‘It’s like a candy shop’: The sexfluencers showing the world how they really enjoy their golden years

On a sunny California day, a group of TikTok’s biggest stars strut next to a pool to the sound of Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer.

As they sway their hips to the music, they flash between bikinis and revealing black cut-out swimming costumes, smiling suggestively at the camera.

But these aren’t your average Gen Z sexfluencers. Robert, Michael, Jessay, Bill, and Joc are almost all in their 70s and are better known to their 11 million TikTok followers as the Old Gays.

They are here to remind people that while they might be in their golden years, they still have it, they still enjoy it and they want to remind others how to have a happy, healthy and safe sex life.

Discussions of sex and dating in later life are all too often taboo, even among medical professionals.

Host of podcast Sex Advice For Seniors, Suzanne Noble says one older man wrote to her for advice because his wife no longer wanted to have sex but he still had a high sex drive.

“He said he had been referred to a doctor and had been recommended chemical castration,” Suzanne says.

“And the number of [older] women I’ve spoken to who are frankly dismissed by the GP for even suggesting they might want to be sexually active.

“They are like, ‘What for? You’re not going to have babies anymore’.”

The Old Gays started out as a gang of four, with, Joc, 74, a recent addition (although he has been best friends with Jessay for 40 years). Joc is the only one in a long-term relationship, with a man four years his senior.

“I am amazed at his potency,” he says.

“I wondered what it would be like when I got to this age, but it’s still pleasurable. Us old folks are working it.”

The rest of the group are all actively dating but only Jessay, 70, the romantic, is looking for a relationship.

“I am a relationship person,” he says. “The others think it is work but to me it is a wonderful thing.”

The other three are happy playing the field – but they are always mindful of doing so safely.

“Over half the people who respond to me are under the age of 35,” Robert, 79, says, laughing.

But he has no desire for a long-term partner: “Whenever I sense that someone is attracted to me and it could lead to something deeper, I find myself pushing them away because I am not looking for that at this point in my life.”

Bill, 79, joined Grindr – the dating app targeted at the LGBTQIA+ community – a month ago and also keeps getting messages from 20-somethings.

“I must be doing something right,” he says.

Robert grew up in the south of America in a Christian family: “Sex was just one of those subjects you didn’t talk about.”

These days, he says people dismiss them as relics of the past who are likely “unable to perform”.

“But that’s not necessarily true,” he says.

“It just takes a bit more time,” adds Jessay.

“Yes, to get to orgasm,” Robert helpfully clarifies, as the rest of the group laugh.

As for Viagra – only Robert and Mick use it, the rest of the group say they eschew any chemical aids.

Mick says he takes one a week: “It really helps with my workouts,” he says, winking.

“I take one pill every day and it keeps my libido up,” Robert adds.

Suzanne has learned to ignore the comments from people who call her a grandma and assume she is not having sex because of her age.

She also has an army of online fans, with 55,000 TikTok followers, and her video on how to identify a man who has watched too much porn has 1.8 million views.

“I am very sexual,” the 62-year-old says. “I am open about my lifestyle but I recognise there are people out there who think that is outrageous.”

She feels she is in part a product of her generation: “Boomers were hippies. We grew up in an age of sexual liberation.”

Suzanne goes to BDSM and swingers clubs and says other members are “all older people”.

“I’ve met a few men who have been in long relationships and marriages, they’ve just come out and it’s like a candy store.”

Although menopause “was a drag”, it also gave Suzanne a renewed sense of confidence.

“You just think, I’ve got these lumps, I’ve got these bumps and this is me.”

Joyce Williams, who goes by the name Grandma Williams on her online blog, married husband David when she was 74.

The 88-year-old says: “One thing I would say to the younger generation is that the wrinkles don’t matter but the twinkles do.

“If you have a mental spark, you don’t see wrinkles anymore.”

Sam Evans, 55, runs Jo Divine, an online sex toy company, and aims to start normalising discussions of sex among the older generation.

Her oldest customer, she says, is 93.

“She had to stop buying though because her daughters got suspicious of the bank statements,” Sam says, laughing.

Another one of her most prolific customers is in her 80s.

“For her 85th birthday she had a blow-up doll with a dildo attached to it,” Sam says. “And she bought sex toys from us to give out to all of her girlfriends. She was educating her younger relatives – I think she bought pretty much everything.”

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With a background in nursing, Sam set up the company alongside her husband in 2007 after struggling to return to work and juggle the cost of childcare.

The company mails out a catalogue to its older customers twice a year.

“Sometimes they come back saying ‘deceased’ or the family phone up and are shocked we’ve sent out this “unsolicited mail”. You can’t say to them, actually your mother had three of our toys, you probably hadn’t found them yet, or she threw them in the bin.”

With the older generation still sexually active, data shows an alarming rise in STIs among the over-65s, although overall rates still remain lower than for those aged under 35.

While most sexually transmitted infections can be prevented through the use of condoms, Sam spoke to one major condom brand that said the older generation is simply “not their demographic”.

“I said, well they should be because they’re having lots of sex and they’re not using condoms and they have money,” she says.

But not every brand is as dismissive. Last year, charity Relate launched a series of ‘Horniculture’ gardening-themed condoms after their research found having sex was the over-65s’ favourite activity (44%), followed by seeing family (43%) and gardening (32%).

The playful illustrated condoms featured a range of suggestive vegetables – from aubergines to plums and avocados.

Sex needs to be better covered in medical training, Sam says, One woman she advised was 53 and wanted a new sex toy after contracting genital warts after sleeping with a man.

“She said, I went to sexual health and they didn’t know what to do with me. She was [only] 53.”

Professor Claudia Estcourt, speaking on behalf of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV, said she was disappointed to hear about this woman’s experience.

“People in sexual health clinics are expert professionals. We don’t make a fuss about infections.

“We’ve seen everything and we’ve heard everything. Some people in older years haven’t had that message – but we really approach the person as a person, irrespective of age.”

She says advice is tailored to the individual “being mindful that people in the older years, it would have been a long time since they had any sex and relationships education and there may be things they don’t know because in their social circles it’s not really talked about”.

Before Joc met his current partner, he got an STI from a man in a bar.

“He was quite attractive and my type, and we went home,” he says.

But a day later, he couldn’t stop itching: “I had contracted his lice. I was itching galore.”

Meanwhile, after coming of age during the AIDs crisis of the 1980s, Michael – who is 67 and the youngest of the Old Gays – lost many of his friends to the disease.

“When I was in my 40s, I was looking at my 60s with dread, thinking who’s [going to be] around because so many of the people who were in my life in my 20s are dead,” he says.

He then contracted the virus himself in his 40s.

“That alone would be enough to make me change my behaviour, which I did,” he says.

Now both he and the other Old Gays are firm believers in promoting safe sex, whatever your age.

“I think the only way you can prevent it completely is to make sure you are honest with your partner,” Michael says.

“As far as other conditions, whether it’s Hep C or these new strains of syphilis, or Monkeypox, you have just got to be careful who you are with and do a little homework.

“I don’t want anybody to go through the pain and suffering that I have.”

Suzanne says for people who didn’t grow up using them, it can be difficult to understand why you would need condoms later in life.

She can’t remember any sex education from her time at school, apart from basic biology.

“A woman the other day said, ‘Men told me they can’t stay hard’, and I just said, that is nonsense, an urban myth. There are loads of great condoms on the market.

“I hear most comments around that and, ‘I can’t get pregnant’, and you think, but what about all the other little nasties?”

Joyce says her generation were among the last to see the impacts of untreated STIs.

“It was such a relief when we discovered there was treatment,” she says.

“It became less of a fear. So what is happening now is we don’t need to have protection anymore for pregnancy and we’ve stopped worrying about it in the same way because we know [STIs] can be treated.

Although infections are highest among men who have sex with men, women are also “more prone to getting an STI when you are in menopause and beyond because the tissues have got thin”, says Sam.

For women in particular, a lack of oestrogen and hormones can make the vaginal walls thin out, with the friction causing small tears which can be painful and lead to reduced immunity against infections.

“[Sex] boosts your physical wellbeing, your mental health, it helps you sleep, it keeps you looking young,” Sam says.

“It alleviates pain, it makes you feel happier. For men, if you are regularly ejaculating it reduces the risk of prostate cancer.

“It is also about connection and intimacy.”

That is certainly something the Old Gays agree on.

When asked what advice they would give to their counterparts about sex, all five of them shout simultaneously: “Just enjoy it.”

“But enjoy it safely,” Bill adds.