Why the Older Woman is the New Romantic Hero
The Dark Side of One of 2024’s Most Striking Cinematic Trends
This week, film critic Joseph Holmes analyzes 2024’s cultural and cinematic trend of portraying older women in romantic relationships with younger men. Is this a sign of social progress, a worrying trend that will lead to women’s dissatisfaction with their own lives, or something in between?
Why the Older Woman is the New Romantic Hero: The Dark Side of One of 2024’s Most Striking Cinematic Trends
Joseph Holmes
Having children and providing for them are good things. But the characteristics we associate with those abilities—such as youthful beauty, wealth, and social status—can create barriers for those who don’t live up to the ideal. That’s why the widespread preferences for these traits can make us mad. Many women feel insulted by men who feel entitled to date a woman that men find attractive without making the effort to become the kind of man that women find attractive. Yet similar dynamics are often at work in older woman/younger man romances. The heroines of these stories don’t just date younger men, they date high-status, rich, and often famous younger men. Here, while they are deconstructing male romantic norms (or at least some of them: these older women are generally still physically attractive), they are taking their own for granted.
This Week in Sex-Realist Feminism: Gisèle Pelicot’s Humanity, School Shooters and the Gender Wars, and Making Connections
This week: Mary Harrington on Gisèle Pelicot's triumph, Ashley Frawley on why the gender wars have invaded our conversations about school shooters, and Ivana Greco on homemaker's hidden role in maintaining social ties. Plus: board gender quotas, big families, Abigail Shrier's vindication, and more!
From the Archives:
Prosecute the Men Who Pay for Sex, Not the Women Who Sell It
Mia Döring
“If the goal is a misogyny-free society—no sexually objectifying women, no publicly rating their sexual prowess and breast size, no stars out of five, no entitled men paying to gratify themselves, no sex trafficking, no abuse—the only answer is the Nordic Model.”