Every September 4th, World Sexual Health Day is celebrated and brings attention to sexual health, bodily rights, pleasure, and well-being around the globe. This year’s theme, “EVERY BODY,” offers an opportunity to explore sexuality for all bodies, including those people over 50.
The stereotype that sexual desire and pleasure belong primarily to younger bodies is particularly strong for women. As women move through midlife, they are often viewed as less sexually desirable or even asexual. Yet current research tells a much different story. Women over 50 continue to have sex, masturbate, orgasm, date, and seek intimacy and pleasure.
Sexual Ageism: When Older Bodies Stop Being Seen as Sexual
Sexual ageism is the assumption that sexuality, desire, and pleasure naturally belong to the young. A 2026 review published in Sexual Medicine Reviews, Luria et al. describes how these attitudes can show up in media, healthcare, younger generations, and even in the way people come to view their own sexuality as they age. The authors note that media often portray people later in life as either asexual or hypersexual, while continuing to emphasize youthfulness as the standard of sexual desirability.
For women, there is another layer. The researchers discuss a “double standard of aging,” in which men can remain sexually desirable (grey foxes) as they get older while women are more likely to be viewed as sexually undesirable because of their age, changing bodies and/or greying hair. These messages obviously matter because all people internalize them, which impacts how women feel to freely express their own sexuality and desires.
Sexuality After 50: What Are Women Actually Doing?
A 2022 University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging asked women ages 50–80 about sex and intimacy. Two in five women ages 50–80 (43%) said they had been sexually active in the past year, such as caressing, foreplay, masturbation, or intercourse. Among women ages 50–64, that number rose to 53%. Interestingly, nearly two-thirds (62%) of women said they were satisfied with their sexual activity.
A more recent 2025 study published in Menopause gives us an even closer look at sexual pleasure in midlife. Graham et al., surveyed 1,500 U.S. women ages 40–65, with an average age of 52.5, about masturbation and orgasm. More than half had masturbated within the previous year. Among the women who masturbated, they reported reaching orgasm an average of 81% of the time.
The researchers also asked women to think about how the quality of their orgasms had changed over the previous 10 years. More women reported that their orgasms had gotten better rather than worse, although most said they had stayed the same.
These findings don’t mean that sexuality stays exactly the same as women age. Menopause, health, relationships, and changing bodies can all influence sexuality. But turning 50 alone tells us very little about whether a woman is interested in sex or pleasure.
A Different Kind of Sexual Freedom
Sexuality in midlife also isn’t necessarily about trying to preserve the sex life someone had when she was younger. For some women, this stage of life can bring an entirely different relationship with sex.
In 2023, researchers Luke and Poulin in the Journal of Family Theory & Review reviewed 11 studies examining the sexual experiences of single women in midlife. One of the studies followed 16 American women aged 57–91, most of whom had entered new sexual relationships after divorce. Many described enjoying the energy and passion of these new relationships and exploring their sexuality in a new way. They found themselves becoming better at knowing and asking for what they wanted from sexual partners.
Dating After 50: “We Can Choose What We Want”
Many women who come into sex therapy at midlife report that they are looking to not only address their bio-medical symptoms of menopause but that they are seeking a deeper relationship with their own desires. When asked what their desires are at this time, many of them say they never really asked themselves what they wanted and spent most of their partnered years focusing on their partner’s desires. What women begin to learn through their sex therapy experiences is what THEY want, how to ask for the kind of sexuality that is most erotic and pleasurable for them and what to do when their partner might push back on their requests.
Whether midlife women are partnered in a monogamous relationship, single and dating, or in consensually non-monogamous relationships, most midlife women come to own their desires and discover they’re embarking on a new and exciting new journey.
There can be something freeing about that. After decades of being told what a relationship or sex life is supposed to look like, learning Sex Esteem frameworks offer women more permission to ask a much simpler question: What do I actually want?
What We’re Starting to See on Screen
We may finally be starting to see some of that freedom reflected on screen too.
In the 2026 film I Want Your Sex, Olivia Wilde plays Erika Tracy, a sexually confident older artist who begins a Dom/sub relationship with her younger assistant. The film was co-written by longtime sex writer Karley Sciortino, who interviewed this author years ago for her VICE show Slutever on the orgasm gap between men and heterosexual women.
About her own history growing up Sciortino puts the double standard particularly well:
“As a millennial, I was raised on the idea that a woman’s expiration date was basically 40, while at 45 George Clooney was the most eligible bachelor alive.”
She writes that female desire has been put on the back burner for the longest time, so seeing it show up loudly on screen can feel like a win. As she puts it: “Gen X and older millennial women are aging into midlife and saying, “No, actually, I’m not doing the invisible thing.”
Every Body Means Every Age
None of this means that every woman over 50 wants sex or should. That would simply replace one stereotype with another.
Instead, the research and women’s experiences show us just how varied sexuality can remain throughout our lives. Women over 50 are having sex, masturbating, orgasming, dating, entering new relationships, exploring what they want, and sometimes redefining what sex and intimacy mean to them.
This World Sexual Health Day, “Every Body” gives us an opportunity to explore all sexuality, including that of more mature women. Our bodies may change as we age. What we want may change too. But neither desire nor pleasure comes with an expiration date.
