The Booming Sexties: Silver-Haired Sexting

Leanne Delap | July 11th, 2014

To be human is to talk about sex. As surely as primitive man drew outsized penises on his cave wall, the urge to communicate about copulation is hard-wired in us. Add instant electronic gratification and voila, you have the Sexties: our current era, where the ping of an incoming naughty message counts as foreplay.

Sexting is not just for kids and congressmen anymore. The lure of oversharing is spreading fast among boomers. McAfee, the American online security giant, did a study last fall called 50 Plus Booms Online. The take-away was the news that one in four adults aged 50 to 75 had sent some sort of intimate message online, ranging from suggestive texts to graphic photos of body parts. Compare this to a Harris Interactive survey of just one year before that found only one in 10 seniors were actively sexting.

Celebrities lead the way: the famous who wish they had been more careful with their phones include Scarlett Johansson (whose naked pics to her hubby were hacked and leaked to the press), Chris Brown (recipients of his manhood portraits sold their trophies to the tabloids) and Tiger Woods, whose multiple careless sext acts cost him his marriage and millions of dollars in endorsements. Representing the boomer contingent in this shame game is Hulk Hogan, who in 2012 had a film of him cavorting with his best friend’s wife go viral.

The New York Times has called sexting the modern equivalent of lipstick on the collar. But if it is so risky, what makes it so compelling? For one thing, it is a trusty way to turn a quiet evening at home into a lightning round of virtual seduction. With lovers and strangers alike, sexting is a diversion, an entertainment. It can be a useful tool to keep intimacy on the table in a long-term relationship when the physical side has flagged. And the relative safety of the forum can make it a place to introduce as-yet-unbroached fantasies, like spanking, say, or role playing.

Wired magazine writer Ogi Ogas says the secret to sexting success lies in complementary gender differences.

“The desire to be desired drives young women’s willingness to flash what their mama gave them. Whereas male exhibitionism is considered a psychiatric disorder and sometimes a crime, female exhibitionism is rarely considered a social problem. Just the opposite: it’s exploited commercially. Multi-millionaire Joe Francis built his Girls Gone Wild empire by taping college girls stripping down for his no-budget camera crew. How does he persuade young women to disrobe? He offers them a T-shirt and a chance to be ogled by millions of men.”

Men, meanwhile, flash their gear in a primal jungle ritual. “Men who flash their organ to strangers rarely seek contact afterward, instead describing a powerful sense of relief from the
display alone.” Peacocking, as it were.

How many servers are out there full of intimate selfies, a massive alphabet soup of dirty texts? And those storage facilities are not very secure. AARP issued a warning to its members on how to protect themselves online. Because as bad as it would be for a partner to find cheating sexts, imagine how it would warp one’s grandchildren to accidentally see Grandpa’s fantasies spelled out?

RELATED: ReBoot Your Sex Life!

How to avoid becoming the next Weiner? Don’t rush the send button: it is easy to misdirect the contact. If you are photo sexting, edit identifying features for plausible deniability. Turn off your browsing and chatting history on all devices. Get a vault app for your phone or use Dropbox on your laptop, as those employ encryption. Never use your work address. And ask your sext partner to secure their end of the electronic trail.

But the most important advice is stylistic. Make your recipient fill in some blanks in their mind. Don’t go overboard: less is more, and tease is king. Suggest places and positions rather than describing the more mechanical parts of the sex act. Flirting is an art. Craft your correspondence like an old-fashioned love letter, in proper English without emoticons or abbreviations. This is where being a real age has its benefits: elevate the conversation above crotch shots; it will get his or her attention every time. And hold it.

Leanne Delap is a freelance journalist who writes about fashion and lifestyle.

Zoomer magazine, June 2014