We were talking last night about the celebration of “daddyness”—about how aging men are considered sexy, in general, in society.

That often terms used to describe someone who is powerfully sexy are traditionally masculine terms—even women are spoken of as having “big dick energy” if they have a certain sexiness to them, even “daddy” is used for powerfully sexy women.

There is a definite stigma against being a mom and owning your sexuality, about being a woman who is aging and powerful in who she is, unabashedly desires sex, and is comfortable with an evolving body without an obsession to look younger. Sure, we can find exceptions—sexy older women in the media—but these are exceptions, not the rule.

To me, it goes back to the patriarchal dichotomy of the Madonna and the whore. Women can be Virgin Mary-esque, being a nurturing, caring mother who seemingly acquired these children through divine intervention, someone who puts up with her husband’s sex drive but would never have one of her own. Or they can be the archetypical “whore”—someone who would never be fit to mother a child, but is given permission to own her sexuality. These are our two roles as women, and they cannot coexist in the same person.

F*ck that.

I am the Madonna. I am the whore.

I am a mom, and that nurturing love I know how to provide makes me more sexy, not less. With each year, I settle more into my own skin, more into who I am, more into acknowledging my desires, sexual and otherwise, and I don’t need to conform to any molds society is trying to fit me into. More into the knowledge that sexy doesn’t mean a particular size, or shape, or gender, or role in life.

Yeah, we use “MILF,” but it has more of a pejorative undertone than using “daddy” as sexy. There is a sense of desperation, of a woman trying to reclaim the lost sexiness of youth in the terms “cougar” and “MILF.”

There is nothing lost.

The sexiness of youth is fun and wild and fumbling and exciting. But the sexiness of middle age and beyond? The sexiness of wisdom, of knowing your body, of owning your desires, of being comfortable in your imperfectness?

Nothing compares to that.

I feel #MommyAF.

~

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