After Michael Douglas' oral sex humblebrag, we mined the older set for their sexual know-how.
BY JOHANNAH KING-SLUTZKY
Between Michael Douglas's oral sex humblebrag, Grandmas watching celebrity sex tapes, the elderly explaining gay sex, and a cover story on Hollywood Reporter about "Revenge of the Over-40 Actress," it's clear the over 40 set know what's up (if you know what I mean). If you're tired of sex advice from clueless manic pixies and inexperienced ingenues, why not give these sultry salt-and-pepper stars a shot? Here are the top eight best pieces of sex advice from the experienced and the well aged. Age truly does come with wisdom.
8. Helen Mirren
Dame Helen Mirren, one of the most notoriously dignified and award-winningest actresses on this list, says we should resist being over-sexualized by men but reject Puritanical good girl acts, too.
"The Playboy Mansion, coke, and the rise of all that — Guccione and Hefner always pushed it as liberation, but it didn’t seem like that to me. That was women obeying the sexualized form created by men — though maybe we always do that, because we want to be attractive. But I was kind of a trailblazer because I demanded to do it my own way. I’d say, ‘I’m not having it put on me by someone else.’ I didn’t want to be the sort of puritanical good girl with a little white collar who says, ‘Don’t shag until you get married.’ "-Mirren
7. Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep on why women can do sex scenes at any age, height, or weight.
"Sex scenes, love scenes. Yes, at this age it's unusual for somebody to do a love scene, to be making love. Yeah, that is unusual. But that is just how benighted we are. Because, you know, we still are alive. It's you and I, baby. It's authentic….Everyone said, 'Isn't it remarkable that a tall overweight woman and a short bald man could be in love?' Well, yeah? You know what I mean? You're alive."-Streep
6. Diane Keaton
It might not be sex advice, exactly, but it was too good to pass up: here's tipsy Diane Keaton's thoughts on tantric sex. Don't know what that is? Don't worry, she'll explain it to you. Sometimes it's nice to remember that you don't have to be adventurous in bed if it's not your thing. Just go ahead and enjoy the kissing of the men (and their naked chests).
“Do you know what tantric sex is?…When you have tantric sex you go for a long time and you have that thing called the orgasm. For nine hours! That's ridiculous!…I enjoy the kissing of the men…So I kissed him. And I put my head on his chest. But his chest did not have clothes on.” -Keaton
5. Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty, whose "number" is famously asserted and contested to be around 13,000 — and that doesn't even include "quickies and drive bys" — tells us why promiscuity 'aint no thang.
"Women are like a jar of olives. You can eat one, close it up, or you can eat them all.”-Beatty
4. Mae West
Mae West is an old Hollywood sex icon, so it came as no surprise to her — age 50 at the time of the letter from which this is quoted — to find that members of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) were using her name in a dirty joke about lifesaver vests. If there's a lesson here, it's this: take pleasure in other people's pleasure.
"Dear Boys of the RAF:
I have just seen that RAF flyers have a life-saving jacket they call a "Mae West" because it bulges in all the "right places." Well, I consider it a swell honor to have such great guys wrapped up in me, know what I mean? Yeah, the jacket idea is all right and I can't imagine anything better than to bring you boys of the RAF soft and happy landings. But what I'd like to know about that life-saving jacket is — has it got shapely shoulders?
Sin-sationally,
Mae West"
3. Elizabeth Taylor
We all know the mythology of Liz Taylor. She played sex idol Cleopatra at age 31 and went on to marry her co-star Richard Burton (and six other comely dudes over the course of her 40 year career). Critics have described her sexuality as "pagan," "liquid," and "like gorging on chocolate sundaes." Plus she was born in Bushwick, home to all the NYC bitche$. Elizabeth is most famous for her weight fluctuations and her serial marriages. But after seven engagement rings what does she think of holy matrimony?
“When I have fallen in love it's always ended up being a marrying kind of love. That's just part of me, I suppose it's part of the way I was brought up. You have to sort of legalize everything. But I've changed, I've grown up. I'm not turning 65 for nothing" – Taylor
2. Woody Allen
I'm not sure how I feel about Woody Allen's marriage to his then-wife Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi. But my favorite neurotic director did have one sage piece of advice when it came to relationships: take advantage of accidents when they come. When Vanity Fair asked Allen about Mia finding naked pictures of Soon-Yi, he had this to say:
“I don’t know. But it was just one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life…If somebody told me when I was younger, ‘You’re going to wind up married to a girl 35 years younger than you and a Korean, not in show business, not having any real interest in show business,’ I would have said, ‘You’re completely crazy.’ I love to do things to make her happy. She loves to do things to make me happy. It just works out great. It was just completely fortuitous. One of the truly lucky things that happened to me in my life.” -Allen
1. Marlene Dietrich
This number one pick might be controversial, but hey, I'm a fan. From what her daughter tells us Marlene was of questionable kindness, but Marlene's self assurance in the bedroom was nearly unmatched. Dietrich is famous for her anachronistic cross-dressing (lady could rock a tux) and her affairs with men and women alike, including "La Vie En Rose" singer Edith Piaf, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Edward R. Murrow, JFK, and “the greatest starfucker of all time,” (seriously, look her up) Mercedes de Acosta. "She has sex but no positive gender," says critic Kenneth Tynan: "Her masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men." There are also some pretty killer stories about her unconventional trysts. One account claims "Dietrich made no secret of the fact that she preferred oral to penetrative sex. (One male lover, she joked to friends, had been so ignorant that he thought 'cunnilingus' was an Irish airline.) During Blonde Venus, she had Max Factor dust her wigs with gold dust, at sixty dollars an ounce, to give them greater shimmer. Tallulah Bankhead, working on an adjoining lot, displayed her pubic hair speckled with the same gold, and preeningly enquired, 'Guess where this came from?' What's Marlene's secret? It's all about confidence.
"It is a kind of knowing that you are all right in every way, mentally and physically and in appearance, and that, whatever the occasion or the situation, you are equal to it." -Dietrich
