The Rise of Cougar Culture

I was recently flipping through a GQ magazine from a few months ago, and there was an article about how to attract a cougar,which is a women above the age of 35 who appeals to men in their early to mid 20s. The cover of the magazine stated “A field guide to the American Cougar: She’s not getting older, she’s getting hornier.” GQ is clearly not the first to celebrate the virtues of the “cougar,” I remember first hearing it in the movie American Pie, which popularized the term M.I.L.F. Now this may not seem different from a Mrs. Robinson type character, which has been part of American culture for decades. However, with a reality T.V. show called The Cougar it seems that the Mrs. Robinson character type has emerged from a fantasy to the mainstream.
With all the new found enthusiasm for the cougar we have to wonder whether or not this is a good thing? On the surface this seems like the rejection traditional beauty which values youth, and the sexualized teens, while embracing a more realistic type women as sexy. But if we look deeper we can get past the Mrs. Robinson mystic and see Cougar culture for what it really is, a hindrance to the progress of women.
Cougars reproduce many of the beauty standards of their younger counterparts: they are usually thin, blond, and have large breast. Also, the sexualization of older women now asserts that it is fine to objectify women of all ages, I wonder if this mainstream sexualization of older women will have a negative impact on women in the workplace. Now I understand that it is important to say that women can still be sexy and are not dead after 30, but something about the new Cougar culture misses that point and replaces it with this fetishization of middle age women instead of celebrating their sexuality. It seems to me that the new Cougar culture is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.