Price: $199.00
What do aging women want? A break from monogamy and domesticity? Casual young lovers of all genders? A hotel room of their own? Or something more significant? Indeed, recent literary fiction suggests that the answer lies in a combination of the above—and more.
This course introduces you to texts starring a variety of unruly female protagonists who are honouring their peri, post or presently menopause selves with swagger—at a time when their newly seemingly invisible bodies are sagging in surprising places. It asks: How do these works disrupt reductive and often cringey tropes featuring aging women as MILFS? How can we springboard off these texts to write our own no-longer-young bodies and desires back into the picture—with a difference?
Participants are invited to get experiential, fictional and playful as they respond to tailored prompts specifically designed to help them create a draft of their own. They are also invited to share their work, and they will receive feedback that will allow them to walk away with an enhanced ability to write insightfully about sex and the aging female body.
Throughout the course, the instructor will share highlights from the following works of literary fiction: Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man, Michelle Hart’s We Do What We Do in the Dark,Aysegül Savaś’ “Marseille,” Miranda July’s All Fours, Gu Byeong-Mo’s The Old Woman with the Knife, and Susan Minot’s Don’t Be a Stranger.
At times, the instructor will also draw on recent relevant pop culture, such as Babygirl and The White Lotus (Season 3), as well as popular novels that have been adapted for the screen like Terry McMillan’s How Stella got her Groove Back, and Tom Perrota’s Mrs. Fletcher.
When relevant, the instructor will make reference to crucial non-fiction texts linked to sex and the aging female body, including: Victoria Smiths Hags: The Demonization of Middle-Aged Women, Linda Hess’ Queer Aging in North American Fiction, and Carleen Brice’s anthology Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife.