New Show, Cougar Town, Gives An Inaccurate Portrayal of Florida’s Single Women Over 40.

As a female focused marketing firm, we were excited to see attention shed on Florida’s newly divorced 40 year-old woman reentering the dating scene. Although we weren’t thrilled with the name of the show, we were teed up and ready to take any cues and clues about this category that Hollywood was able to glean.

“Cougar Town”  opens on a graphic of the state of Florida. It is set in a fictionalized place somewhere south of Sarasota and co-created by Kevin Biegel, a former Sarasotan. So far so good.

Reality - Actual Florida Cougar Tamara Gilman, 47, now dates a much younger man who was the pursuer.

Unfortunately after thirty minutes our notepads are still empty.

It seems that  Hollywood has had a little jokefest on the real 40-something Florida woman, and as we found out later, she is not pleased.

Although most Florida women think Courtney Cox by all standards is a beautiful and smart woman, they don’t agree with what they saw on the season opener. Portrayed as a desperate women prowling bars for naive man meat by night, Cox continues the joke as a ditsy realtor hocking cleavage by day.

After talking to to real life Florida women who date men 10-20 years younger, it seems that the late night hunting of prey never happens. And that, in fact, the man (yes, we define them as men) we’re the pursuers, not the ladies.

Linda Franklin, creator of the therealcougarwoman.com, said most women labeled cougars are being pursued by the younger men, not the other way around.

Kim Preston, a Florida single woman over the age of 40  says, “I get hit on all the time by younger men and I find it cute and sweet.” She dates men closer to her own age.

Tamara Gilman, 47 and a native of Sarasotan and mother of two, says she was as surprised as anyone to find herself dating a man 22 years younger than herself. “It sort of happened before I realized. I wasn’t looking and I never set out to date a younger man.”This doesn’t sound like a woman who set her sights on “a young catch”.

Another woman says that the Cougar notion is really about “women who happen to be older who find themselves back in the dating game, some unexpectedly, some by choice, and they are doing their best to figure it out and have some fun, if that is possible.”

According to one website, a cougar is simply a “strong, sexy, proud to be over-40 woman who is financially independent and who refuses to be defined by the age of the man they choose to be with”.