Abstract
In September 2022 the African News asked older British women to stop traveling to their country to pay Gambian men for sex and love. The dynamic of the older White woman paying the younger Black man for sex and romance is not isolated to Britain and The Gambia or to sociological events. The mediated trope of an older woman desiring and paying for a sexual and romantic situation is increasingly common. Included in this genre is not only a sense of loneliness tinged with regret but a determination to experience sexual fulfillment that is often conflated with romantic love. For these aging White women locating a space to find sexual pleasure necessitates a break from the everyday. For the men the stories are less clear. In some cases they struggle with poverty. In others they choose sex work for philosophical and even altruistic reasons. In all cases a troubling logic plays out related to race, gender, sexuality, and age. I examine several post-millennial media texts that feature the older White woman paying for connection with the younger Black man. In all, I seek to untangle the complicated gendered and raced logics at play in this genre that blends familiar elements of the romcom with those of the sex-tourist drama and the suspense thriller. Taken together, these mediated stories give rise to a series of gendered and raced investments around aging, desire, power, and what constitutes truth.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
Film, Representation, Sexuality, Sex Tourism, Colonialism
Digital Media
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