If you’re old enough to remember Dustin Hoffman as the young man in 1967’s “The Graduate” being seduced by Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson, then you’re probably old enough now to be a cougar yourself. We’ve all heard about the female in our modern culture, quaintly referred to as a “Cougar.” The term is applied to a woman in the fall or winter of her life who prefers to date — and presumably have sex with — men in the spring of their lives. While the term cougar implies predatory behavior and some women have trouble with that prejorative, the trend has become so commonplace that it has spawned a TV series called “Cougar Town.”

Now researchers have focussed their lens on the phenomenon and unveiled some biological and social forces that make today’s “Mrs. Robinson” common place.

A recent study published in the Journal of Health Psychology, found that the old fashioned view of menopause as a time of waning sexual energy isn’t true for all women. And that far more influential on sexual behavior than hormonal changes are social and psychological factors. In other words, even if a woman’s sex-hormone levels decline with menopause, her sexual desire may not be affected if she feels youthful and fit and lives in a permissive environment with opportunities to meet younger (or older) men.

In fact, just before she hits full-on menopause, a woman’s sex drive may get a boost. In a paper published in Personality and Individual Differences by psychologists at the University of Texas, women age 27-45 have a heightened sex drive in response to their dwindling fertility. More and more women are waiting until their thirties and forties to bear children, and this study found that those women are more willing to engage in a variety of sexual activities to capitalize on their remaining childbearing years. Such “reproduction expediting” includes one-night stands and adventurous bedroom behavior, including seducing younger men.

But before you run off and sow your wild oats with a younger husband, heed this warning. Young husbands can shorten a woman’s life expectancy. The greater a wife’s age gap from her husband, the lower her life expectancy, according to a new study from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany. According to the study, the best choice for a woman is to marry a man of exactly the same age; an older husband shortens her life, and a younger one even more so. I’m sure this last study will be dismissed by Cougars everywhere. For, if you’re going to die young, there might be no better place than to go in the arms of a young man!

It all started with her making  her own sex tape in the vein of her role models, Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, (nice choice Montana) and then signing a professional contract to get it distributed and become a career pornographic actress. No sooner, did daddy shake his head than a posse of his fellow stars banded together in an attempt to purchase all copies of her first porn DVD release. They failed. And the news for Lawrence went from bad to worse.

The latest reports are that his little Miss was arrested last fall for prostitution charges and is now on probation. As if that wasn’t enough, E! Online reported this week that Montana Fishbourne was arrested again in February for a violent assault on her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. Then Montana got herself a Twitter account and further distanced herself from A – list Hollywood by attacking Jamie Foxx as being gay and also accused him of making a gay porn. She may face a slander and libel charge for that one.

All I can say is, “Daddy, do I have your attention yet?”

The truth is, no one but Montana knows what kind of father Lawrence Fishburne was. And sometimes problem children are immune to even the most mindful and loving parenting. But if family history is any indication, I’d bet my house that Montana is behaving like a toddler screaming for much needed attention.

Fishburne’s own parents divorced when he was a child and he moved with his mother from Georgia to New York City, where he was raised. Fishburne’s father saw him only about once a month. Montana is also a child of divorce. Fishburne spilt with Montana’s mother and left that family when she was around five-years-old. Then he went on to marry again and create another family. It is unclear how much visitation and attention Montana received from her father growing up, but if the stories of other celebrities’ children are any model, we can assume that when Montana visited Hollywood A-List Daddy’s world, it was a world of few boundaries and wacky wealth. Look no further than MacKenzie Phillips story. When she left her mother’s small apartment to visit her 70’s rock star father John Phillips and his celebrity friends in the big house, her confused tears were rocked away at late night adult parties by other rock stars. Not a world for a developing adolescent.

Clearly this troubled young woman has been over-sexualized — she says she’s dreamed of being a porn star since she was 16 — and has an anger an management problem. Her assault victim had significant injuries.

Reports are that Montana has not spoken to her father since her porn tape was released. She’s 19 now, legally not a child, but clearly emotionally one. My advice to Lawrence: Track down your daughter. Get in her face. And don’t leave her until you’ve given her all the attention she’s craving.

So to wake up this morning and see her as the top hit on CNN.com and on the second link of the New York Times in my Blackberry, is surreal. Reading the nasty comments of trolls and bloggers sent a chill down my spine. Our culture sure loves to blame women when men screw up.

For those who need the crib sheet for the background story, Jodie was hired by Hewlett-Packard to do what she does best. Be the social intelligence for world-weary CEO, Mark Hurd. As a marketing specialist, she acted as a hostess of sorts, introducing him at parties designed to woo high level clients.

There could be no better match that Jodie and this gig. Her social skills are so obvious, I used her as an example of “welcoming energy” in my 2003 book, THE GIRLFRIEND TEST: “Jodie is a shining example of welcoming energy. I can’t go anywhere with that girl without being crowded by men (and women for that matter.) In fact, she’s such a reliable people magnet that one year I took her to my company Christmas Party with 3000 employees and their spouses, and met more people that evening than in the entire two years I had worked there — because Jodie introduced me to them.”

But it appears that HP’s Mark Hurd wanted more than Jodie’s smile. She eventually sued HP for sexual harassment. The company says they found no evidence of this but Mark Hurd was later given the boot due to falsifying expense reports concerning his extracurricular time spent with Jodie. And before his exit, Mark gave Jodie (what I hope is) a big fat check. Men generally don’t do that when they’ve done nothing wrong.

Now the world is speculating about whether this married man ever had sex with this single woman, but the question is moot. That part isn’t illegal.

Sexual harassment laws are quite clear. There are two types:

Quid Pro Quo Harassment – An employee is required to tolerate sexual harassment in order to obtain or keep a job, job benefit, raise, or promotion.

Hostile Work Environment Harassment – Harassment at work unreasonably interferes with or alters the employee’s work performance, or creates a hostile, abusive or offensive work environment. In determining if a workplace environment is “hostile.”

Both of those scenarios could have happened to Ms. Fisher. Apparently the CEO liked to “wind down” with a late night dinner with his marketing consultant and there may have been an implied or overt pressure for sex in exchange for future work. Or, he could have just been chasing her skirt at every event and created a hostile environment. Whether she crumbled under the pressure has nothing to do with the law. I’ll remind you, she is single. He is a married boss with power over her livelihood.

What irks me the most about this story is that Mark Hurd’s past is not being examined by the media. I noticed that one former HP employee posted a comment online that his firing is long overdue. But mostly Jodie is being called everything from a B-Player actress to a reality show star, both titles she wears with pride. Single mothers are very creative when it comes to to earning a living. And being a mother is Jodie’s primary career, let me assure you of that. She nursed her son for 18 months, survived a dangerous miscarriage, went through a painful divorce, and then picked herself up, dusted herself off, and got a kick ass job at Hewlett Packard.

Is the double standard really that entrenched that we slay the female victim and forgive men who abuse their power?

I texted Jodie this morning and we exchanged loving words for our kids. She and her twelve-year-old are from hiding from the media storm, obviously under a gag order. Men also like to stymie a woman’s voice when they part with their guilt money. When is life going to cut a single mother a break?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here are the facts that have me ranting over my morning coffee today.

Recently Kathryn Blundell, the editor of a leading British parenting magazine, Mother and Baby, wrote an editorial entitled  I formula-fed. SO WHAT? . In it, she said breastfeeding is creepy and called breasts “fun bags” and continued with “seeing your teeny, tiny, innocent baby latching on where only a lover has been before feels, well, a little creepy.”

And, on this side of the pond, that wise, sage Kim Kardashian — whose own boobs are limited to working the night shift –  tweeted this to her fans: “ew, some woman has her boobies out, she should cover up, yuck, blech, ugh”

I understand that eyebrows get raised by this public display of this natural beauty, for I once staged a research study for my psychology dissertation on breastfeeding and romantic attachment. While interviewing nursing mothers I learned that one of the most common reasons that women quit breastfeeding is embarrassment about nursing in public. All over Europe, paintings and statues of the Madonna (the real one, not the one who Vogues) depict her nursing, yet our American culture still can’t get past the idea that breasts are more than sexual objects.

The sexualization of the breast had very early beginnings. Back in our evolutionary past, when humans got up off all fours and became bipedal, women evolved to grow larger breasts for sexual attraction. Now that we were upright, our lovely derrieres couldn’t be seen from our front side, so breasts got bigger as a kind of, ahem, yes, frontal tushy. Men liked the view on both sides now, and all our lovely orbs signaled our fitness to reproduce.

But for hundreds of thousands of years, breasts still had a day job, and the sight of a nursing woman was commonplace in all cultures around the world. For millions of years, up until 1932, every human being was breastfed by their mother, auntie, or wet nurse. It was how humans survived before infant formula. During World War II, when women were needed in factories to build weapons, mostly male pediatricians convinced women that this new product made from whey (a cheese by-product) was better than human milk. It also allowed women to leave their babies for longer periods. Anyone who has nursed a newborn knows that feeding schedules are based on a child’s needs, not a clock. And, sometimes their need is to just suckle and be comforted, so working full-time is possible, though tough.

Even though breastfeeding is on the rise today, it is in an uncomfortable race with racy messages. Sexy women are hot. MILF’s are hot. Women who nurse are creepy. Fortunately, our increasingly sexual media is co-mingled with a powerful chant of a growing body of women who still think like women. Women who know that breastfeeding contributes to healthy attachments and good health all around. Women like, Bettina Forbes, who co-founded “Best for Babes” a group that normalizes breastfeeding and shows that nursing moms can be powerful, sexy, glamorous, and nurturing all at the same time. Thousands of women follow her on facebook and are the what I like to call, the real feminists.

When women hate the natural function of own bodies, they need to stop and think. Whose sentiments are being recycled? I’ll tell you who. Those of a dying, patriarchal culture whose boys club would prefer that you enslave the boobs to them.

And here’s some news to throw back in the face of anyone who thinks that breasts are only “fun bags.” According to one of my all-time favorite studies, guess which kind of woman is most likely to choose to breastfeed? The woman who is most comfortable with sex, erotica, and her body. Prudes don’t breastfeed. Hear that Kathryn and Kim? Sexy women can feed their babies.

The only recent update is that authorities have dismissed her claim of “unwanted sexual contact” and her attorney said the case would be handled “civilly.” Read: For money not jail time. The sources are mostly tabloid. The National Enquirer broke the story four years ago and this week the New York Daily News tells it this way: In 2006, while staying at an upscale hotel on Portland, Oregon, Mr. Gore scheduled a massage under the name “Mr. Stone.” Then while the massage therapist was doing the abdominal portion of the massage, he made some moaning sounds and asked her to go lower, even attempting to guide her hand down below.

There are few things to consider when thinking about this story. Included in my thought process are this: the physiological possibilities of a man in deep relaxation, the wide-range of services and specialties available in the massage industry, and the biggest issue of all, personal boundaries verses perception of personal injury. So, for the purposes of this hypothetical examination, let’s assume this woman’s allegations are true. We don’t even know it that is so. And, let’s start with what happens to a man in deep relaxation. Anyone with a husband knows that spontaneous erections happen all the time during sleep. Hard-ons happen. Especially during a massage. Which is one of the reasons that female massage therapists dominate the industry. Heterosexual male clients feel too uncomfortable having a spontaneous erection at the hands of a man. So, let’s assume a hard-on happened during the massage. And any woman with a boyfriend knows that when some men get a hard-on, it appears that all the blood from their brain drains out to puff up their appendage. Thus many men have the capacity to make poor decisions when they are aroused. Now, let’s assume, solely for the purposes of scientific examination, that this was in fact the inconvenient truth for our dear former VP.

But besides biology, let’s place a little blame on the massage industry. In America, the quality and nature of massage services can run the gamut from licensed physical therapists who work with doctors, spa therapists who focus on sports massage and relaxation, to massage studios that offer a “full body release” (yes, that’s code for a complimentary hand-job,) to illegal massage parlors that offer sex for sale. Who knows which kinds of massage services big Al has had in the past. Might he mistakenly assumed that he was getting a full body service in Portland? Opps. Wrong kind of massage therapist, Mr. Gore.

Finally, there is the issue of boundaries. Everyone has a comfort level with levels of sexuality, both in what acts they can tolerate and how comfortable they are in making sexual requests. Maybe Al Gore, if the story is even true, has a good ability to communicate his sexual needs. Kudos to Al. On the flip side, maybe the massage therapist is particularly sensitive to sexual injury. One massage therapist might have brushed off his advance with a tsk! tsk! and a little admonishing to the cheeky boy while another might perceive the same interchange as a sexual assault. Injury is in the eye of the recipient. Let’s hope the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. Miss Prissy massage therapist can hopefully get some cash to mend her wound and Big Al can learn to stay awake during a massage. Boys will be boys.

P.S. Only because blog readers will claim that I forgot to mention this. Al Gore was married at the time. Is it okay for a married man to have a sterile, hand job in a professional setting? That’s fodder for another blog.

Historically the medical community has loved to medicate womanhood. Depending on which study you read, one in six American women are currently on an SSRI (anti-depressant.) I guess that’s an advancement from traumatic surgical hysterectomies that women were once forced to endure to cure “hysteria.” And how about postpartum depression? It’s the darling diagnosis of our generation. Funny, affluent women with less pressure to work and mothers with extensive family support have lower rates of PPD. Now the drug companies are telling mothers, us exhausted caregivers/providers, that we have a sexual dysfunction???

According to the New York Times, there are questions about how pervasive low-sex-drive is in women. It is a bonafied diagnosis in the DSM-IV called hypoactive sexual desire disorder. And many of the studies mentioned in medical literature suggest that one in ten women suffer from the disorder. But the problem is this: Those studies have been financed by drug companies.

While the FDA weighs in, the German company is going ahead with a marketing campaign that includes a web site, a Twitter feed, a Discovery Channel documentary, and a publicity tour with Actress Lisa Rinna, a former Playboy model.

Here’s my two cents. To anyone who’s listening at the FDA or at home: We mothers do not need a pill to have a more active libido. Fly us to a resort. Give us room service. And stand back boys. Watch how fast our libidos come back!!!

I have seen Joran van der Sloot the suspect in the Natalee Holloway murder tell three separate stories about what happened in Aruba five years ago. In my opinion the only word of sordid truth he ever uttered was in Dutch when he referred to sweet Natalee as a “bitch.” The truth is that this young man has extreme anger toward women.

Lying to authorities to save your hide is one kind of deceit but what about the average person who lies to their closest intimates? Just last night, while sipping at a neighborhood wine bar, I heard three stories about men who lie to obtain sex, ego stroking, or even a woman’s trust. And as a woman (not a doctor, now) I have to say, what’s up with that?

In one story, my best friend’s longtime, on-again-off-again boyfriend was found to have fathered three children during the same years they whispered secrets between the sheets. Except he forgot to tell her that one secret — that his sperm, his time and his resources were going another direction.

In another story, a neighbor of mine was reeling from heartbreak after a broken engagement to an NFL football player (Read: He can afford bobbles.) In her loss and misery she thought she might console herself with a little recession era recycling so she marched her three carrot diamond ring to a jeweler, only to discover that a man she had once deeply trusted had given her a three carrot cubic zirconia.

While we continued to muse in disgust about how some men can feign intimacy and trustworthiness so well, the name of one of my old paramours came up. He’s been used as an example of a bad-boy in both my books (The Boyfriend Test and The Girlfriend Test) because this guy is the ultimate player. Over the course of our seventeen year “friendship” he has uttered the “L” word to me but he has also used my heart, my body and my money for his personal gain. He’s good, trust me. I have been out of his mesmerizing clutches for a few years now. Whew! But just a few weeks back I say him hiking with yet another beauty and shook my head to see that he’s still lying and juggling even at the age of, my God, could he be 53 by now? Anyway, my wine partners informed me that he had recently married his assistant. I laughed out loud, saying there is no way his marriage would have slowed down his appetite for frequent new sexual conquests. They assured me he is behaving as a loyal married man.

So I texted him a little “hello.”

And he quickly texted back. What he wrote were words that no married man should ever write to an old flame. My heart broke for his wife.

In the book, “101 Lies Men Tell Women, and Why Women Believe Them,” Dr. Dory Hollander claims that the root of all romantic lying is that women seek emotional connection and men mostly seek sex. The number one lie she sites? “I Love You.”

The saddest thing about my three stories of betrayal and the hundreds of stories in Dr. Hollander’s books is that so often we blame women for believing the lies. I was shocked to see the firestorm of criticism of Rielle Hunter, the mother of former presidential candidate John Edwards‘ fifth child. Somehow the media saw fit to place the bulk of the blame on her as a home wrecker. As the target of many, many lies issued from a male mouth, I can promise you that Mr. Edwards lied through his teeth to poor Miss. Hunter. First of all this slick rick wasn’t even playing in his own intellectual sandbox so getting her to believe his fabrications was probably a cake walk. I can just imagine his best promise to her, “Honey, you’re the one I love. My marriage is a sham to get me through this presidential campaign. Once I am president we can raise our baby in the White House.”  Trust me. His story ran along those lines.

The blame should never be on the recipient of a lie. Gullible people are innocent. Yes, I’ve removed the gender now, because some women lie as well as most men. But the culprit is the liar and his/her the lack of moral reasoning and inability to have compassion for others. The blame lies only with the deceitful person, not the one who trusted. What do you think?

Yep. Another cheating politician. And this time, one who campaigns for sexual restraint. Why can’t some politicians keep in their pants? And what does it say about us as a country when so many of our leaders are LYING CHEATERS?

The answers are simple. We have become a country that has undergone a no-rules relationship revolution in our media. Granted, marriage vows still have deep meaning for some and when the going gets rough (read: sexually boring) many married couples remember their intellectual commitments. Long after the sexual hormones have done their work of creating a bond and a nuclear family, many smart folks simply choose to focus sexual energy on the task at hand, that is, raising healthy children in a crazy world. One recent article in Psychology Today said that 80% of married couples are happy with their sex lives but they are probably happy with less. And that’s normal.

So, what about the other 20%? Have they bought the media falsehoods that sex is free from consequences and that more sex means more happiness? By the way, I’ve never seen any study that connects promiscuity with general feelings of happiness. And they also seem to have no guilt when it comes to lying. The only defense I can make for those who sexually betray their partner is that they fell victim to a tried-and-true rule of sexual behavior — sex with an obstacle is always more exciting than completely safe and permissive sex. The more risk, the more arousal.

One other nifty thing about the huge explosion of sexual content in the media (this blog included) is that it is really difficult for married celebrities or public servants to keep their affairs under wraps, because sexy stories bring eyeballs to news programs. So, on one hand, the media glorifies sex without boundaries and on the other hand it acts as a watch dog.

Sorry, Representative Souder. Your video came back to bite you. In a news conference in Fort Wayne, the beleaguered rep said, “I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love. I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me.” His resignation is effective Friday.

But there is one thing that works most of the time. I attest that the world’s most powerful aphrodisiac is one simple word. It is the word “No.” Spoken loudly or quietly, spoken in behavior or lack of behavior, the word “no” makes a sexual suitor sit up and take notice. The principal behind such wisdom is this. A psychologist’s mathematical formula for great sex is simply

Arousal + Obstacle = Erotic Sex

Some historians believe that the Catholic Church populated the planet with that equasion. The Church told people to say NO to sex for pleasure purposes and then out-lawed birth control. The result: Catholics in every corner of the globe.

Now think back to your most exciting sexual encounter. Was it intergenerational? Interracial? Was one person unavailable in some way? Nothing like an obstacle, be it a cultural or personal taboo, to get our juices flowing. Or, was it someone of a higher social status who was unattaianable in some way?

My advice: If you want to have wonderful sex, say NO to easily attainable sex.

A recent study published by the America Academy of Pediatrics, suggests that displays of sexual references on teens’ Facebook profiles is associated with their intention to initiate intercourse. The study followed 85 college freshmen with public Facebook pages and found a strong association between sexual references on Facebook and real-world intentions to initiate sexual intercourse. Although the study looked at college freshmen, a separate 2007 study conducted by the Center for Disease Control showed that by ninth grade, 33% of adolescent had sexual intercourse, so it’s not far fetched to assume that sexual material posted by younger teens could also reflect real-world intentions.

Prior to this Facebook study, the same researchers, Dr. Megan Moreno of from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, found that 54 percent of MySpace profiles contained high-risk behavior information, with 24 percent referencing sexual behavior. Of course, these on-line postings might indicate real-world risky behaviors or simply adolescent grandstanding, but what parent wants to wait to find out?

By tenth grade, the percentage of sexually active teens is just shy of 50% and this number does not include middle schoolers who engage in oral sex, which apparently is not considered sex despite the fact that one can acquire a sexually transmitted disease from it. Oi! And, parents, if you haven’t caught your breath yet, here’s a sobering statistic from the Center for Disease Control: One-third of American teenaged girls get pregnant before the age of twenty. That’s one in three, ladies and gentlemen.

So when is the right time to talk to kids about sex? That answer is simple: As soon as they start asking. When I was pregnant with my second daughter, my four-year-old asked me how the baby got in my tummy. I briefly flirted with the idea of giving her the pat answer my mother had provided me as a child, that “God put the baby there,” and then decided to tell her the truth. The director of our preschool gave me a delightful children’s book that helped me tell the whole story — yes with artistic sketches that showed “the act.” From that point forward I became the source of sexual information for my kid. Now that she’s in the complicated world of middle school, I am thrilled that she keeps asking and I get to provide biological information laced with my own moral teaching.

So, is it ever too late to start taking about sex with your child? NEVER. Teens may roll their eyes or plug into their iPod but, trust me, they listen to any source of sexual information, even when it comes from a parent.

Social networking sites can be a helpful way to be a virtual parent. Make a family rule that parents must be “friended” on kids pages. Before you know it, you will become lost in your child’s sea of online friends and sooner or later they’ll forget that you are reading their wall. Take postings seriously and use them not as an opportunity to admonish but as an chance to educate.

Bottom line: Know your own sexual morals and messages and find a way to guide your children before our highly sexualized media does it for you.