Saturday, September 20, 2008

Older women with younger men: the toyboy Oedipussy complex

Do younger men seriously want older women?

Do most men really desire a wife old enough to be their mother? If you've been reading female newspaper columnists over the last few years you'd think so.

As a man in his early thirties I do sometimes find a certain appeal in some older women, in my experience they tend to be more friendly and less feminist-minded than women my age and younger. The are easier to talk to. Their greater fund of experience has shown them what a load of trash the current vogue for emasculating men through girl-power is. They have also long grown out of the adolescent girl's penchant for bad boys; they appreciate a good man. Some of them also come with the added bonus of being well versed in the feminine arts of cooking, sewing, and pouring their man a nice cool beer when he requires one!

But as much as I might (in theory) enjoy their company, I wouldn't want to marry one. I guess the female journalists would call me a 'caveman'.

Apparently, so their story goes, women are now achieving such heights of financial success that they have no time to build a relationship with a man until their late thirties or early forties, and then they have no need for a man-as-provider, so they choose youth and looks instead. The female columnists also try and complete their theory by pointing out that young men, too, are also more likely these days to have 'less of a problem' with equality with women, with deferring to a woman with greater years, experience, wealth and therefore power.

This is all part of the feminists usual agenda: get angry about supposed abuse of male power over women (the tendency for men to prefer women for their youth and looks), then try to portray sex differences as merely cultural conditioning.

The reality is that as women earn more they don't desire young impoverished men, they desire men who earn even more! It gets to the point where millions of them are pricing themselves out of the dating game. "Where are all the 'suitable' men?" they opine. What they are actually asking is: "Where are all the multi-millionaire men who are just dying to date a power-hungry middle-aged career woman like moi?"

As usual with feminist journalists, the true facts are being warped, spun and distorted to satisfy their wishful thinking. Here's how it works. A survey is commissioned by some organisation that has a vested interest in promoting the idea that older women want to marry younger men and/or these unions are highly successful - usually it will be a woman's magazine. So the survey questions are leading in the way they are phrased, to make it more likely that they get the answers they want.

You may think to yourself: well what's the point of even bothering to do the 'research' if it's all fixed? But that is not how these people think. Alternatively, survey data or study statistics are simply quoted selectively and in misleading ways to arrange a picture that they find pleasing. It's not journalism per se, its public relations.

A lot of this current media trend is being fed by the existence of one couple: Demi Moore (42) and her boyfriend Ashton Kutcher (27). To a feminist journalist, this one celebrity couple alone is proof of a wide-ranging trend across the entire Western world. They are apparently going to get married. Listen carefully; you can hear the female journalists squeal with glee.

But have there ever been so many social-trend conclusions built on such a minor incident?

It's all so much sound and fury!

Now, here is the rub: these older women celebrities may be middle-aged or old but they certainly don't look it. What you get when you date a Demi Moore, a Joan Collins, or an Elizabeth Taylor is a glamour-pussy. It's a woman who is not only beautiful, but essentially younger than her years. She's clearly not a representative example of the average woman of her age. She is not attractive to a younger man because she is wealthy, but rather because enormous resources have been expended in making her seem younger. The body has been toned, conditioned, made firmer and nubile by personal trainers and dieticians. The face has been tightened up, lifted, and botoxed. She is adorned with the most expensive apparel and scents. She takes a great deal of care in her appearance. These are not the average women-next-door. They are rich old gals, approaching their twilight years possessed with a crazed obsession to hold onto youth. A younger man is merely an accessory towards this end.

While I find the media promotion of the idea that more and more young men are settling down with older women rather misleading, I certainly wouldn't condemn any individual couple. After all, it would be nothing short of curmudgeonly to condemn a couple's love on the basis of an age gap.

However, there is a darker side to this phenomenon. If there is a strong media promotion of the idea that men in their twenties should settle down with women in their forties, and if this encourages more of these type of couples to form, this will cause much heartache. The lifestyle, wishes, and plans a man in his twenties will have will be jarringly out of synch with those of a woman in her forties. Conceiving and raising a family will almost certainly be impossible. I fear that many of these partnerships - if they last - may start out as something exotic and exciting but end up in disillusionment and heartache.

Also, there is undoubtedly a potentially unstable power-imbalance of a 40-something woman with a 20-something man. Women, of whatever age, usually tend to wield a great deal of power in relationships as they usually have the superior skills at what some people would call managing interpersonal relationships, and others would call psychological manipulation. A woman dating a man young enough to be her son is going to have an even greater edge in this arena.

So are men who date the older lady looking for a substitute mother? Perhaps some are, but in general I think not. There will always be a small minority of men who settle down with an older woman. However, the majority of young men and older women will not be going out of their way to seek this type of arrangement as a long-term relationship. Sure, young men may find older women sexually attractive, but it is with a temporary conquest in mind. It's a thrill simply because it goes against the grain and their natural tendencies. In other words: it's a fetish.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Notice too the double standard. Men pursuing younger females are cradle robbers. Women pursuing younger males are empowered.