Burt Reynolds and the Shawshank Redemption
Reflections on menopause, mothers, and mortality.
I was nine the day I came face to face with a naked Burt Reynolds. I don’t remember what I was looking for, but I was being thorough because I closed my mom’s always-open closet door to look behind it. That’s where Burt was waiting. The poster tacked to the cobwebbed wall showed the erstwhile Bandit lying on his side, propped upon elbow. He lay on an animal pelt of unknown species with a strategic arm covering his genitalia but not his pubic hair, which was resplendent in its 1980s business.
His face was mischievous and mustachioed but friendly; he appeared to be having a great time. I immediately swung the door back in place to cover the image. Then paused. Then swung it again to have another look. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Over the next couple years, I would think of and physically visit this image regularly; it had more to do with knowing it was taboo—that I wasn’t supposed to see it—and less to do with the sexuality of it all, although that would register eventually.
I’ll turn 49 this coming year, and as my hormones perform gold-medal-worthy, Simone Biles-style floor routines in my loins—just as my child prepares to enter puberty, experiencing some pretty special hormonal gymnastics of his own—I find myself reflecting on my earliest exposures and understandings of my sexuality. Enter Burt and the veritable tunnel of sexual awakening that lay behind that poster.
Maybe the reflection comes from the way my sexuality is being seemingly taken away from me by age just as we’re in a bit of a new women’s revolution where we’re supposed to own it, or take it back, or be girl-bosses of it then tuck it into our purses next to our reading glasses and carry it around. Maybe it’s in how I’m starting to feel so invisible right when I finally feel so pretty and have so much to say.
Maybe it’s a faded memory of the version of my mother who hung that poster; I picture her tacking it up there half to admire and half as a joke because she thought most things were at least a little bit funny (and if you’ve seen the famous image, you know it has major cheek, so much pun intended) It’s almost unfathomable to me how very young she would have been then.
As I’m approaching the age my mother was when she died, it occurs to me that she had to keep her desires hidden, whether because of the societal expectations of that time or to minimize distractions while raising two little girls on her own.
Meanwhile my friends and I choose sexy reads for book club then discuss them over social media without shame. We talk about vibrators and how intimacy is changing for us. We’re candid with one another about our horniness, or lack of horniness, or fluctuation of horniness.
My mother had a single contraband naked man poster in the literal closet (plus one very questionable Tom Selleck coffee mug; don’t tell me she didn’t have a type), and my friends and I tag each other on Jason Momoa’s Instagram posts or casually say ‘horniness’ three times in one sentence. What a time to be alive.
People will tell you that your late forties are when you quit caring about what anyone thinks, when you embrace your body—even that substantially lower left breast,—remove the toxic people from your life, and let your freak flag fly; this is when things are supposed to get really good. For the most part, I agree, and I’m here for it, here for the revolution and for the free lube or whatever the savvy marketers are handing out to us modern peri-meno ladies as we exit our mammograms or local Tori Amos concert (the ‘menopause market’ is worth over $6B, according to The Guardian).
It’s a new kind of sexual revolution that has as much to do with actual sex as it does with understanding and owning the processes our bodies go through instead of just standing by while they happen to us.
There are online peri-menopause sex influencers now. There are seminars where women gather and bond and learn to embrace their clitorises (the entire organ, not just the tiny external part we learned about in health class). Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin made a very watchable show where they sell special vibrators for elderly women whose vulvas and vaginas are more delicate. I repeat, what a time to be alive.
I’m glad it’s so much more acceptable to experience our lives and bodies in the open now.
While I promise not to talk to grocery store cashiers and restaurant servers about my night sweats and grey hair, I do feel lucky to have a circle of close friends I can talk about anything with and a husband with enough feminist clout to truly listen. Hell, I’m even thankful for that one lady on Instagram who does all the sex dances and vibrator reviews with zero irony (you go, girl).
I guess I just wish that our moms had the same support network and, sure, that I had a mom to commiserate with now. The span of sexuality throughout a woman’s life used to be so shameful, and now it seems so… interesting. We’re like walking science experiments, but we actually get to try to hypothesize together over racy book club selections and the accompanying hilarious, sex-themed appetizers.
So, as I embark on this next adventure in my sexual being, I’d like to extend a thank you to the hirsute man who kicked it all off for me and the mom who taught me to be comfortable in my own desires, even when hers were so carefully hidden. Rest in peace, both of you.
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Great essay. Thank you, Cara. I've also found that having a strong support network is so important to get through this phase!