Time August 19, 2019I
’ve been fielding a loT of
questions about dating apps lately.
There are 2 a.m. texts like: “Is 55
too old to go on Tinder?” And ex-
istential laments like: “I thought I was
just leafing through photos but it turns
out I was swiping yes, yes, yes, when I
wanted to say maybe, maybe, maybe.
Isn’t there any room for ambiguity? Not
even an option to ‘save for later’?”
All good questions, though I don’t
have the answers. I have no experi-
ence with Tinder or any of the swiping
apps—I only made it to the browser-
based era of online dating. But as the
first person in my friend group to di-
vorce, nearly 10 years ago, I’m the prime
confidante for questions too embarrass-
ing to ask the happily coupled.
But I might be relieved of those duties
now that we finally have an elder states-
woman of midlife dating: Candace Bush-
nell, creator of Sex and the City—the book
and series that tackled all the uncomfort-
able dilemmas of 30- something single
women in the 1990s—is back with a new
book and upcoming Netflix series that
asks, Is There Still Sex in the City? And
while she doesn’t bring back Carrie, Mi-
randa, Charlotte or Saman-
tha, it feels a bit like we’re
at brunch with middle-
aged versions of those ar-
chetypes, and they’re still
talking about love and sex
because, well, of course.
The book, part mem-
oir, part fiction, is a guide
to the Ides of 50, a stage
of life when kids depart
(along with most of the local estrogen),
marriages teeter and normally accom-
modating women stop being so accom-
modating. And because things are way
more complicated now, they may also
find themselves trying to figure out how
to swipe maybe on a 27-year-old pro-
grammer from Connecticut.
Much like in the original SATC,
Bushnell and her friends experience
every romantic possibility so we don’t
romance set against a tasteful backdrop.
No one was getting ghosted on Bumble
at 49 with absolutely no explanation.
A slew of recent movies get at the
lighter side of midlife madness. Wine
Country, directed by Amy Poehler
and released this past spring, sees a
group of old friends travel to Napa for
a 50th birthday only to discover that
no one escapes middle age unscathed.
It has some hilarious moments, but it’s
no Sideways, the 2004 Oscar-winning
Napa road-trip film that was not only
funny but also piercing and sad. I hate
to say it, but many male midlife-crisis
films are often less earnest and take
more fruitful risks, and we need more of
that in stories about women.
And that brings me to the next beat
in the 50-plus women genre: Other-
hood, a good-hearted Netflix film that
debuts this month. It’s about three
friends, played by Patricia Arquette,
Angela Bassett and Felicity Huffman,
who must rekindle their identities, sep-
arate from their roles as mothers, now
that their children are adults. Arquette
tells TIME she cherished the oppor-
tunity to play a mom at this stage: “I
haven’t had a lot of chances to do ma-
terial where the leads are all women,
talking about friendship and parenting
with a female director and producer.”TimeOff Opener
have to—from being courted by cubs
(young men who pursue older women)
to dating wealthy septuagenarians who
think 59 is a bit old for them. She writes
about re-dating an ex decades later and
a laser procedure called the MonaLisa
Touch that is supposed to rejuvenate a
woman’s sex life like Viagra,
except that it hurts and is
almost never covered by in-
surance. You can hear Sarah
Jessica Parker’s voice in Bush-
nell’s as she asks a new set of
Carrie-esque questions: “Are
middle-aged women now cat-
nip for younger men?” “Was
Tinder an app for people that
hated themselves?”
Bushnell, now 60, also touches
on poignant aspects of what she calls
“middle-aged madness”: the death of
a parent, the isolation of divorce, the
ache of realizing that even the most gor-
geous among us will eventually become
invisible.Until recently, when we saw
women in some midlife drama, it usu-
ally involved Diane Keaton in a gauzy△
Bassett, Huffman and
Arquette try to find themselves
anew in Otherhood‘It’s a whole
new world out
there when it
comes to middle-
aged mating.’
CANDACE BUSHNELL,
in Is There Still Sex
in the City?CULTURE
A guide to the
Ides of 50
By Susanna Schrobsdorff