Cougar Time!

Over the last several years, pop culture has been enamored with cougars. And no, we're not talking about Snaggle-Puss, the anthropomorphic, well-dressed but slightly effeminate mountain lion that's always exiting stage left. We're talking about sexy older women in pursuit of younger men. 

To this point, there's tons of blogs and websites (of varying ilks) dedicated to the appreciation of cougars, and we've also seen several cougar-related characters and storylines in recent TV shows and movies. Among our favorites: Izabella Scorupco (below) as Paige in the straight to DVD movie Cougar Club; Famke Jansen as Ava, who seduces Sean's son on Nip Tuck; Susan Blakely as self-help expert Angie, who sexes up Charlie Sheen on Two and Half Men; and of course Susan Lucci as Erica Kane, who has an affair with her daughter's ex-husband on All My Children.

Reality TV has also embraced the cougar. There was the Bachelor-knock off Age of Love, featuring a group of cougars competing for the affections of a younger man, and The Cougar, with a group of younger men vying for a 40 year old woman.

And ABC is just about to premiere its new fall series, Cougar Town, starring Courteney Cox as a fortysomething divorcee trying to get back in the dating scene.

By the way, it wasn't always "Courteney" (with an extra "e") was it? Didn't it used to be just plain old "Courtney"? We'll have to go back and watch the opening of Friends, Family Ties, Dream On and some of her other earlier series appearances. (Don't you love how these celebrities just decide mid-stream in their careers to alter the spelling or pronunciation of their names? Remember when Demi Moore was "DEM-ee"? Now it's pronounced "De-MEE". Or Terrell Owens. It was "Ter-REL", now it's "TER-el". WTF!... Am I right?!)