By now we know that Dame Helen Mirren is some kind of freakin’ superwoman: The 69-year-old can lay claim to one of the strongest marriages in Hollywood (17 years and counting to director Taylor Hackford), has a career that’s thriving (who says there are no good parts for older women?), and knows how to rock a bathing suit (Kim Kardashian can only hope).
Now there’s another reason to hold Mirren up as a role model for women over 50—hell, make that 30. In a recent no-holds-barred interview with the Daily Mail, the cheeky Brit revealed that her sex life has only gotten better with age. She described sex as "paranoid and empty" in her youth, but now it’s "great, just wonderful.”
In fact, reports the paper, Mirren once claimed to set her alarm an hour early so that she could get frisky with her man.
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And apparently, Mirren is not the only mature woman refusing to slow down. Research reveals that the commonly-held belief that sexual satisfaction takes a nose-dive as women age is a tired and, well, old stereotype. A 2012 study from the University of San Diego looked at the sexual activity and satisfaction levels among 800 women with a median age of 67, and concluded that nearly two-thirds (61%) of them were satisfied with their sex lives, thank you very much. What’s more, a whopping 67% of the older women who were sexually active told researchers they experience the Big O “most of the time” or “always” during sex.
Researchers suspect that a big reason nookie gets better with age is that older women may have a (possibly?) more enlightened reason for having sex in the first place: they do it as a way to affirm their relationships. They report sexual satisfaction from “emotional and physical closeness,” rather than desire alone.
We can get on board with that. The whole knocking boots before breakfast thing though? That still seems a little superhuman.
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