How old is too old - if only you can tell me...

Are we ever too old for this sex?

So I saw Sex and the City 2 last week. This review pretty eloquently sums up my feelings.

Quite frankly, I’m still offended.

Why? Well. IMHO the 'film' took what was once a bold, progressive and timely bit of pop culture and pulverized it into a soggy, silly, soulless mockery of modern life, love, women and sex.

Lock shock and four smokin' women

Sure, there were a few flaccid attempts made to confront sexual/social taboos but the central cast had been made into such gross caricatures of themselves that I found any mild message hard to swallow.

Indeed, the biggest question I walked away asking was, is there a point when we’re just too old for this shit?

Now, I don’t want to make this a love/hate SATC post (there are plenty of those ‘round already if you care to vent caustic fury or prattle sycophantically) and do let’s be clear - I’m not suggesting that a healthy, happy sex and love life hinges on age.

But healthy and happy are the key words here – words I felt were as foreign to the leading ladies in the flick as the conservative social customs of Abu Dhabi.

Rather than intelligently discuss and resolve problems they and millions of others face (sex and menopause, marriage without children, parental guilt, adultery, work/life balance), they just get drunk and go shopping.

Or resign themselves. Or make self-sacrificing 'compromises' that inevitably lead to resentment and relationship breakdowns.

Even though consumer queen Carrie has shacked up with Big in the stupidly opulent, childless apartment she always wanted, she’s still not happy and never will be as long as she thinks buying more stuff is the answer.

Even though nymphomaniac Samantha has managed to find a way to keep shagging man after meaningless man despite going through menopause – “I’ve managed to trick my body!” she exclaims, ramming a handful of pills down her throat and investing in good lube – her approach to sex hardly seems healthy.

And even though over a decade has passed since SATC first emerged, the fact that our protagonists are still behaving, dressing and interacting the way they did way back then suggests they’ve gained age but no wisdom – grown old but not more mature.

It’s like they hit thirty and claimed it as the new twenty, got to forty and said they were thirty and have now reached fifty and haven’t got a clue how a modern fifty-year-old ought to behave.

So instead, they behave like they did when they were young enough not to know any better.
And this is my beef.

I don’t think anyone’s 'too old' to shag or love or what not, or that they should ‘act their age’ (calendar age is an abstract concept) – but I do believe that we all have a responsibility to ourselves to actively ‘grow up’ not just passively ‘get old’… and I’m not sure that’s the message the Sex and the City 'girls' are really putting out.
(Oh zat is such a Samantha thing to say).

But that’s just me. What about you? Are we ever “too old for this”? Do modern women over forty ‘know’ how to behave? What’s your idea of a positive role model?

And what about blokes – is there a still a double standard when it comes to men and age and social expectations?