Debra Pickett

New age for sex

Age 60, Sheehy says, "is an extraordinary new jumping-off place," especially for women who, having finished with the business of child rearing and all the related work/life balancing issues, can rediscover themselves in all kinds of new ways. Especially sexually.

Some of the stories in the book can't be fully reprinted in a family newspaper, but the essence of them is that being a "seasoned woman" (sounds a lot better than "old," doesn't it?) is a seriously rocking good time. If you happen to read the book while you're still in the throes of your hectic and stressful 30s or 40s, it might very well make you wish for your 60s to hurry up and arrive.

It's for that reason, Sheehy says, that she doesn't much like hearing the whole "60 is the new 40" tag line.

"Nobody wants to go back to 40," she says, with the authority of someone who has actually taken a survey.

Sheehy started off her research for this book by posting a 13-item questionnaire on her Web site. With questions like, "Are you tempted to have a love affair with a younger man?" the survey tips its hand just a little bit, but Sheehy says she was surprised by the many passion-filled responses she received, particularly from divorced women and widows.

And now that she has written the book, she says, "Everywhere I go, some 82-year-old woman will pop up and share the passionate affair she had with a man in the mountains after her husband died."

Sheehy, who is married, stresses that "you don't have to be divorced to evolve, although women who have been divorced have a great opportunity to re-dream. For the women who are married, that same evolution requires a kind of break ... it's very often sending the last child off to college and contemplating the empty nest. Or, sometimes, it's the mid-life crisis of a husband."

The main thing is, she says, "you do have to learn to be alone with yourself. Becoming a seasoned woman is about reaching the point in your life at which you're no longer defined by all the pleasing roles."

Says it's mainstream America

Following up her survey with a series of group interviews -- they were kind of like consciousness-raising groups, she says -- Sheehy traveled the country for about six weeks, talking to "seasoned women" about their intimate lives.

"The movies have told us that it's either 'First Wives Club' or 'Desperate Housewives,'" she says, "but that's definitely not the reality."

Many of the women she talked to were involved in Internet dating and swapping stories and advice with their adult daughters because, Sheehy says, "the younger adult women were likely to tell them, 'Yes, of course, go to Thailand with him.'"

And while the women she surveyed were obviously generally pretty well off financially -- poor women get so few offers to be whisked off to Thailand -- Sheehy says her subjects do represent mainstream America. There are no celebrities, only one New Yorker (a neighbor of Sheehy's) and no one from Los Angeles.

Meeting so many real women who were having the time of their lives was a great experience, she says, adding that "I have no fear now about aging. I know now I'll be a granny babe in my 80s."

Strangely enough, the babe issue is, to my mind, the one really troubling aspect of the whole seasoned woman thing. Because none of these seasoned women seem to, um, actually look seasoned.

"Practically every woman I talked to does something to [color] her hair," she says, matter-of-factly. "And between Pilates and spas, they really look fantastic."

Two spoonfuls of yogurt

Sheehy, who has surveyed the restaurant's entire all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet and selected two spoonfuls of yogurt, a few fresh raspberries and pineapple chunks and a cup of decaf coffee, looks like she's pretty familiar with a Pilates routine or two herself.

"What would you say to those who were looking forward to their 60s as a time when they could finally stop fighting those damn 20 pounds and holding in their stomachs?" I ask. "Is that just not done anymore?"

She looks slightly aghast.

"You can do that," she says slightly warily, "but if you want to remain attractive in the world -- and to men -- it is work. You have to go to the gym; 75 percent of life is maintenance. Maybe now it's 85 percent."

And then she adds, a little ominously, "if you think you're done fighting those 20 pounds, you have to ask yourself how long you want to live."

She does not finish her yogurt.