Older Women, Younger Men: Is There Still a Double Standard?
ScarJo and Sean Penn are the latest May-December romance in Hollywood. But what if their ages were reversed?
-Melissa Chapman, BettyConfidential.com
I'll admit it: I've always had a sugar daddy complex -- I actively dated men who were at least 10 years older than me in the hopes that I'd meet the one who would ultimately become my husband. I know what you're thinking... I'm a gold digger, a money grubbing w---- who used my feminine wiles to trap a man with deep pockets.
And that's where you're wrong.
I've always liked older men because they seem to have an air of confidence and sense of self that younger men are still in search of. Having amassed a certain level of economic independence affords them the opportunity to leave that race to succeed and temporarily focus on life's more important issues. For me, marrying a man who is fifteen years older was more about being with someone who had already done the whole rat race career track and was more interested in starting a family and focusing on his kids.
For centuries, older men have been marrying and shacking up with younger women and no one bats an eyelash. Hollywood is rife with these couplings: Larry King and his wifeves, Jack Nicholson and every baby mama he's knocked up, Warren Beatty and Annette Benning, and the newest couple: Sean Penn (50) and Scarlett Johansson (25). The list is long. Yet when an older woman gets involved with a younger man, she's labeled a cougar and society can't conceive that a younger man could possibly find her attractive and lovable, were she not sitting on a huge wad of dollar bills. Perhaps these younger men, just like me, are seeking a mate who is secure in her person, who's achieved a level of success that permits her to focus us on other areas of her life and invest more so in love and family (as is the case with me and my older guy).
What it boils down to is this: all relationships, be it older women and younger men and older men and younger women, work because both parties are invested in them for their own individual reasons. Yet while we accept an older man coupling with a younger woman, why do we take jabs at older women who are doing the same thing? Why do we brand them cougars, insinuate they've been sitting in a plastic surgeon's armchair far too long and that their younger male counterparts are merely shtooping them for the green stuff? Madonna and Jesus Luz were treated like a complete joke. Sure, there's Demi Moore, the Queen of the Cougars, and her "cub" Ashton Kutcher -- but it seems like everyone is waiting for Ashton to cheat (again?) at any minute.
Why is there STILL a double standard?
Melissa Chapman blogs about her marriage and everything in between at www.marriedmysugardaddy.com. Her work has appeared in The Staten Island Advance, Care.com, ABC News, BlogHer, Baby Center, Momtourage, Lifetime Moms, Babble, The Washington Post, Time Out NY Kids and iVillage.
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