April 19, 2006
Jane Fonda's six years of celibacy
What a fascinating interview, for the student of women and travel sex, conducted by Larry King with Jane Fonda yesterday.
From the CNN transcript:
KING: Your sex life never need improving. Did you ever have low points in your sex life?FONDA: Yes. There's been a six-year drought.
KING: You have gone six years?
FONDA: I know you haven't. You know what Ted always said, if you don't use it, it grows over. Secondary virginity.
KING: Are you in a six-year period now?
FONDA: Um-hm.
KING: By your choice?
FONDA: Uh-huh.
KING: Why?
FONDA: I haven't met anybody I wanted to break the fast with.
KING: Really? You don't have that kind of need.
FONDA: I'm not talking about need. That's a whole other issue. There's other ways.
KING: We're getting really --
FONDA: Should we really get into it?
KING: But if you met Mr. Right --
FONDA: When you're 68 years old, the idea of getting in bed with a new man is scary. If I ever -- people say, you should remake "Barefoot in the Park," it would be called Barefoot in the Dark. I would be backing out of the bedroom in the dark.
I studied the issue of women and celibacy for my forthcoming book, 
Romance on the Road (pages 127-32).
Jane Fonda's six years of celibacy is not that atypical for older, unmarried women, according to surveys in the United States, France and Britain, which I describe in Romance on the Road. In the United States, 26 percent of women aged 45 to 54 report no sex in the previous year.
Some women Jane Fonda's age and older, unable to find Mr. Right at home, are showing up as sex tourists, especially in the Gambia, where the wedding registrar has turned away grandmothers attempting to marry teen boys, and Sri Lanka.
Though Fonda would appear to be a "voluntary" celibate, as she tells Larry King this is by her own choice, she is technically what is called an "involuntary" celibate, because she is more a victim of the man shortage, her advancing years and a lack of suitable partners than a woman making a religious pledge.
I will ask Dr. Denise Donnelly, one of my scholarly reviewers, if she has any observations on this interview.
Meanwhile, ladies, here we have a Hollywood star, still flawlessly groomed, a fitness guru and a woman with presumably plenty of money, who cannot find suitable dates despite -- or because of -- her attainments.
This is sad.
Fonda's is a cautionary tale on the difficulty of mating for even affluent and accomplished older Western women, especially those who fail to settle down with someone stable in their prime years. It's a slightly grimmer tale than that of even author Terry McMillan, who, for all her high-profile struggle with her Jamaican husband, Christopher Plummer , who turned out to be gay, at least had six years with the guy with some sort of physical activity, vs. none at all. (See the duo on Oprah here.)
It's also a sobering example of why British grandmothers fly to the Gambia for a last hurrah sexually.
Update: One noted scholar on the family e-mailed me to write, "I agree that it is sad. Maybe this is why married people consistently report more frequent and more satisfying sex than other groups!" My thoughts exactly -- this was the bombshell finding of Laumann and Michel's 1994 study, 
Sex in America.
Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a celebrity, if Fonda's is the price to pay.
Updates: I posted this item on the Baltimore Sun talk forums. Some interesting replies:
- "I'm sure she can find some men in Red China, North Korea, or some other commie country to help her."
- "What's wrong with her being free from a sexual relationship for this long period of time... after all, she's older... she's accepted Christ as her personal savior... and professes to be a Christian now... is that so bad?
"But as for it being sad... I think it is... I think it's sad that anyone her age is not in a healthy relationship with a partner... it's sad that someone her age has no companion to share her waning years with... life, especially at that age, is best not lived alone but shared with a loving companion... in her case, a husband... "
- "It may have been H. L. Mencken, after a nasty encounter with a paleofeminist, who quipped that men should go out and burn every bed in the world. Larry King should have responded to Jane there is no need to share everything."
- posted by jbelliveau at 12:24 PM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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