How Do I Ask For a Happy Ending?

First, open Google. Then find the right codes to let her know exactly how relaxed you want to be.
By Stacey Grenrock Woods

lucy liu charlies angels massage
Columbia Pictures

I don't want to get a happy ending with my massage, but let's say I did. Is that even a possibility?

I don't want to answer this, but let's say I did. First, I'd direct you to comedian and radio host Jim Norton, who wrote extensively on the subject in his book, but I wouldn't mention the name of the book because I believe that if you give a man a title, he'll come once, but if you teach him to Google, he'll come forever. With that in mind, I'd tell you to get a subscription to the Internet and find yourself a masseuse (noun, from Old French poss and ability), as opposed to a massage therapist (noun, from Middle English no and chance). Then I'd tell you to look for established code words like generous and roses. I'd tell you to ask how relaxed you'll be at the end of the massage, and if she says you'll be completely relaxed, you might then ask if draping is mandatory. If she says it isn't, I'd tell you to keep yourself exposed and ask her, at the appropriate time, to rub your glutes (noun, from Al Gore ass). Then I'd tell you to wave a crisp hundred or two around while winking and motioning to your crotch, but if at any time she looks confused or offended (from the Modern English lawsuit), I'd tell you to make up some excuse, get the hell out of there, deny everything, and forget my name.

Got a sex question of your own? E-mail it to us at sex@esquire.com.

PLUS: How to Give a Good Massage >>

4/8/2009 WELL; Divorce, It Seems, Can Make You Ill

August 4, 2009
By TARA PARKER-POPE

Married people tend to be healthier than single people. But what happens when a marriage ends?

New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse's death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry.

And in terms of health, it's not better to have married and lost than never to have married at all. Middle-age people who never married have fewer chronic health problems than those who were divorced or widowed.

The findings, from a national study of 8,652 men and women in their 50s and early 60s, suggest that the physical stress of marital loss continues long after the emotional wounds have healed. While this does not mean that people should stay married at all costs, it does show that marital history is an important indicator of health, and that the newly single need to be especially vigilant about stress management and exercise, even if they remarry.

''When your spouse is getting sick and about to die or your marriage is getting bad and about to die, your stress levels go up,'' said Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago and an author of the study, which appears in the September issue of The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. ''You're not sleeping well, your diet gets worse, you can't exercise, you can't see your friends. It's a whole package of awful events.''

The health benefits of marriage, documented by a wealth of research, appear to stem from several factors. Married people tend to be better off financially and can share in a spouse's employer health benefits. And wives, in particular, act as gatekeepers for a husband's health, scheduling appointments and noticing changes that may signal a health problem. Spouses can offer logistical support, like taking care of children while a partner exercises or shuttling a partner to and from the doctor's office.

But in the latest study, researchers sought to gauge the health effects of divorce, widowhood and remarriage in a large cohort of people over time.

Among the 8,652 people studied, more than half were still married to their first spouse. About 40 percent had been divorced or widowed; about half of that group were remarried by the time of the study. About 4 percent had never married.

Over all, men and women who had experienced divorce or the death of a spouse reported about 20 percent more chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, compared with those who had been continuously married. Previously married people were also more likely to have mobility problems, like difficulty climbing stairs or walking a meaningful distance.

While remarrying led to some improvement in health, the study showed that most married people who became single never fully recovered from the physical declines associated with marital loss. Compared with those who had been continuously married, people in second marriages had 12 percent more chronic health problems and 19 percent more mobility problems. A second marriage did appear to heal emotional wounds: remarried people had only slightly more depressive symptoms than those continuously married.

The study does not prove that the loss of a marriage causes health problems, only that the two are associated. It may be that people who don't exercise, eat poorly and can't manage stress are also more likely to divorce. Still, researchers note that because the effect is seen in both divorced and widowed people, the data strongly suggest a causal relationship.

One reason may be changes at the cellular level during times of high stress. In an Ohio State University study, scientists analyzed blood samples of people undergoing the stress of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. The research focused on telomeres, which insulate and protect the ends of chromosomes; with aging, telomeres shorten and the activity of a related enzyme also declines.

Compared with a control group, the Alzheimer's caregivers showed telomere patterns associated with a four- to eight-year shortening of life span. Dr. Waite said the stress of divorce or widowhood might take a similar toll, leading to chronic health and mobility problems.

None of this suggests that spouses should stay in a bad marriage for the sake of health. Marital troubles can lead to physical ones, too.

In a series of experiments, scientists at Ohio State studied the relationship between marital strife and immune response, as measured by the time it takes for a wound to heal. The researchers recruited married couples who submitted to a small suction device that left eight tiny blisters on the arm. The couples then engaged in different types of discussions -- sometimes positive and supportive, at other times focused on a topic of conflict.

After a marital conflict, the wounds took a full day longer to heal. Among couples who exhibited high levels of hostility, the wound healing took two days longer than with those who showed less animosity.

''I would argue that if you can't fix a marriage you're better off out of it,'' said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an Ohio State scientist who is an author of much of the research. ''With a divorce you're disrupting your life, but a long-term acrimonious marriage also is very bad.''




DRAWING (DRAWING BY STUART BRADFORD)

Fan Bingbing's new enchanting look

Following the "Dragon Robe", which stunned Cannes this year, actress Fan Bingbing recently showed off another Chinese-styled gown that combined the elements of blue and white porcelain. [Sohu.com]

Scorecard | Calvin Klein Collection Wins!

Women's Fashion By ALISON S. COHN September 17, 2010, 7:45 pm

And… curtain! As New York fashion week’s marquee actors take their bows in the city’s newest Theatre and Stage, Scorecard notes in the final reductive tally that there’s no way American fashion’s perennial practitioner of architectural minimalism, Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa, wouldn’t beat them all in the square the circle game.

Related
Spring 2011 Fashion Week

Calvin Klein Collection
Designer: Francisco Costa
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/style/fashionweek/runway.html#spring_2011_klein_calvin Thursday, Sept. 15, 205 West 39th Street
Photos: slide show

“Yet another minimalist celebration of simple lines, white and then more white.” (AFP)
“Easy, fluid and chic have been three of the favorite words at New York Fashion Week — and that was before the Calvin Klein collection debuted. Now, you can add sexy, smart and glamorous.” (Associated Press)
“His hyper-obsessive focus on silhouette and shape resulted in a collection for Calvin Klein that will make his particular take on minimalism the maximum statment to take away from New York’s Fashion Week.” (Daily Front Row)
“A sultry, sexy and simple (of course) collection.” (ELLEuk.com)
“The house famed for its minimalist aesthetic unveiled its sparest chic in eons.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“Something happened this season to lighten the whole thing up and, if Francisco ever spent a sleepless night worrying that the feminine softness that bordered on flirtatiousness might be a compromise too far I think he should rest assured it did not.” (Grazia Daily)
“Mr. Costa got simpler, but no less arresting.” (Heard on the Runway)
“Everything about the show was a minimalist’s dream.” (Huffington Post)
“His whites are just right.” (On The Runway)
“Now that the fashion world has come back around to the less-is-more ethos, he’s gone and turned out a superconfident, uncompromising collection that shows everybody else how it’s done.” (Style.com)
“Some designers might dabble in minimalism, but at Calvin Klein stark subtlety is a religion. And as that sect’s high priest, creative director Francisco Costa delivered an assured, focused, and refined spring collection.” (Vogue.com)
“Basing his spring/summer 2011 collection for Calvin Klein on ’structural systems,’ designer Francisco Costa sent out a collection that looked deceptively simple, but was anything but.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Pure is the way designers like to describe either a clean look or one they feel is very true to their aesthetic, very them. Usually it comes off as fashion speak, but in the case of Francisco Costa’s spring collection for Calvin Klein, there’s really no other word.” (Women’s Wear Daily)

Oscar de la Renta
Designer: Oscar de la Renta
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, 583 Park Avenue
Photos: slide show

“Oscar de la Renta’s Spring 2011 collection nods back to the [Greenbriar]’s glory days, when The Platters were all the range and even bingo night was black-tie — although it’s a bit too sophisticated for today’s casino.” (Daily Front Row)
“De la Renta made his somewhat outdated, though obviously still profitable, mission all the more retro by showing a series of fifties inspired coats, cardigans, day suits and ball gowns befitting a society lady or debutante circa the Eisenhower years.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“The red carpet luminaries and the ladies of the society circuit who he dresses will have plenty to choose from.” (Heard on the Runway)
“If there was a theme, it was prom.” (On The Runway)
“His reliance on certain posh props … made today’s somewhat uneven collection feel more old-fashioned than it might otherwise have.” (Style.com)
“De la Renta’s easy command of luxurious couture effects produced just the sort of refinements that modern swans … appreciate.” (Vogue.com)
“A sublime, strangely cinematic experience … Today, as a storm erupted outside spoiling the coiffed dos of numerous ladies in attendance, de la Renta’s immaculate ensembles for spring/summer 2011 sailed onto the catwalk, appearing larger than life. ” (Vogue.com UK)
“A beautiful and savvily controlled collection, very romantic and very Oscar.” (Women’s Wear Daily)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Isaac Mizrahi
Designer: Isaac Mizrahi
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Lincoln Center, The Theatre
Photos: slide show

“Mizrahi’s models followed the general tone of the season with clear colors, femininity and refined elegance.” (AFP)
“Isaac Mizrahi couldn’t be bothered with little details — bows, buttons, pockets and the like — for his spring styles? Mizrahi called his collection ‘IM Xerox,’ and most of the embellishment, save the sequins, were printed onto the fabric.” (Associated Press)
“He could have been saying something about how our reliance on electronic devices has changed our perception of reality, or he could have been thinking that there really is no such thing as an original idea in fashion.” (On The Runway)
“The copy concept is something of an old standard itself. Perhaps that was the point.” (Style.com)
“This man understands that his women like pretty.” (StyleList)
“With a collection this clever, a clever set would have been redundant.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Isaac Mizrahi is a copy cat and proud of it.” (Women’s Wear Daily)

Naeem Khan
Designer: Naeem Khan
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Lincoln Center, The Stage
Photos: slide show

“Was it raining? Probably. Was the front-row on its last leg after an intense week of shows? Of course. But nobody noticed — or cared — about circumstance during Naeem Khan’s rejuvenating Spring 2011 collection.” (Daily Front Row)
“Big-haired models stomped by in covet-worthy dresses featuring bright colors, flowing shapes, and intricate beading that looked to be inspired, at least in part, by some far-flung tropical destination.” (Huffington Post)
“Roberto Cavalli, are you sitting down? Naeem Khan dove into tropical waters for Spring, focusing almost exclusively on eveningwear options for the Palm Beach-to-Cannes set, with a big splash of Saint-Tropez party gear thrown in, too.” (Style.com)
“A feast of bright 70’s colors and over-the-top prints.” (The Thread)
“Glitz and glamour are always key to a Naeem Khan collection. And this season he gave it a terrific safari twist.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Ralph Lauren
Designer: Ralph Laurern
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Skylight Studio, 275 Hudson Street
Photos: slide show

“Ralph Lauren brought all the glamour that the Wild West probably never had to the runway.” (AFP)
“Ralph Lauren’s romance with the American West continues.” (Associated Press)
“Welcome to the Ralph Lauren ranch, where the buffalo roam and the cowboys and girls are the chicest you’ll find in the American West (or any region, for that matter).” (Daily Front Row)
“Despite a lone inspiration on the New York schedule, Lauren ticked off many of the recurring trends seen so far.” (ELLEuk.com)
“Raw and refined.” (FabSugar)
“It was luxe Western wear for the city woman with a summer home in Santa Fe.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“A Navajo/safari hybrid.” (Grazia Daily)
“For Spring, Mr. Lauren will take us back to about 1890 –- cowgirls and Indians, but not in the bow-and-arrows sense.” (Heard on the Runway)
“Of all his expressions of Americana, of all his appropriating its regional and historic garb, the Western motif is really where Mr. Lauren shines.” (On The Runway)
“A fine show.” (The New York Times)
“A smooth gallop from start to finish.” (Style.com)
“This pure yee-haw moment bordered on costumey, but could certainly enchant the right frontierswoman.” (StyleList)
“A country dance of formal prairie dresses and blouses in a whitewashed palette, with over-the-top-Texas longhorns and golden sparkle peppered in.” (The Thread)
“Lauren do-si-doed with a very Ralph, very American muse — the cowgirl — putting together a collection that was full of prairie romance.” (Vogue.com)
“Would look as at home on Rodeo Drive as it would on the range.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Ralph Lauren showed one of his best women’s collections in memory.” (Women’s Wear Daily)



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A Beef With Gaga

Culture, Women's Fashion|By MAURA EGAN| September 16, 2010, 10:17 am

Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


I’m not one to follow the fashion follies of Lady Gaga, but the meaty getup the singer wore to the MTV Video Music Awards the other night made me think of another artist who has been working in carnivorous creations for quite some time.

In 2004, the Turkish-born photographer Pinar Yolacan presented “Perishables,” a series of portraits of older women posing in various outfits made from meat — one woman models a sweater with honeycombed tripe sleeves, another wears a Victorian style buttoned-up blouse garnished with chicken feet at the waist. What makes these pieces more beautiful than grotesque (for me, at least) is the way Yolacan delicately blends flesh with fabric. The artist, who did a stint at Central Saint Martins in London, elegantly drapes the clothing on the subjects’ bodies; the flesh of the meat eerily matches the skin of the model — wrinkled, crinkled and creased. There is a real beauty in Yolacan’s display of decay.

Lady Gaga’s ensemble, on the other hand, was created by the Los Angeles-based designer Franc Fernandez (it was commissioned by the singer’s stylist, Nicola Formichetti), who wrapped 50 pounds of sirloin around a corset structure. Rather than Gaga’s usual stab at the surreal, the marbled meat pattern and the strange beefy tails flapping at the bottom suggested some kind of late seventies tie dye rocker chick outfit. And although the butcher string on the steak stilettos was a clever touch, Gaga’s reason for wearing the outfit — “If we don’t stand up for what we believe in, if we don’t fight for our rights, pretty soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones” — was pretty much malarkey in my book. In fact, the most outrageous gesture on her part was having Cher hold her bedazzled meat clutch during her acceptance speech.

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Grass Fed | West Coastin’

FOOD
TRAVEL
By PETER MEEHAN
June 29, 2010, 1:43 pm

Cows grazing at Big Sur.

The sun-stunned effects of a California tour-cation have led to a complete breakdown in the interview-transcription machinery here at Grass Fed, so I’m phoning in this week’s entry with what the Dining Section editor Pete Wells once railed against as a grilled cheese blog post: a post about a bunch of stuff I ate. I promise some fine and interesting stuff in the weeks to come, but for now, a litany of things I ate on the West Coast, presented, confusingly enough, in a chronological fashion that follows a little three-show tour my band did: Big Sur, San Francisco, Los Angeles.

I guess we can start with waking up in San Francisco. We stopped at Four Barrel for coffee and snacks to take on the road. The last time I was there, Four Barrel was just a espresso machine on a loading dock in the alley behind what is now the gloriously airy, warehouse-y space. I don’t know why, but I feel like the coffee was better back then, which is not to say that what we got was bad, but it wasn’t as epic as the place’s reputation had led me to expect. We also got a bag of some kind of fancy doughnuts that were over-fried, over-flavored and too soft. Hrrrphm.

On the way to Big Sur, I eyed a pointless chicken-salad sandwich at coffee shop in a minimall complex in Monterey and didn’t eat it. I was more interested in a group of protestors waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and holding signs about Arizona getting it right on immigration. Funny that they were doing it at the intersection of a luxury mall and a road that led more or less only to Big Sur, which is richer and whiter than the intersections they could have found a short drive to the north, in Castroville or Gilroy, two agricultural centers where Mexican laborers pick the artichokes and garlic that are the reasons those towns are famous.

In Big Sur, we breezed through the Big Sur Bakery, where I hoovered down a piece of pizza covered in a thick carpet of stewed greens — maybe too healthy a snack for the mood I was in. (But it led to a conversation in which I learned that the movie “Popeye” is something I really should go back to. Robin Williams scares me, but Altman makes it sound promising.)

Pete Nolan and I played as Spectre Folk, the first of nine bands on the bill at the FolkYeah!!! Woodsist Festival at the Henry Miller Memorial Library. (It was one of the greatest days of my adult life — my girlfriend and our six-month-old and bunch of friends were there — and it was by far the best festival I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. Every band played a good set, and I was especially into Moon Duo, Kurt Vile, Woods and Real Estate.)

The Ambrosiaburger at Nepenthe; pasta salad at the band dinner; corned beef sandwich at Langer’s.

I was starving after our set and offered to help a girl laying out a backstage spread (and by “backstage” I mean “back porch”; the Henry Miller Library not being such a formal place) spread of Trader Joe’s booty. She sent me to wash the vegetables, and at the sink I met a serious, bearded guy named Leif who was preparing food that would be sold to attendees as well as at the communal dinner for the bands. Leif’s got a blog that details his multifarious dealings in the food world — an agenda of dinners, talks, sojourns and meet-ups that made me feel positively lazy when I eventually checked it out.

The pasta salad he cooked for the band dinner was, against all odds (or at least against the anti-pasta-salad prejudice that I think I picked up from Pete Wells), killer: filling, oily in the right way, piquant in the “refreshingly interesting” sense of the world. I ate two plates.

The next morning we woke up at Deetjen’s, which is one of the finest places on earth I know to wake up at, in part because breakfast there is pitch-perfect: the vibe is friendly and family and warm, the cozy warren of rooms makes every grouping of tables an intimate set, and diners all talk to and smile at each other because everybody knows they’re in the place to be.

Because I like to feel a groaning sense of fullness almost all the time, I went for the two eggs and toast and a side of buttermilk pancakes. I always go with chicken-apple sausage for my morning meat at Deetjen’s, even though I’m usually a sunrise porker. After that it was off to lightly sear ourselves in the sun on the beach at Andrew Molera State Park. I missed lunch, made it up with a vegetarian burrito from a convenience store along Highway 1, and then counted down the hours to dinner at Nepenthe.

You know Nepenthe if you’ve been to Big Sur; it’s perched on a cliff, affording diners a view of the coast to south and the Pacific to the west in a manner that’s so majestic I’m typically reduced to trying to capture it on a crummy camera rather than just breathing it in. Nepenthe’s got a very California menu — New American, I guess would be one way to call it; wandering, another — but, like so many tourists, I go there for the burger.

The burger at Nepenthe is called the Ambrosiaburger, after the “special sauce” that gets slathered on it. (There’s a recipe for it on the restaurant’s site; prepare to be underwhelmed by what goes into brewing up the sauce of the gods.) It’s served on a “French” roll that’s pale and soft enough to make a Frenchman blush. And while that description shouldn’t, in my mind, add up to a great burger, it does at Nepenthe. It might be the beef; the menu notes that it’s from local cows, and while driving to Big Sur, you’ll certainly see herds of them, cows living probably the best cow life possible, grazing wild with the Pacific laid wide open before them. I buy that happy cows taste better.

The next day we set off up the coast, back to San Francisco to play another show. We stopped for a bite at Phil’s Fish Market out on Moss Landing. Phil — I assume the bearded man who had his likeness plastered around the place like Mao at a Warhol show — had apparently had some sort of throwdown with Bobby Flay; most of the television monitors around the restaurant were frozen on a frame of him smiling and shucking, from what I assume was his spotlight moment with Mr. Flay.

The place is the size of an airplane hangar, with a retail operation (offering a surprising amount of East Coast fish) and two seating areas. The girl working the register told me the squid was local, so I ordered calamari, and, like most fried squid, it was good — though I do think the freshness of the squid made a difference. I also got a steamed artichoke, on account of our proximity to Castroville and because I’d had the best steamed artichoke of my life at Nepenthe the night before. Good, but not as good as the artichoke served on a cliff in Big Sur.

Onward to San Francisco. We played a show at the Hemlock that had a bad-acid vibe to it — in a good way? — and friends recommended that we pile out for an after-show meal at a place called Nopa. I had grilled cactus on the mind — I figured Nopa was short for nopales and we’d be eating tacos or burritos — but it turned out to be a fancy-ish, upstanding place with a hostess and nice waiters and a good wine list that happened to be open late. (Nopa is short for “north of the Panhandle” or something.)

I ordered some kind of pizza flatbread that was way too good for the hour, and a plate of fried tiny fish that we probably could have reloaded on at least a couple of times. I nabbed forkfuls of excellent roasted broccoli from my bandmate and a slice of a friend’s rib eye that was perfectly cooked and dressed in a sauce that would have made shoe leather edible. A couple of friends ordered burgers, which seemed appropriate for the hour, but man, the real food was the real deal.

We took off for L.A. the next morning and made it almost all the way down before giving into the highway-food gods with a breakfast burger stop at In-N-Out, a West Coast indulgence I’m not strong enough to deny myself at least once a trip. One of my favorite things about the place is that there’s always something to learn at an In-N-Out. Pete had never had a burger Animal style, so I got to hip him to that. He showed me that the bottom of every cup includes a Bible reference: my soda directed me, like so many men holding signs behind the goalposts at football games, to read John 3:15.

We stopped briefly in Santa Barbara to pick up Pete’s baby and wife and to eat at La Super Rica, which is undoubtedly my favorite Mexican restaurant in the continental United States. (Haters — there is a huge contingent of people who feel the place is hyperbolically overrated — please don’t feel the need to take over the comments on that point. I know you think I’m a sucker, a gringo, a tourist and a sheep.) More on La Super Rica and Santa Barbara here in the future — too much ground to cover in this post. The main thing to remember about La Super Rica is that they have best horchata on the planet and they’re closed on Wednesdays.

We got down to L.A. and hung out for a little while at the Echoplex, where Jeremy Earl and the Woodsist crew were putting on another Woodsist fest. There were a couple of food trucks parked out back — in the future all food in Los Angeles will be served from trucks — one of which was called the Greasy Wiener, which seemed to prompt more passers-by to snicker than to snack, but then again I was there early.

The L.A. show included local bands, like Sun Araw, who I would have loved to catch live, but we had to share a bill with Thurston Moore over at an awesome little art gallery called Synchronicity.

Our show wrapped up around midnight, and nobody was in the mood for trouble. I grabbed a 1 a.m. burrito at a place that called itself a “Mexicatessen”: Burrito King. The vegetarian burrito did not make me sick, but I’m not sure that’s an endorsement.

The tour-cation ended the next morning. I was heading up to Santa Barbara to meet up with my baby and my girl, riding the 2:55 p.m. Amtrak Surfliner up the coast. I had breakfast and coffee at the Chateau Marmont, a hotel that is like Deetjen’s in its transporting charms, though instead of offering a powerful connection with redwoods and nature, it offers the chance for even a breakfast guest to feel like a super Angeleno and scope out Rosario Dawson eating, Famke Janssen walking her dog and Thurston Moore having coffee.

I put a stake in the heart of my hunger for the rest of the day with my (shamefully) first visit to Langer’s, the famous delicatessen. Katz’s was around the corner from my apartment for the last 10 years in New York, so it’s deeply difficult for me to be in any way objective about deli supremacy. But, man. Langer’s is really good. They use bread that doesn’t taste like it was made in a copying machine. Langer’s corned beef melts in the mouth. They dispense meat in portions that do not immediately redirect all the conversations in the place toward coronary health. The servers are hyperfriendly. Is it better than Katz’s?

Oh no! Look how time flies. If I drink another one of these beers out of frosty mugs I’ll never make my train. See you next time.


Food, Music, Travel, Big Sur, Food, Grass Fed, Los Angeles, Peter Meehan, restaurants, San Francisco, Travel


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We Three Things | Water Colors

Culture
Design
By LEANNE SHAPTON
July 16, 2010, 11:26 am



It is too hot. My constant craving is to be submerged in a cool pool: the sound of kicking overhead, of bubbles and muffled splashing. Everything is slower and suspended underwater. I spend as much time as possible in the deep end, and when I’m not there, I seek out that submersible summer feeling. Watch this 1993 music video directed by Jem Cohen, and feel your body temperature drop.


Courtesy of Blaise Cepis

Descending the stairs to Dashwood Books on Bond Street is always refreshing, especially when the A.C. and stacks of new photography books beckon. Last week I thumbed through Blaise Cepis’s “Lemonade and Bugspray,” a collection of photos taken during the summers of 2008 and 2009. By the last picture I felt sticky and sunburned, and I missed my friends. The book smells like summer spirit! The artists Cepis, John Codling and Craig Damrauer started the Scratch Press earlier this year. It publishes work that, Cepis explains, “makes us just plain old happy.” Dashwood carries its ebullient limited-editions for $20 each.



© Pipilotti Rist/Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Pipilotti Rist, Video still from “Sip My Ocean,” 1996

Pipilotti Rist is in touch with her inner porpoise. The choreography of her camera in her psychedelically anatomic video installations is all flow. In my favorite piece, “Sip My Ocean,” she sings an urgent rendition of Chris Issak’s “Wicked Game” while cross-processed swimmers kick, drip and glide underwater. It’s a perfect metaphor for heady summer infatuation. The piece is part of “Partit Amistós — Sentiments Electrònics,” a solo show of Rist’s work at Fundacio Joan Miro in Barcelona, Spain, until November.

Leanne Shapton

For gin-clear vision underwater, I swear by my Swedish goggles. Look closely at footage of Olympic swimmers behind their blocks: most wear a variation on the technology developed by the Swedish company Malmsten, whose eyepieces fit closely and comfortably into the socket for a foam-free, watertight fit. The straps and bridge pieces are essentially rubber bands and kitchen string, which is why they’re nice and cheap. Order an amber, teal or rose-colored pair at circlecityswimwear.com and let your primordial instincts (whip)kick in.




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Poparazzi | Social Media Coercion

CULTURE
By BEN WIDDICOMBE
August 11, 2010, 2:07 pm



I suggest you like this article.

Please note that this is not an invitation to read it and make up your own mind. In language that will be familiar to Facebook’s 500 million users, it is a question with your answer already supplied. And before you ask, “like” is the only option.

Social networking sites that invite us to share our opinions have brought with them a new kind of pest: the coercive “friend” who wants you to shill their latest venture.

Like your neighbor, the folk singer. Go along with his request to promote his next gig on Twitter and you risk spamming your social network and coming off as a bit of a rube. But if you decline, he’s going to notice and it can chill an otherwise cordial relationship. Gone are the days of the stack of fliers that could be discreetly filed in the trash.

For those cyber shut-ins not on Facebook, the “like” function — illustrated by a jaunty “thumbs up” icon — is a way for users to add their imprimatur to anything another person posts on their page. You can “like” a picture, a status update or even a place of business. With that comes the now-standard e-mail prompt your friends will send when they’re trying to promote a project, the “suggestion to like.” Conspicuously absent from your list of choices are “don’t like,” “whatever” and “quit bothering me.”

At least the Facebook “suggestion to like” e-mail messages have become so common that they are easy to ignore. Much harder to handle is the personal appeal.

In the last three months I have received a dinner invitation with instructions to tweet my R.S.V.P., a friend’s request to change my Facebook status update to promote his latest film pitch, an e-mail message from an adult acquaintance asking that I tweet him happy birthday, and a message on Facebook from a P.R. firm asking me to “like” a link to my own story about his client.

Perhaps this is to be expected when you have friends who communicate for a living in fields like journalism, public relations and entertainment. But recently I received an e-mail message from a relative who runs a specialty food business out of her farmhouse in rural England, asking me to tweet about her new distribution deal with a supermarket chain. I’m terrified that at the next family reunion, there’s going to be a printout of tweets tacked up next to the usual gallery of clan photographs.

George Orwell would have appreciated the “suggestion to like” as a handy modern tool that takes the grunt work out of forming an opinion. So why don’t you like this article right now? Come on, all your friends are doing it.



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.

Inside Out | A Closet Full of Clean

DESIGN
By RITA KONIG
August 24, 2010, 2:53 pm

Evan Sklar/Getty Images
One needs so little space to make a really useful laundry closet.

I have started looking for a new apartment. Within 48 hours, I became that clichéd New Yorker, addicted to real estate Web sites and printing floor plans out to rearrange them into my perfect apartment; I even bought a printer on Sunday so that I could print them at home! There are few things that I like more than redesigning spaces on the back on an envelope, creating rooms with little squares that represent sofas and end tables, and imagining scenes of afternoons and evenings with people popping over, and dinners being cooked in a kitchen that was once a closet and second bathroom, and which is now a place where herbs are chopped and corks are pulled from bottles.

One thing that astonishes me is the lack of laundry rooms in these apartments. You can be looking at spending $2 million, and you’re expected to go down to the basement to do your laundry in a machine being shared by the entire building. In a city where most of the inhabitants are extremely spoiled and picky in almost all other aspects of their lives, we accept some amazing discomforts in our (generally expensive) living arrangements. I won’t dwell too much on the apartments I have seen with walls shooting off in funny directions, master bedrooms that are referred to as sleeping nooks and windows that are too high or in strange corners. The rest of the country must think we are mad. I do!

While I was in London recently, I realized how much I miss having a washing machine and dryer in my apartment, and it is now an absolute must when I buy a place. One needs so little space to make a really useful laundry closet — literally the depth of a machine and the width of two, and of course some plumbing. I am currently trying to turn my closet office (now obsolete since I’ve moved to a proper office) into a laundry, since the room behind it is a kitchen — with the aforementioned plumbing. I am hoping this will be quite simple, and even if I am only here another year, it will be worth it.

Now, down to brass tacks. The best way to do this is to have two front-loading machines next to each other. The stacking system is a nightmare as you lose counter space, which you need for sorting all that laundry! Have the counter made with a piece of plastic laminate, and add shelving above for the stacks of fluffy white towels and pressed linens that seem to be the foundations of our fantasies, and of Martha Stewart’s fortune. Even the smallest spaces can fit this thoroughly civilized addition, which gives you a chance at domestic order, and when everything else is hectic, I find some solace in folding towels and arranging them neatly, rather than slinging them on the side of one’s clothes closet.

Then there is the accessorizing, the baskets, the large jars — those wonderful vintage glass ones that come from Europe, filled with soap powder and a scoop. There is space to keep an abundance of all those things that promise to take stains out. I love having boxes that make light bulbs, batteries and the various wires, extensions, USB ports and foreign adapters that seem to gather in my home much easier to find. I also love Hable Construction minitotes for chucking all these things in, and Lanvin shoe boxes are rather good, too. A laundry closet becomes the efficiency hub of even the smallest New York apartment.



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Fabulous Dead People | Frances Faye

Culture
By CHRISTOPHER PETKANAS
July 12, 2010, 3:50 pm

Collection of Tyler Alpern

Related
Read more Fabulous Dead People columns

In the late 1950s, the cabaret scene on the Sunset Strip was so feverish, you could hear Christine Jorgensen and Frances Faye in different rooms on the same night without leaving the building. Jorgensen played the Interlude; Faye the Crescendo downstairs. Jorgensen’s set included “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” sung, apparently, without irony. A robust performer even on a bad day, Faye could be heard through the floorboards, violently slapping the piano keys and inquiring, “Gay, gay, gay, is there another way?”

Frances Faye was that rare thing, a white chick who could not only shout but swing. She had a dry, gruff voice she put in the service of a deadpan, declamatory style, nudging listeners to consider standards in a different way: stripped of obvious sentiment. Is Faye’s brash recording of “Am I Blue” the most knowing version on the books? People who thought Teddi King and Mildred Bailey and Felicia Sanders said it all have concluded “yes.”

Faye made more than a dozen albums, collaborating with the aristocrats of pop-jazz arrangers, Dave Cavanaugh, Marty Paich and Russ Garcia, and musicians like Maynard Ferguson and Herbie Mann. Faye was partial to a Latin beat, and Jack Costanzo, the great bongoist, often supplied it. If you own nothing of Faye’s, “Caught in the Act” is a good place to start. So is Terese Genecco, who performs songs identified with Faye at the New York club Iridium. Please don’t stop reading. Genecco is no dumb tribute act. She does not want to be Frances Faye; she does make you understand why she’s so important. With Nick Christo it’s more the other way around. Christo is an Australian singer whose entire show is devoted to Faye. His chirpy, wide-eyed approach is at odds with her material. Also, he’s not a girl.

Collection of Tyler Alpern

Faye’s music and sexual identity were inseparable. She had been married twice when, in the mid-’50s, she met Teri Shepherd, who was some 20 years her junior and became her manager. As Shepherd tells Bruce Weber in his film “The Chop Suey Club,” she and Faye were a couple for 31 years when Frances died in 1991 at age 79. (Shepherd still has the house they shared in the Hollywood Hills.) Onstage, Faye — one of Weber’s all-time heroes — mischievously changed “him” to “her” when singing love songs and peppered her sets with L.L.J. (Lite Lesbian Jokes). “That’s why I never go with girls,” she’d say when a woman hollered from ringside. “They’re so aggressive when they’re drinking.” The gays loved Fraaahncis. They still do.

For Faye’s longtime fans as well as those new to the party, all roads lead to Tyler Alpern, 45, of Boulder, Colo. Alpern began listening to Faye in 1988 but was frustrated by the lack of information about her. Ten years later he found a mention in a biography of Peter Allen. Since then, Alpern has traced Faye’s life in a rambling essay that runs to more than 18,000 words on his Web site, though if you dig deep you will also find some adamant score-settling: “I keep reading that although a top-notch entertainer, Frances Faye ‘did not have a great voice.’ I disagree!” As there is no biography of Faye, Alpern’s site will have to do.

If you knew nothing of Frances Faye, saw a clip and thought, That woman could only be from Brooklyn, like Fanny Brice could only be from Brooklyn, you’d be correct. Faye’s mother was a Russian immigrant, her father an electrician and arsonist familiar with Sing Sing. David Daniel Kaminsky — Danny Kaye — was a second cousin. Faye scored her first gig at 15, quit school and before she was 20 played the Cotton Club and speakeasies like the Calais Club. Gangsters, including Al Capone, adored her, some paying $1,000 a pop for requests. Discounts were neither demanded nor offered. Eight thousand dollars bought “Love for Sale” eight times. Faye was so at home with goons, she wed one, Abe Frosch, who did time for running a gambling syndicate. Her second marriage, to Sam Farkas, who had been a professional footballer, got off to a bad start. Faye was “broken to bits,” Alpern says, in a car accident on their honeymoon. Also, Farkas beat her.

Splitting the bill with Bing Crosby at the Paramount on Broadway in 1932 led to Faye’s first movie, “Double or Nothing,” which starred Crosby, and to her first record deal, with his Decca label. Visually it was hard to know what to do with Faye in that era. She wasn’t thin, and the camera did not love her nose, which was never small. (Faye went on to make her appearance part of her shtick, with flip deprecations like “I think when you’re pretty it doesn’t matter how you wear your hair.”) All of 24 in “Double or Nothing,” Faye doesn’t look a minute under 50. She wasn’t so much costumed as slipcovered. Playing a nightclub performer, she has one delirious scene in the film. For nearly five minutes, she and Martha Raye engage in a barkfest, scatting their brains out, two aliens from planet Zazz Zu Zazz.

Collection of Tyler Alpern

The ’30s were also Faye’s big years on West 52nd Street, where she shuttled between the Hickory House, Club 18 and Leon and Eddie’s. Back on Broadway in 1943 in “Artists and Models,” she was joined for one big number by four female jazz harpists. (Not the novelty it sounds: Daphne Hellman made her debut at Town Hall around the same time.) In about 1950, fed up with orchid corsages and portrait necklines, she scalped her hair and dyed it blond, earning an attack from Leonard Feather in Downbeat when Capitol Records signed her. “After studying the physical characteristics of typical recording stars,” he wrote, “… you wouldn’t be likely to pick … a matronly looking woman with a Brooklyn birth certificate, arthritis, a tough vocabulary, a quarter of a century in show business and hardly any records at all. …” Feather later tried to make it up to her by crowning Faye “the consummate nightclub performer.” Which she was.

In 1958, Faye tripped on the carpet in a Las Vegas hotel room, broke her hip and walked with crutches or a cane for eight years. Still, she worked. She’d be carried to the piano with the lights down and discovered by the audience when they went up. She was out of hope when a third hip operation proved successful. In 1977, parts of her act were filmed for “Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn,” a TV movie about gay runaways, and before retiring in 1981, she was cast as the madam in Louis Malle’s “Pretty Baby.” A series of strokes that silenced Faye seemed especially cruel.

For Nick Christo, Frances was “like a sequined piece of driftwood.” But to quote the lady herself, “Does that sound too camp?” Having floated a fragment of music ripe with innuendo, it was the question she often asked just before leaving the stage. The way she framed it, it sounded aspirational.



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Samurai Shopper | The Sunny Side of the Street

Women's Fashion
By S.S. FAIR
August 9, 2010, 1:54 pm

Marc Alary

“There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this has been one of them.” That’s the kicker to “Naked City,” a 1948 film noir shot in the most naked of places, New York. The Samurai Shopper silently utters that line after hearing hard-luck subway pitches, after sympathizing with friends or suffocating in the endless news loop of doom and gloom. I grow inured to the sheer volume and depth of public suffering, those eight million calamities waiting for me or anyone else to lend an ear, a hand, a shoulder, a few bucks.

Better to rejoice when people reach into the darkness and pull some silver linings from the vale of tears. Like Francesco Clark, who started the skin-care company Clark’s Botanicals after a swimming-pool accident left him a parapalegic in 2002. Clark was also unable to sweat, enduring clogged pores and chronic skin breakouts — true insults to injury. He and his father, a doctor, formulated the excellent botanical line that sends part of its sales to the Christopher Reeve Foundation. (Francesco is its National Ambassador.) I can sincerely rave about Clark’s Smoothing Marine Cream, and tinted lip balm, too.

Wini Burkeman’s silver lining is McBride Beauty, started after her son Max was born nearly 10 years ago. Max was colicky and covered crown to tail in eczema. Conventional pediatricians offered rubber-stamped, ineffective advice: cortisone for the eczema and too bad about the colic. Burkeman finally found a holistic pediatrician, the Park Slope food co-op and natural healing remedies — oatmeal and calendula — to take Max out of harm’s way. Just like her mother had done on her farm in Ireland, Burkeman stood over a hot stove in a Brooklyn kitchen concocting McBride’s chemical-free beauty products, named for her wild Irish rose of a mom. Max is now eczema-free, and McBride Beauty was adopted by Robert DeNiro’s Greenwich Hotel. Try McBride’s Instant Rescue Balm for dry patches. And the Grapefruit & Aloe Toner. McBride’s travel bag is indispensable.

Fortunately, the makeup artist Kristen Kjear Weis escaped personal tragedy but noticed throughout her career that women repeatedly asked her to avoid certain products in order to head off allergies, breakouts or general unpleasantness. That was the inspiration for Kjear Weis’s 99.5 percent organic makeup, which will make its debut at Space NK after Labor Day. Your cheeks will stay dewy without shine, your lips will glisten, and your eyes will be smoking, in a sexy, non-carcinogenic way.

Also making its debut at Space NK on Sept. 6 is Tata Harper’s 100 percent natural skin-care line. Harper accompanied her father-in-law to the Mayo Clinic, where he was diagnosed with cancer. Doctors there advised him to toss everything he used containing synthetics, which pretty much left his cupboard bare. Tata had her epiphany; her line, which is sourced globally and from her own 1,200-acre farm in Vermont, raises the bar on luxury and transformational results. I’ve got a gallon of Tata’s Irritability Aromatherapy Oil on order, to help with the never-ending eight million stories.



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Now Booking | Algodon Mansion

Travel
By ROCKY CASALE
September 13, 2010, 5:15 pm

Courtesy of Algodon Mansion
Algodon Mansion

Considering how things go in Argentina — military coups, economic insolvency and, most recently, a coin shortage — the fantastically posh Buenos Aires neighborhood of Recoleta is still going strong. Its bosky streets are lined with embassies, museums and belle époque mansions that occupy entire blocks. It’s one big architectural pageant. And so, as legacy would have it, Recoleta remains a magnet for upscale boutiques and hotels like the new Algodon Mansion, which opened last month.

The New York-based development firm Invest Property Group, which is also responsible for the Algodon Wine and Golf Estates in Argentina’s Mendoza region, turned the six-story 1912 mansion into 10 sleek suites with ebony floors and furniture from B&B Italia and Capelinni. French limestone and Calacatta marble deck the bathrooms, giving them the look of baroque mausoleum on the Appian Way (if such a thing also had an oversize steam shower). The Royal Suites, starting at $1,815 per night, come with courtesy pajamas, a baby grand piano, a wine tasting set and a personal chef. If you must, you can rent out the entire mansion for about $20,000 a day.


Courtesy of Algodon Mansion
Chez Nous.

Algodon’s Argentine and French fusion restaurant, Chez Nous, serves simple but excellently done dishes like seared sea scallops and those famous Argentine steaks, and it’s unexpectedly laid back, with just 50 seats. The Cognac Bar is where you can wrap up an evening like a Victorian gentleman, with a vintage tipple and a hand-rolled cigar. And for a rare Buenos Aires sight, there’s a pool and a cocktail lounge on the roof. They share the top of the building with the 95° Spa, where the menu lists a selection of “vine therapies,” including massages, facials and rubs, that use ingredients from Algodon’s wine estate in Mendoza.

Should Algodon’s entertainments wear thin, a walk around Recoleta is always a nice distraction. Nearby are the Recoleta Cemetery and the National Museum of Fine Arts, as well as hundreds of boulevard boutiques and cafes. At night it’s calm and quiet, and the mansions’ big windows glow with soft yellow light. Especially then is Recoleta all about wealth on parade — another reason why the Algodon Mansion feels right at home.

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16/09 Photos of the Moment | Anna Sui

Women's Fashion
By BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES
September 16, 2010, 12:16 pm

Scenes from the New York Fashion Week photo diary of Bryan Bedder for Getty Images.

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17/09 Photos of the Moment | Oscar de la Renta

Women's Fashion
By BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES
September 17, 2010, 1:00 pm

Scenes from the New York Fashion Week photo diary of Bryan Bedder for Getty Images.

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15/05 Google Tells Sites for ‘Cougars’ to Go Prowl Elsewhere

United Artists
MRS. ROBINSON, ARE YOU...Anne Bancroft played the original cougar in “The Graduate.” Dustin Hoffman was the cub
May 15, 2010
By SARAH KERSHAW
IF you’re a woman who would like to date younger men, you can find lots of articles about these relationships by doing a Google search.

But as a woman looking for a man, you might be a little confused by the advertisements that accompany these articles. One promises to help you find sexy Latin women, and another, hot Latvian ladies. But there are no links to the growing number of “cougar” dating sites, matching older women with younger men, on content sites that show up in a Google search. Google has recently deemed those dating sites “nonfamily safe,” and therefore its ads for such sites containing the word “cougar” will not be allowed on so-called content pages.

The Google advertising system has two components: one for ads that appear next to search results, and one for its content network. For a company like CougarLife.com, now banned from the content network, that means its ads will no longer appear on more than 6,700 Web sites, including Ask.com, YouTube and MySpace, which accounted for 60 percent of its traffic, said Thomas Koshy, vice president for marketing at CougarLife, a Toronto-based site that says it has a half-million members, men and women.

Google continues to allow similar advertising for the many sites that match older men and younger women, like DateAMillionaire.com, which assures its clients they can meet “sugar babies.”

So cougars and cubs are out, but sugar daddies and sugar babies are in.

Blurbs and “sponsored links,” which typically pop up on the right side of the screen, for dating sites like CougarLife.com and other “nonfamily” sites (one screams “Date a hot cheating wife!”) will still appear along with a list of search results.

Google, which has more than a million advertisers, would not comment on why sugar-daddy sites are still considered family safe, but cougar sites are not. The company’s decision, made public this week by CougarLife.com, has rankled not only advertisers but women who have embraced the cougar concept as a symbol of empowerment, of older women bucking dating stereotypes.

Many feminists still take issue with the word “cougar” because it may conjure the image of a predatory, aggressive older woman on the hunt for a boy toy. And plenty of cougar dating Web sites are salacious, as are other dating sites.

With television shows like “Cougar Town,” many movie plots based on these May-December romances (not always portraying cougars in a positive light) and a steady stream of tabloid reports on the comings and goings of celebrities like Demi Moore, the concept has taken hold in pop culture.

But that’s a far cry from a societal stamp of approval. Experts on female sexuality and women’s history say Google’s decision provides a glimpse into a pervasive discomfort with older women as sexually active players on the dating scene.

“It’s relatively new that women have felt O.K. to be sexual and be attractive and continue to be alive in that way as they aged,” said Lonnie Barbach, a psychologist in San Francisco who specializes in female sexuality and relationships. “It’s always been an acceptable part of culture for men to be sexual at all ages and all levels.”

Last week, CougarLife.com, which was paying Google $100,000 a month to manage its advertising and place it on content pages, was notified by the company that its ads, which had been appearing since October, would no longer be accepted.

Google confirmed that “cougar” would now automatically place a site into the adult category, but would not say which other words would do that.

“We can’t comment on specific advertisers, but our policy is that adult dating ads are classified as nonfamily-safe, meaning that they will not show on the Google Content Network,” the company said in an e-mail message.

When notified by Google of the decision, CougarLife proposed substituting a different ad for the ones that were running, picturing older women and younger men together. Cougarlife said it would use an image of the company’s president, Claudia Opdenkelder, 39, without a man in the picture (she lives with her 25-year-old boyfriend).

But the advertising department was told in an e-mail message from its Google representative that “the policy is focused particularly around the concept of ‘cougar dating’ as a whole,” and asked if the company would be open to changing “the ‘cougar’ theme/language specifically (including the domain if necessary).” CougarLife forwarded the e-mail messages to The New York Times. Google would not comment on the messages but did confirm that they were consistent with the new policy on cougar sites.

“It’s just wrong all around,” Ms. Opdenkelder said. “It’s age and gender discrimination. It’s just about older, successful, independent, strong women who enjoy someone that’s younger. Some of the men sites, they are borderline prostitution, and Google has no problem having them advertise.” CougarLife said it was considering filing a discrimination complaint with a Canadian agency that oversees equality issues between private parties, and was looking into possible legal recourse in the United States.

CougarLife.com is owned by Avid Life Media, which also owns ArrangementSeekers.com, which describes itself as “the original Sugar Daddy service catering to ambitious and attractive girls seeking successful and generous benefactors to fulfill their lifestyle needs!”

Avid Life Media executives said that while some specific advertisements for the ArrangementSeekers site had been rejected, the ads were evaluated on a case-by-case basis and the site was still advertising with Google.

Mr. Koshy of CougarLife.com said his site was, however, continuing to advertise on Facebook, spending $100,000 monthly. Facebook, he said, had objected to some specific content of proposed ads but had not objected to the cougar concept.

A Facebook spokeswoman said there was no “broad ban on ‘cougar ads,’ ” but that any advertisement’s “image and language cannot be overtly provocative or sexual.” In the messages to CougarLife, Google said it might revisit the new policy. But for now, the cougars would be confined.

Women: Why shouldn't you date younger men?

Women: Why shouldn't you date younger men?
Welcome to goCougar.com - the premiere online community for mature women who prefer to date younger men. Feel comfortable with the possibility of starting an age-gap relationship in a community where people think just like you. May be you have experienced a lot in life already and now want a totally different type of relationship. Recapture some of your youth and try striking up a relationship, whether romantic or just friendship, with a younger man!

Leave behind the embarrassment and annoyance of "everything to everyone" dating sites. goCougar is a focused community that goes beyond dating. With blogs, chat, forums, instant messaging, and many other social networking features, goCougar seeks to evolve the concept of meeting people on-line.

Men: Do you prefer the company of an older woman?
If you don't connect with women of your own age then may be it's time you explored the hidden pleasures of an age gap relationship. Older women can bring an exciting new dimension to relationships. goCougar is the ideal place to explore new possibilites and discover what you really want from a relationship.

The Cougar revolution has created a whole new genre of relationships, which is best summed up by Courtney Cox's new sitcom Cougar Town:

Women: Why shouldn't you date younger men?
Welcome to goCougar.com - the premiere online community for mature women who prefer to date younger men. Feel comfortable with the possibility of starting an age-gap relationship in a community where people think just like you. May be you have experienced a lot in life already and now want a totally different type of relationship. Recapture some of your youth and try striking up a relationship, whether romantic or just friendship, with a younger man!

Leave behind the embarrassment and annoyance of "everything to everyone" dating sites. goCougar is a focused community that goes beyond dating. With blogs, chat, forums, instant messaging, and many other social networking features, goCougar seeks to evolve the concept of meeting people on-line.

Men: Do you prefer the company of an older woman?
If you don't connect with women of your own age then may be it's time you explored the hidden pleasures of an age gap relationship. Older women can bring an exciting new dimension to relationships. goCougar is the ideal place to explore new possibilites and discover what you really want from a relationship.

The Cougar revolution has created a whole new genre of relationships, which is best summed up by Courtney Cox's new sitcom Cougar Town:

Join goCougar for FREE!
It costs nothing to join the site and start interacting with like-minded individuals.


Older women seeking younger men
This is a new era where older women are seeking younger men. Dating younger men is something that older women are doing more and more. You need to look no further than Hollywood to see the trend moving towards May December relationships.

ALTERNATIVE: Age Gap Relationships (Older/Younger and Younger/Older Men & Women) @ AgelessDating.com

goCougar is dedicated to younger men who worship older women and have a sincere desire to get involved in this specific type of relationship. However, if you are an man searching for a younger woman (within legal age limits of course!) or a young woman looking for an older man (no legal limit applies) then please visit our sister site: www.AgelessDating.com

Whoever you are looking for, please be respectful in your dealings with other people and be sensitive to their feelings! We all want to find happiness afterall...