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Marilyn Minter’s ‘Elder Sex’ depicts radical images of intimacy
CNN
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What does intimacy look like for seniors? There’s no end to sex scenes and other steamy content featuring the young and unwrinkled, but past a certain age, popular culture largely draws a blank — or treats sex as a punchline.
Last year, the artist Marilyn Minter set out to change that, gathering a group of men and women aged 70 and older in her New York studio to showcase a lesser-seen side of sex and relationships. In erotic and colorful images, the seniors are stripped down to lingerie or briefs; they hug, kiss and caress each other in the heat of the moment. The photographs beckon our attention to challenge something still seen as taboo, showing playful, loving moments of pleasure.
“There’s so much contempt for elder sex. Even one of the models that I worked with said, ‘Who wants to see all these?’” Minter recalled in a video call with CNN.
“My whole thought process going into it was that we’re pioneers,” she continued of the unabashedly sexualized context. “Nobody’s ever shot elder people affectionately, and with any kind of elegance. And that was my goal — to make to make them look very desirable.”
A handful of the ensuing images were originally published in the New York Times Magazine, accompanying a candid editorial feature about seniors’ sex lives. Minter is now publishing the series in full in the forthcoming book “Elder Sex,” and exhibiting them at New York gallery LGDR. The exhibition, which opened in April, is her first solo show in the city since the Brooklyn Museum mounted her retrospective “Pretty/Dirty” in 2016, and features highlights from her five-decade-long career, as well as other new bodies of work.
In “Elder Sex,” Minter utilized one of her signature aesthetics, which she has explored in both hyperrealistic paintings and photographs: jewel-toned, close-cropped compositions of glistening bodies, seemingly shown through the glass of a steamed-up mirror or window. But despite her credentials as one of the most important and boundary-breaking artists today — and despite stars such as Lady Gaga and Lizzo posing for her — Minter couldn’t find enough real couples willing to participate.
“We wanted to (include) all races, all types of sex,” Minter explained. “We had a lot of trouble getting models. I’m 74. I asked all my friends — in mixed-race relationships, in lesbian relationships — and none of them would do it.”
In the end, Minter cast actors along with the few people who had agreed. She paired them together in her studio, photographing them behind a panel of frozen glass — a trick to achieve the steamy, wet look without battling the ephemerality of water vapor. During their shoots, Minter said all her models, who were as old as 89 years old, told her they still had regular, enjoyable sex lives. Their sentiments matched the people interviewed for the New York Times Magazine article, who described deepening intimacy with their partners later in life, as well as learning to navigate and appreciate their needs as their bodies aged.
Minter believes there’s a sense of freedom in sex later in life that, for many people, can take time to reach.
“When you’re young and having sex, it’s a little more performative than it is when you’re 80,” she said. As an older person, “You’re thinking, ‘This is me. Take it or leave it. I’m just going to enjoy myself. I’m not going to fake anything here.’”
Minter acknowledges that sex and self-image is fraught for women of all ages — older women are rarely seen or taken seriously as having intimate needs, while for younger women, sexual agency is often a tightrope walk — too much of it and you can be “excoriated and slut-shamed,” Minter said.
“When you’re 25, there’s just so much fear about young women owning sexual agency — it’s just terrifying to people,” she said.
Marilyn Minter unveils steamy ‘shower’ images
But the artist sees some progress in who gets to be seen as desirable on our television screens, reflecting a burgeoning broader shift in cultural attitudes around sex. She pointed to photographs in People magazine comparing the characters of “The Golden Girls” and “Sex and the City,” who are the same age at the time of the latter’s reboot on HBO Max (which is owned by CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery). “The 50s look a lot different in the 2020s!” a caption exclaimed.
Though “The Golden Girls” also delved into romance and intimacy — and was widely-viewed as remarkably sex-positive for its time — there’s a stark contrast in how women in their 50s are presented across the two shows.
“I thought, ‘Okay, here’s why it’s different,” she said. “Number one: People live a lot longer, and they’re healthier… Number two: there’s this thing called Viagra.” Minter laughed, adding: “But who retired at 54? To a home in Florida with three other ladies? What?”
She hopes “Elder Sex” will not only serve as a much-needed visual reference for what intimacy can look like at older ages, but will also resonate for people who feel like their desires — and lives — are overlooked.
“It gives permission to people who feel shame about their sexual urges,” she said. “I want this to give them permission to explore that and erase the shame.”
“Elder Sex,” published by JBE Books, is available now.
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China GDP: Economy shakes off Covid legacy to grow 4.5% in Q1
Hong Kong
CNN
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China’s economy got off to a solid start in 2023, as consumers went on a spending spree after three years of strict pandemic restrictions ended.
Gross domestic product grew by 4.5% in the first quarter from a year ago, according to the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday. That beat the estimate of 4% growth from a Reuters poll of economists.
But private investment barely budged and youth unemployment surged to the second highest level on record, indicating the country’s private sector employers are still wary about longer term prospects.
Consumption posted the strongest rebound. Retail sales jumped 10.6% in March from a year earlier, the highest level of growth since June 2021. In the January to March months, retail sales grew 5.8%, mainly lifted by a surge in revenue from the catering service industry.
“The combination of a steady uptick in consumer confidence as well as the still-incomplete release of pent-up demand suggest to us that the consumer-led recovery still has room to run,” said Louise Loo, China lead economist for Oxford Economics.
Industrial production also showed a steady increase. It was up 3.9% in March, compared with 2.4% in the January-to-February period. (China usually combines its economic data for January and February to account for the impact of the Lunar New Year holiday.)
Last year, GDP expanded by just 3%, badly missing the official growth target of “around 5.5%,” as Beijing’s approach to stamping out the coronavirus wreaked havoc on supply chains and hammered consumer spending.
After mass street protests gripped the country and local governments ran out of cash to pay huge Covid bills, authorities finally scrapped the zero-Covid policy in December. Following a brief period of disruption due to a Covid surge, the economy has started showing signs of recovery.
Last month, an official gauge of non-manufacturing activity jumped to its highest level in more than a decade, suggesting the country’s crucial services sector was benefiting from a resurgence in consumer spending after the end of pandemic restrictions.
As the economic recovery gains traction, investment banks and international organizations have upgraded China’s growth forecasts for this year. In its World Economic Outlook released last week, the International Monetary Fund said China is “rebounding strongly” following the reopening of its economy. The country’s GDP will grow 5.2% this year and 5.1% in 2024, it predicted.
However, some analysts believe the strong growth reported in the first quarter was the product of “backloading” of economic activity from the fourth quarter of 2022, which was weighed down by pandemic restrictions and then a chaotic reopening.
“Our core view is that China’s economy is deflationary,” said Raymond Yeung, chief economist for Greater China at ANZ Research, in a Tuesday research report.
If adjustments are made to account for the impact of delayed economic activity, GDP growth in the first quarter could have been just 2.6%, he said.
Some key data released on Tuesday support this idea. For example, private investment was extremely weak.
Fixed asset investment by the private sector increased a mere 0.6% from January to March, indicating a lack of confidence among entrepreneurs. (State-led investment, meanwhile, advanced 10%.) That’s even worse than the 0.8% growth recorded in the January-to-February period.
The Chinese government has resorted to surprising measures to restore confidence among private entrepreneurs, but the campaign has inspired more nervousness than optimism.
The all-important property industry is also mired in a deep downturn. Investment in property declined 5.8% in the first quarter. Property sales by floor area decreased by 1.8%.
“The domestic economy is recovering well, but the constraints of insufficient demand are still obvious,” said Fu Linghui, a spokesman for the NBS, at a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday. “Prices of industrial products are still falling, and enterprises are facing many difficulties in their profitability.”
Unemployment continued to surge among the youth.
The jobless rate for 16- to 24-year-olds hit 19.6% in March, up for a third straight month. It was the second highest on record, only behind the 19.9% level reached in July 2022.
The high jobless rate among the youth suggests “slack in the economy,” Yeung said.
“By June, there will be a new batch of graduates looking for jobs. The jobless condition could worsen further if China’s economic momentum falters,” he added.
China’s education ministry has previously estimated that a record 11.6 million college graduates will be looking for jobs this year.
At last month’s meeting of the National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp parliament, the government set a cautious growth plan for this year, with a GDP target of around 5% and a job creation target of 12 million.