
“Miss Cougar Canada 2014” is a thing that exists, and I know that because I am on my way there. The event, which promises to crown this year’s hottest Canadian cougar, is to be held at a club called Crocodile Rock, and will include dancing, an 80s theme, and fun door prizes. I search for an 80s-inspired outfit and settled on a loud Floridian floral top with some Mom Jeans (get it) before getting revved up on some Real Housewives clips.
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On the Croc’s top-most patio, women and men of all ages mill about, drinking and smoking in the shadow of towering condos-in-progress. Somewhere on the roof is a girl named Sarah, and I know this because her friend is screaming her name over and over, sloppily carrying around shots destined for Sarah’s lips alone. Her friend is young and tacky, which is fine because we’re allowed to be tacky when we’re young. Her shout-y presence barely registers to the other patio-goers. The event has not technically started and will not for another few hours.As the bar starts to fill and a cover band sets up, the word cougar is repeated over and over. It feels like something more insidious than a double entendre, though less outwardly offensive than a slur. It is not intended this way by the creator of the event—a kind, smiling woman called “Jules Cougaress" who is fighting cancer—but it feels to me like it cannot be helped. The word is tainted. It has not been “reclaimed” the way the gay community has taken back “queer,” primarily because it has not been used overtly to put down or Other. And yet, that is precisely what it does. The Oxford English Dictionary is wrong to suggest a cougar is simply an older woman looking to have sex with a younger man. We all know the image conjured by the word: a cougar is tawdry and desperate, past her prime. She is too loud and her dress is too tight. She wants it too badly. She is the punchline, not the set up.
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