Sandra Dick: Boys will be toys for older women striking out for love

THEY won't see 40 again, the menopause is on the horizon – for some, it has been and gone – and they're closer to their pension than they might prefer to think. Yet a new breed of sex-hungry women – dubbed "cougars" – are increasingly on the prowl.

And their prey is, of all things, toy boys.

News that Irish First Minister's wife, MP Iris Robinson, recently did her own "Mrs Robinson" and hooked herself a lover an astonishing 40 years her junior is startling enough.

Kirk McCambley was just 19 – an age when most lads are more interested in the latest Call of Duty video game, binge drinking and fantasising about Megan Fox – when he bedded the flame-haired Belfast politician 18 months ago.

Indeed, church-going Mrs Robinson, now 60, was old enough to be her secret boyfriend's grandmother. But it didn't stop the pair – who have known each other since he was just nine – having a fling that has now rocked Northern Irish politics.

What is just as astonishing, however, is that Mrs Robinson, whose namesake in the sixties' movie The Graduate lured a youthful Dustin Hoffman's character into bed, is hardly alone.

For a new generation of 40-plus women, from desperate housewives bored by years of marriage to high- earning city businesswomen, celebrities to, indeed, politicians, are giving their love lives a youth injection courtesy of more than willing toy boys.

Last week it emerged that filmmaker and artist Sam Taylor-Wood, 42, is pregnant by teenage actor Aaron Johnson. The pair hooked up after she cast him as the lead in her John Lennon movie, Nowhere Boy. She now plans to marry Johnson, who is just seven years older than Taylor-Wood's daughter, Angelica, aged 12.

Yet she's only following in the footsteps of the likes of Hollywood actress Demi Moore, 46, and her husband Ashton Kutcher, who's still only 31. Even Jade Goody's mum Jackiey Budden, 51, has recently swapped 37-year-old lover Jason Cooper for the even younger 30-year-old father-of-three Aaron Woolhouse.

Scots psychologist Cynthia McVey believes women are simply enjoying the benefits of a more broad-minded society – and grabbing a bit of what men have enjoyed down the years.

"This trend reflects changes in society generally," she explains. "It used to be that men were the breadwinners, and women were attracted to status and the ability to protect and provide for their family.

"Now women no longer need those kinds of services. They can provide for themselves and for their children.

"With that sorted, they can then go for looks and for youth. They can behave the same as men and choose someone much younger if they want to."

Society's response to women and their toy boys is changing too, she says. "Society in general might still regard it as a bit odd, but younger people are very accepting. They say that if it's OK for a man to have a young glamorous woman on their arm, why not for a woman to have a young, attractive man?

"As we see celebrities doing this it becomes more generally accepted within the general population."

The trend is also partly fuelled by women now having more control over their looks thanks to cosmetic surgery, Botox and gym-honed bodies.

But while all that may boost a middle-aged woman's confidence, according to online dating website boss Julie Macmillan, 49, looks aren't always the big issue for their younger partners.

"Women are very hung up about their looks. They see every line, every detail. They're in their mid-40s, they probably haven't had sex with their husband for years and self-esteem is at rock bottom.

"They can't understand how a younger man might find them attractive, but they do. For many men, it's not about a wrinkle or too many curves or age. They see overall attractiveness and sexiness."

Julie launched Toyboy Warehouse (www.toyboywarehouse.com) in 2006 after a searching online dating sites and finding herself paired with "boring" middle-aged men.

"It's not just about six packs and looks," she insists. "And there are plenty of young men out there who are intelligent and mature and able to hold a conversation. They're not all sitting about playing on an XBox all day. And a lot of them find girls their own age irritating and annoying.

"I've dated men in their 20s who are so intelligent and mature and perfectly able to talk about all sorts of things. Likewise, I've had older boyfriends who have been unbelievably boring."

Julia, a painter and sculptor, has more than 22,000 members on her website – around 1,000 of them Scots. And while the website is aimed at finding a toyboy for women, there are more men registered seeking love with an older woman. Demand is growing so quickly that she is now planning a series of events in Edinburgh and Glasgow to bring older women and younger men together.

"A generation ago, a woman had kids, she'd kind of let herself go and she'd stay at home, twiddling her thumbs and getting older. But today women have more.

"This is like the last stage of feminism. The first was the pill, then comes the political changes and the social changes in the workplace. Now it is about relationships.

"And there are a lot of women coming out of long-term relationships, with grown-up children who married young and feel they missed out on their youth. They're free again and they want to make up for lost time."

Of course, it's worth remembering too that the male of the species hits his sexual prime in his late teens – a woman in her late forties. Which, according to one IVF specialist, can create it's own toy boy dilemmas.

The Barcelona-based Institute Marques announced last week that at least 12 per cent of the British couples it helps involve a woman who is at least six years older than her partner.

Dr Raul Olivares, the IVF centre's international director, said: "Starting a new relationship with a much younger man makes these women feel rejuvenated, and at a time of such physical and emotional plenitude, it can be difficult to accept that one's reproductive train may already have left. Often they cannot understand that, at 45, you can have a fantastic body but it can be too late to have a pregnancy."

Despite the toy boy trend, psychologist Cynthia, however, believes most women will seek out partners of roughly the same age. "Is it going to be much of a relationship if your toy boy doesn't have a lot of lifestyle experience – he might look lovely but there's not much fun if you can't talk to each other because he's too busy playing his XBox.

"Then again," she laughs, "it might not be a bad thing. He'll need something to do while we're in the bathroom trying to cover the wrinkles and cracks on our face!"

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