Quiz time! Put your calculators away, please, I have a maths problem designed to test every inch of your natural intelligence. Ready? Here we go: Pete Davidson is a 25-year-old comedian. He is dating Kate Beckinsale, a 45-year-old actor. What’s their age difference?
Twenty years? Wrong. The correct answer, judging from popular responses, is: “Too many years to be acceptable”. While society takes older men hooking up with younger women for granted, we still seem to have a lot of hang-ups about women dating younger guys. There is a one-word explanation for this: misogyny.
Davidson has addressed such double standards head-on. “People have a crazy fascination with our age difference, but it really doesn’t bother us,” he said when quizzed about the relationship on Saturday Night Live. “But then, I’m new to this,” he added. “So, if you have questions about a relationship with a big age difference, just ask … Leonardo DiCaprio, Jason Statham, Michael Douglas, Richard Gere, Jeff Goldblum, Scott Disick, Dane Cook, Derek Jeter, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn …”
The list went on and on because (I’m not sure if you’ve noticed) men love dating much younger women. Indeed, many seem to see dating a woman their own age as a personal failing. Earlier this year, for example, Yann Moix, a 51-year-old French author and international moron, said he would be “incapable of loving a woman of 50 … I prefer the bodies of young women.”
Thankfully, neanderthals such as Moix are slowly being balanced out by the likes of Emmanuel Macron, Hugh Jackman, and Davidson: men who are proud to be in relationships with older women. The gender age gap—like the wage gap – still has a long way to go, but we’re slowly getting there.
Arwa Mahdawi also writes The Week in Patriarchy, a weekly newsletter on feminism and sexism. Sign up to receive it by email.
