I'M EMBARRASSED FOR YOU!

Dear Denver Post -
REALLY???? You are really wondering why your newspaper isn't selling? A FRONT PAGE article on Cougars? Is THIS news? Is THIS Front Page news?

Didn't the legislature meet and vote on anything yesterday? Couldn't you find the mayor and ask him how summer tourism projections are looking? Couldn't you do a piece on the refugee who moved from one of the "stan" countries when they were three, had nothing, but pulled herself up by her bootstraps and graduated from University of Denver? Couldn't you have done an article about how all the budget cuts will affect area school districts next year?

THIS article was your very best NEWS article? I'm disgusted.

Dear COUGARS,
REALLY???? You told your story to the newspaper? My husband says that when you talk to the media, you come out looking one of two ways: DUMB or DUMBER.

So you had a good night last night and you woke up this morning with......NOTHING! Except a headache and a dress that needs to be dry cleaned.

Does being the predator instead of the prey really change anything? The end result is the same.

When a man is out on the prowl, we don't call him a cougar. We call him a PIG!

Where is your mother???? "This is what society handed me?" "We're looking for people we can love. It's not about anything else."

Dressed in a low cut leopard print dress and hanging out in a bar, you aren't looking for love.......you're looking for sex. I'm digusted.

This was a FRONT PAGE ARTICLE in our newspaper yesterday -

"Cougars" on the prowl in Colorado nightclubs

Beyond the stereotypes of predatory "cougars" over 35 dating younger men, there's rising income, numbers — and acceptance


Self-proclaimed urban cougars, Melanie Olson, 44, left, and Christine Spuehler, 44, right, prowl a bar in Highlands Ranch, Colo., May 13, 2009.

Sitting at Elway's glittering bar in a slinky dress and strappy heels, Christine Spuehler, 44, is alluring by any measure.
And ageless, too, with blond hair spilling around her face. Men a decade or two her junior approach at this legendary lounge, known for hooking up as much as for its frosty martinis and celebrity owner. The Castle Rock woman has dated several younger guys since separating from her spouse three years ago.
You could call her a cougar.
But it's not that simple.
"This is what society handed me," said Spuehler, chatting on a recent Thursday night. "I thought when I was in my 20s, I would find somebody and have a beautiful life with him and have children."
Exit the husband. Enter the fawning young men.
Spuehler, like many middle-aged women, is single, financially secure and interested in romance. By some measures, she typifies what pop-culture lingo has dubbed a cougar — a woman 35-plus willing to date guys a generation-minus.
But cougarism is more complicated than the reductive picture forged in TV shows, comedy monologues and the snide commentary of office e-mails.
Spuehler is no lioness preying upon tender antelope. She wouldn't mind finding a man her own age, she says.
"We're looking for people we can love. It's not about anything else."
For some cougars, at least, dating men who were still in high school during the first season of "American Idol" is less about sex than it is about circumstance.
"There aren't as many men my age who are single and fabulous," said Gail Bridges, 38, sitting in a Boulder coffee shop.
"I try to be open to everything. But you really only meet young dudes in bars."
And the young guys, she said, tend to be "enamored" of older women. "You tell them your age and it does not scare them away," she said. "It draws them in."
The May-December romance concept is not new. Older men, certainly, have been dabbling for centuries (though lately, they've been dubbed

Jessica Hunter, 45, is dating Shane Scott, 30. She dates younger men, she says, because "they are like, 'Hell, yeah, I can do whatever I want.' "

Cougars have been around, too, though not so prominently. Libidinous Mrs. Robinson was a scandalous boy-chaser in 1967's "The Graduate." Even the term cougar has been around since the 1980s.