When Basic Instinct 2 finally breached last month, after a 14-year gestation, Sharon Stone's nude scenes proved she's as luscious and indestructible as a genetically engineered peach. And yet the movie tanked, doing only a fraction of the original's business. After months of armchair gynecologists declaring Stone's crotch too old to star in an erotic thriller, is it possible that Stone, or at least the character she was playing—antique sexpot Catherine Trammel—wasn't quite mature enough? Yes, she's handy with an ice pick, but where is the chip off the old block? While the early '90s may have belonged to pan-sexual man-eaters like herself and Madonna, whose notorious Sex book was essentially Basic Instinct graciously elided of Michael Douglas' ass, we now live in the age of the MILF.
In peaceful, prosperous countries across the globe, birth rates are falling, populations shrinking. In Singapore, Foreign Policy magazine reports, the government has started playing wingman to its citizenry, sponsoring speed-dating events to expedite marriage and procreation. In such a world, the term "going all the way" acquires new meaning, and the fecund strumpets willing to do the dirty deed grow irresistably seductive—just ask the TV executives who have to program opposite Desperate Housewives.
But while the ladies of Wisteria Lane may be reigning divas of MILFdom, it's on the Internet where maternal ardor reaches its fullest flower, at dozens of hard-core porn sites where mom-and-pop-and-son entrepreneurs turn the world's favorite pejorative into a business plan. In theory, at least, MILF-porn should be a kinky, twisted hotbed of Freudian neuroses. In practice, sites like MILFHunter.com and MyFriendsHotMom.com offer some of the most demure face-glazings the adult industry has ever produced.
Why? Look to Catherine Trammel, patron saint to a generation of girls gone wild. All across the web, thousands of Trammelettes rut with the brio of Viagra-fueled rabbits—and because no good deed goes unpunished, there's a backlash against them. One of its manifestations is a rough, extreme form of porn where nubile libertines are defiled in ways that resemble misdemeanor battery. Another manifestation is MILF-porn, where the women are treated with ... well, respect is probably too strong a word for it—this is porn, after all. But at least they escape the overt misogyny applied to the Trammelettes.
And that's because MILFs are "good girls." They're too tired from shuttling their offspring to Itsy Bitsy Yoga to spend the night tongue-wrestling Lindsay Lohan at Bouji's. They're the new virgins, the kind of girl you might take home to, well, mom.
Plus, they have great jugs. And while nannies are great for cleaning up vomit, only mommies can nourish a home with psychic mother's milk. Or, as literary MILF Caitlin Flanagan puts it in her new collection of essays, To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewife, "What's missing from so many affluent American households is the one thing you can't buy: the presence of someone who cares deeply and principally about that home ..."
Flanagan, who writes breezy essays about contemporary family life, is what one might call a trophy mom. She stays at home to tend to her two sons, but outsources most of the icky, boring stuff to nannies, maids, and other hired helpmeets. The largely virtual nature of her role makes her magical mom-beams all the more potent—it's so much easier to conspicuously adore your precious children when you never have to smell their poop.
Meanwhile, as Basic Instinct 2 was getting the brush-off from moviegoers, The New York Post ran a poignant item about Stone. During a cross-country flight, the actress ventured from her seat in first-class to coach, where she visited, deeply, one imagines, her adopted baby and his nanny. It was a tender, nurturing moment—so maybe she'll have better luck at the box office next time.