Still Got It

Desire doesn’t have an expiry date. How I learned to keep feeling sexy after 60.

- Gail Gallant

I FEAR I’M NOT QUITE the raven-haired “hottie” I once was. Oh, my hair is still raven coloured, sure, but now when I look in the mirror, I sometimes see the ghost of Alan Rickman looking back at me. Not from Truly, Madly, Deeply. From the Harry Potter films. He really rocked that aging-goth look. But, just like the late Alan Rickman, without my L’Oréal hair colour I’m a silver fox too, which is only natural, seeing as I’m north of 60. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel pretty hot sometimes.

Few of us talk about it openly, much less flaunt it, but sexual desire beyond the sixth decade is a fact of life. It’s in this spirit that prominent French psychologist and bestselling author Marie de Hennezel approached the topic of sex among seniors in her 2017 book A Frenchwoman’s Guide to Sex After Sixty. De Hennezel, now in her 70s, has written a dozen books on aging and been translated into 22 languages. She mostly writes about heavy subjects like spirituality and dying, so when she turns her attention to sexuality, she doesn’t take it lightly either.

There’s no age limit to enjoying love, she writes, because “the heart does not age,” and the same goes for lovemaking. She argues that if we adapt sexual activity and adjust our expectations to better suit our aging bodies, we can look forward to rewarding sex.