City Lights:

Ten years ago, when I was young and full of liberal zeal, I wrote a freelance article for the Los Angeles Times about the age disparity in movie romances. The thriller “Entrapment,” which features a steamy romance between 69-year-old Sean Connery and 29-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones, had just hit theaters, and I penned a jeremiad that might have netted me a job at Ms. Magazine.

“If a movie features a May-December pairing in the woman’s favor — ‘The Graduate,’ ‘The Pallbearer’ — it’s inevitably the main plot point,” I wrote. “But the other way around, it’s likely to be treated as business as usual.” I added that if you took the age difference the other way, “you might have Leonardo DiCaprio in a romantic thriller with Elizabeth Taylor.”

Now, that pairing doesn’t seem so outlandish. When Sandra Bullock starred in “The Proposal” with a man 12 years her junior, no one seemed to raise an eyebrow. And the new sitcom “Cougar Town” features cougars as heroines.

Maybe it’s that dignified word, “cougar,” that’s changed our attitudes. How could anyone resist being compared to a bold, ferocious mammal? Next to “cradle-robber,” “sugar mama” and other epithets for women older than their mates, “cougar” sounds downright marketable.

At least, that’s the hope of Kimberly Marsh and Anne Marie Rickards, two 40-somethings who recently launched the Huntington Beach dating service Cougar “N” Cubs. Marsh and Rickards started their pet project to provide a forum for younger men and older women to mingle, and to encourage a type of pairing that they believe is taboo in many parts of the world.

The service, which can be visited at www.cougarncubs.com, has already garnered nearly 200 members. Amazingly, the founders told me when we met last week that cubs outnumber cougars about 2 to 1. Older women, they said, often seek younger men for their vitality and sense of adventure, but for cubs, a cougar appears to offer stability and a relationship free of drama.

The website has the usual features for a dating service — member profiles, a chat room — but when I saw a mention of “cub training courses,” I had to ask about that. According to Rickards, they’ll likely be online classes in which instructors offer pointers on how to approach a cougar, how to avoid being too possessive and other valuable tips.

I had a feeling some of my old liberal beliefs would be challenged in this interview, so I brought along a copy of my article to show Marsh and Rickards. They each said I had been right about Hollywood having a double standard. But when I asked if they found a movie like “Entrapment” offensive, they balked.

“Not at all,” said Rickards, a Connery fan. “It’s like, ‘Good for him.’”

“Exactly,” added Marsh, saying the romance with Zeta-Jones worked because “they’re two strong personalities.”

If it’s all right with the cougars, then, maybe I can be more blase about May-December pairings than I was a decade ago. Or as Bob Dylan once sang, in a line that any cougar would take to heart: “Ah, but I was so much older then! I’m younger than that now.”

City Editor MICHAEL MILLER can be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com .