notoriously ill-equipped to explain social behavior. Alice Eagly, the renowned psychology researcher, has long argued that patterned differences in behavior between the sexes are not shaped by evolution, but by the differences in social roles. Social roles over time produce differences in abilities, expectations and opportunities, which are then mistakenly perceived as innate and natural. According to this argument, innate biological differences between the sexes do exist, but they are more responsible for the launching of certain gendered patterns than for maintaining them in the present. After all, what initiates a process is not always what maintains it. The reason you started smoking is not the reason you’re still smoking. Moreover, social structures can shape how biology plays in the social world. The society can choose to enhance or suppress genetically-based gender differences. For example, the average man is more muscular than the average woman, but the culture may still decide to forbid him from using his biological advantage to inflict his desires violently on a woman. (Society, in fact, may undermine evolutionary mechanisms altogether. Evolution works by killing the weak young before they reproduce. Our society is dedicated to saving the lives of even the weakest infants and seeing them through to and beyond reproductive age).

The arrest of a 53-year-old woman in Okayama Prefecture for stalking a man 15 years her junior leads evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai (Sep. 27) to wonder why some gals like younger guys.Nursery school employee Yui Tanaka was taken into custody in Okayama City on September 23 after she intruded into the garden of the home of a 38-year-old man she was pursuing.
A police source says that Tanaka, who is married, and the victim became acquainted through a local tennis club, whereby she expressed her fondness for him but he did not have similar feelings for her.“After that, a tire on his care got punctured,” says the source, “and the paint on the nameplate for his front door was damaged. There were around seven or eight incidents all told. The police are looking into her involvement.”
A report in the Mainichi Shimbun says that at the time of her arrest Tanaka was carrying kerosene in a plastic bottle and an awl.
Nikkan Gendai turns to marriage counselor Hiromi Ikeuchi for a possible explanation for why middle-aged woman can become vindictive.
“Once women reach their late 40s, menopausal disorders can start,” she says. “Gray hair and wrinkles on their faces become a worry. Women lacking confidence are especially hurt by this change in appearance. Their reaction then is to rejuvenate themselves through the companionship of a younger man.”
While in pursuit, she will unconsciously change her hairstyle and improve the way she dresses. Her skin might even take on a glossy sheen as a consequence, says Ikeuchi. “Also, younger men have a stronger sexual energy that these women find very satisfying,” the counselor adds.
Almost as a warning to Nikkan Gendai’s mostly male readership, Ikeuchi provides telltale signs of a woman in pursuit of a younger beau. First, her language will change. In describing a particular food as being delicious, she may use the term cho-umai, which would typically be uttered by a much younger male.
“Her wardrobe will include clothes suitable for a younger woman,” continues Ikeuchi. “She also might start using a strap for her mobile phone. Then all of a sudden she’ll have knowledge of manga and video games — sure indications that she is being influenced by a younger guy.”

Thai woman (age 60) in the US: “LOL! Every man wants a younger woman! I want a younger man! Where do I get one? Get me one, Bob.” As you can see, this desire is absolutely normal, 100%. On the other hand, reasonable men know that as we age, our chances of getting these hotties diminishes with each passing year. So I am philosophical. Young women and even mature teenage girls are pretty nice to look at, but it would be a miracle if I could get one at this late date. And I’ve already been there and done that scores of times anyway, so I’m not missing anything.

Most of the outrage comes from women, generally older women. The notion that we are leaving them for young hotties sends them into conniption fits. A lot of young women are also offended, but more from modern US culture and less from those of traditional cultures. There is also a lot of outrage coming from young men, who generally think we are poaching from their females herds which they jealously shepherd. Once men start having some kids, especially female kids, a whole new set of crazy comes up, called policing teenage daughter’s sexuality. The only person who gets anything out of this game is Dad. The daughter hates it and so does Mom, who works with daughter to undermine Dad’s project.

At my age, you have to be pretty careful how you look at young women and especially how you talk to them. I practically keep scorecards in my head to see where I am at with this or that young woman so I can figure out how I can act around her and what I can say without getting into problems. Nevertheless, these problems are generally easy to deal with via controlling yourself to some extent. A little paranoia helps too. Part of the problem seems to lie in the insane idea many women have that an older guy can just go grab any young hottie that comes along with the greatest of ease. This is why they are so furious about this sort of thing. But like so many female notions, it’s all emotional weather and no logical highway.

I know a lot of guys my age. The number of them who have been able to get any young woman at all is very small. Even in the few that did, the relationships didn’t last very long. I figure for me to get a young hottie it would practically take a miracle of God. So this female blustering doesn’t take into account the logical notion that the vast majority young women, especially the hotties, don’t have the slightest bit of interest in us!
One reason an older man likes a younger woman is flattery. As we get older, with each passing year, it gets harder and harder to attract younger and younger women. They just aren’t interested in us! Quit worrying, ladies! For those of us who are narcissistic and bet on the losing horse known as the body, aging is particularly painful. This is especially true if you were handsome as young man, as I’m told I was. It’s tough to go from walking into a nightclub and every woman in the club turns around and stares dagger eyes right at you (yes this used to happen) to being a virtual cipher. Being ignored is painful, especially one was raised on being adored.

So it is that at my age, when I go out in public, I often don’t attract many women. Sure, I attract some, but not that many. This is painful for those with enough self-love to crave attention. Sure, women my age look at me sometimes, but that doesn’t really feel very good. Like a dark cloud went by, it’s hardly even flattering.
If a woman in her 40′s looks at me, well, that’s better. 30′s, much, much better. 20′s, and now you are really striking gold. Hard to attract a woman in her 20′s at my age. A teenage girl? My God! If I could attract a teenage girl at my age, God truly shone his light on me that day. As you can see, as you age, the younger and younger of a woman you can attract, the more flattering it is. What? I’m 54, and I can still attract a 16 year old? I can die happy now! I was driving around town the other day and drove by the high school. What the Hell, this town is ugly as sin, and that’s about the only decent scenery in the place. As long as you’re discreet, Olive Avenue’s pretty much a scenic highway at midafternoon. There was a young 16-17 year old girl standing by the gate. I glanced over. She immediately snaked her body in slithering move that spelled sex sex sex sex while looking laser eyes right at me. Damn that felt good. I went home and felt great for the rest of the day.