Peggy Brick has had quite the enviable career. She was a pivotal member of the sexuality movement, discovered the g-spot, and declared that it is great for the elderly to have sex, she seems to have done it all in the intellectual world of sexuality. This woman has been a Director of Planned Parenthood,the author of several books and a plethora of academic papers. During her earlier career she explored why European cultures are so much more open about sexuality and contraceptives than American cultures are.
Brick now provides workshops on sexuality and aging for agencies and community groups, and she trains staff at assisted living and nursing homes. Many of these adults never had a formal sex education. Some of them are widowed, some view masturbation in a religiously wrong light, some have health issues… the list can go on forever. The elderly have just as many sex questions as young people do.
She once told MSNBC that “My main theme is that people need new expectations. If they expect sex to be like it was when they were a teenager, they’re going to be disappointed. It’s different, and in fact it can be considerably better, but people have to understand the changes.”
Consider this: there are plenty of commercials aimed at younger people in order to prevent the spread of disease and unwanted pregnancy. There are even commercials pointing at middle aged married couples for trying new lubricants. Where are the sexuality commercials for the elderly? The old are surely concerned about more than diabetes, falling down, and forms of insurance.
Commercials that market condoms and lubricants for later life individuals would be quite lucrative as a business scheme, as well as providing some much needed knowledge for the elderly population of America. Does this nation assume that the elderly can’t contract gonorrhea? Over ¼ of HIV-positive individuals are older than 50 years old now- the population is seen as “graying”.
Some of these people contracted the disease when they were younger and then aged, and some older people contract it later in life there are reports of cases of STIs being spread around retirement communities like wildfire. If this is a generation that never received a formal sexual education, then perhaps a condom commercial is necessary to get their attention. Peggy would approve.
