The New York Times Magazine cover story focuses on the intimate experiences of older adults.
By Kate Dwyer
Hands. Neck. Armpits. These are the places where skin reveals its age. And this week’s New York Times Magazine shows a lot of skin. The magazine’s cover story by Maggie Jones, “The Joys (and Challenges) of Sex After 70,” focuses on seniors with fulfilling sex lives. But finding older adults willing to bare it all — figuratively and literally — proved challenging for both Ms. Jones, a contributing writer to the magazine, and the visual artist Marilyn Minter, 73, who photographed the project.
“Lots of people were not interested,” Ms. Jones said. For older people, many of whom still view frank discussion of intimacy as taboo, “it was too risky to talk about their sex lives,” even when Ms. Jones agreed to use their first names or middle names to protect their privacy. However, “the ones who were game were incredibly game.”
Over the course of three years, Ms. Jones and Ilena Silverman, a deputy editor at the magazine, discussed doing a story on the sex lives of seniors. During that time, Ms. Jones interviewed nearly 50 people over age 70 about marriage, dating and hooking up, and discovered that not only were octogenarians having sex, but some were having the best, most meaningful sex of their lives. The feature tells the story of a diverse generation — married, single, straight and queer people of different races — who are finally investing in their pleasure. “They may be in therapy or trying to have better sex, but everybody I was talking to was invested in and working on their sex lives,” Ms. Jones said.
Many had spent decades believing they would never have satisfying sex, and concluded they didn’t like sex altogether. Ms. Jones recounted something that the sex researcher Peggy Kleinplatz told her that didn’t make it into the story: “Low desire is often good judgment, because the sex isn’t worth it.”
When it was time for Kathy Ryan, the magazine’s director of photography, to approach a photographer to shoot the images, Ms. Minter’s unabashed, candy-colored depictions of female sexuality came to mind immediately. “Her nudes are glamorously provocative and refreshing in their candor. This seemed like just the right sensibility to bring to this assignment,” Ms. Ryan said.
Before Ms. Minter read the “revelatory” story, she said, she didn’t have a clue people were having great sex into their 90s. “I thought, ‘Wow, we really have an opportunity here to give elders permission to investigate everything,’” she said. “The article is saying, ‘Yeah, go for it, boys and girls!’” She believed she had one job: to make her subjects look “elegant, sexy and old.”
But first, Ms. Ryan and the photo editor David Carthas faced a challenge similar to Ms. Jones’s: They had to find older adults who were willing to work with them, ones “comfortable in their bodies and uninhibited” about being photographed in lingerie.
“I asked everybody I knew and they all turned me down — nobody would do it!” Ms. Minter said. “I got my husband to pose a little, but we could barely see him.” After some cajoling, two real couples signed on. The team also hired models and actors.
During the shoot, to ease anxiety, Ms. Minter reminded her subjects how rare it is to see sex among seniors depicted on film in an elevated way. “I told them, ‘You’re the role models here, you’re going to be the power of example for the rest of the population.’” To reflect that, the team cast models of different shapes and sizes. “I wanted that. I was trying to make this shoot look like real people,” Ms. Minter said.
Ms. Minter believes a project like this is long overdue. Several years ago, she painted a series of “beautiful people with wrinkles,” which did not sell. “I still have those paintings. Nobody wanted them,” she said. “There’s such a contempt in the culture for elders having sex. Elder sexuality is treated as a joke. It’s a New Yorker cartoon.”
Her photographs — and Ms. Jones’s story — work to dismantle the taboo around sexuality in later life and capture a confidence that comes only with age.
Because the team decided not to show the subjects’ faces, Ms. Minter faced a challenge on set. Although nearly all of the subjects were in their 70s and 80s, it was tough to capture their ages — most bodies look younger than people assume. “Lingerie is very forgiving,” she said.
When selecting the final photographs for the magazine, Ms. Ryan and Mr. Carthas had to edit out many images, Ms. Minter said. “They kept saying, ‘Too young! Too young! Too young!’”
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