Top 5: Things About Dating Younger Women

Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris

That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age. Yes they do.

David Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), Dazed and Confused (1993).

Philip, Philip. Oh, Philip, try to understand. I’m old. I’m old. I’m old. I’m old!!

--Paula (Ingrid Bergman), Goodbye Again (1961)

Let me push this train off the track right at the outset. I'm writing this at Café Express. Yeah. Very #BallerLifestyle. Some group has rented one of the rooms to play the 1966 movie Blow-Up. This incredibly influential Antonioni movie includes a scene with, of all people, the freaking Yardbirds in their prime. Keith Relf, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Sometimes I give Austin grief, but where else would you just randomly and unexpectedly encounter something so fetch in such an unlikely spot?

(Yes, I used "fetch." No, I'm not proud. It gets even worse. See below.).

Back to the topic at hand. This (i.e. Goodbye Again) really underrated movie features Ingrid Bergman as a 40 year old Parisian businesswoman. She loves unfaithful and frequently unavailable Yves Montand, but 29 year old American lawyer ("Philip"), played by Anthony Perkins, courts her. Ingrid honey, just be careful when you meet his mother. Anyway, spoiler alert, the movie's cathartic scene involves Bergman trying to convince Perkins that it just won't work due to their ages (well, and his slight mother issues). She repeats over and over and over that she's OLD!!! I mentioned that her character was 40, right? 

Oh, and Mrs. Robinson, the classic "older woman"? Anne Bancroft was 35 when she made The Graduate.

That was the Sixties. Now, "younger woman" and "older woman" take on distinctly different meanings. 40 year old Sofia Vergara was named most desirable woman in the world in a 2012 Ask Men poll. At 54, Playboy featured a Nancy Sinatra pictorial. 73 year old Tina Turner was on the cover of German Vogue. Over 40's Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julianne Moore, Halle Berry, Salma Hayak, Sandra Bullock, Kate Beckinsale, Julia Roberts, Diane Lane, and Jennifer Aniston continue to play romantic movie leads. Many older stars' beauty continues to shine. Jane Fonda, Barbara Hershey, Meryl Streep, Raquel Welch, Sela Ward, Mary Steenburgen, Helen Mirren...Diane Keaton was more beautiful at 57 in Something's Gotta Give than she had ever been. Television features older women in starring roles too. Desperate Housewives, Sex In the City, Cougar Town, Ugly Betty, Veep, Law and Order. Then there was 40 year old Demi Moore in Charlie's Angels, coming out of the surf in a bikini. That Ashton Kutcher wasn't quite as stupid as he looks. Granted, these women may not look like the "average" over 40 woman, but neither do Matt Damon or Brad Pitt look like the average man. Though I'm told on good authority that Matt Damon is an exceptional actor.

The point being, reaching an age that would have put one out on the ice floe in earlier years, so to speak, is nothing now. 40 is the new 30. And so forth.

Let me be candid about something. When I listed this topic among the 30 Top 5 lists, I caught what seemed like an unending river of shit. Before I had even written one word. Uh, what? Sensitive much? This is why we can't have nice things around here. Its not like this is the "Joey Buttafuoco Story." I had actually envisioned this as a twist. The list would really talk about the five reasons NOT to go out with younger woman. Even though it should be patently obvious to anyone. Just watch the Taylor Swift "22" video. (But, not without then watching Conan O'Brien's response video). But, hey, Challenge Accepted.

So what does it mean to "date a younger woman"? Someone once told me that the "age appropriate" rule for men is half your age plus seven. For a 48 year old man (taking a number purely at random and arbitrarily), that would mean any woman age 31 or over would be "age appropriate." I'm not sure why, exactly. But there you go. Its a rule. So it must be true.

I dispute this, but so-called popular wisdom holds that all other things being equal, more or less, men will always pursue a younger woman over an older one. This makes men disgusting pigs not worthy to ride in the front seat or to watch the ball game. This amounts to some sort of oppression and ostracizing and marginalizing. Men party every night with twenty-something girls with perky figures and empty minds. While over 40 women make quilts and wear purple hats, ruing the day their husbands left them for the receptionist. Men just throw away women like old banana peels on the compost heap once they hit, I don't know, 35? Reeducation inevitably must follow, with men being sentenced to watch hours of Lifetime TV and The Accused as penance before they may be considered acceptable members of society. Hugh Hefner? Hugh, you magnificent bastard. You're making things exceptionally difficult for the rest of us. (Sidebar: #awesome).

Call me crazy, but I'm not sure that's what's really going on. At least not outside the Playboy Mansion or Derek Jeter's condo. P.S. Just like D Jeets, I always give out gift baskets too, with Chris Reeder memorabilia. I keep it classy. No, call me crazy, but except in Vegas, I just don't see that many "age inappropriate" couples. And I'm around the humans all the time so I should know. In fact, it kind of stands out when you do see such a couple.

Men may like to look at younger women. I know, shocking. Film at 10:00. There's not exactly a whole shelf full of magazines featuring over-50 year olds. Actually, there is. Its fetish porn. Or Martha Stewart Living. But people form relationships for reasons going well beyond how their prospective partner looks. If attractiveness were the only factor men, or women, considered, no one would ever stay together. No matter how physically attractive someone is, that becomes relationship background noise after a couple weeks.

To the extent I'm missing the way the world works and men really do inordinately ignore women close to their own age to date much younger women, let me point out a couple of often forgotten facts. Just consider these as you fume over evil, rotten, youth-obsessed men.

First, lots of women are guilty of the same thing. How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Sound familiar? Fortyish Angela Bassett goes to Jamaica and gets down with half her age Taye Diggs. (It was either that or hang around with Whoopie Goldberg; hell, she probably would have hung out with that creepy Jamaican voodoo guy from Live and Let Die instead of facing that catastrophe). Thelma and Louise, remember Geena Davis picking up and getting to know young beefcake Brad Pitt? I could reel off lots of other examples, and in all these, there's a sizeable female audience cheering this on, screaming "you go girl!" (literally and figuratively) and generally thinking that going out with a younger man is the greatest thing ever. The aforementioned Demi Moore? Empowered Woman Role Model for, in part, marrying 15 years younger Ashton Kutcher. And the whole "cougar" thing? How many women condemn this? Answer: none. They're curious, they're intrigued, maybe they wouldn't do that, but I never hear or read about women criticizing other women who pursue substantially younger men. Hey, I've been in groups of women my age at happy hours and such. (I know...shocking). I've heard the jokes about their husbands and other men their ages: Viagra jokes, bald guy jokes, paunchy guy jokes, gets tired quickly jokes, likes to wear out-of-style clothes jokes, appalling personal grooming jokes....You too ogle young, physically fit men in movies, magazines, TV shows, real life, etc. None of these guys are exactly Harvard professors or Nobel Prize winners. Steven Hawking may have admirers, but he the women on the View ain't fawning all over him. Let me tell you something else too. Twentyish Chris Reeder even received attention from fortyish women back in the day. And...it was awesome, I mean, disgusting. Some lady even asked me if I "come here often." Few things in life rival being 20 and spending Friday night living out the screenplay for Looking For Mr. Goodbar.

Second, a lot of y'all were for this when you were the younger woman. You put down "boys" and ran around talking about how you wanted to be with a "man." You turned us down when we were freshman and sophomores in high school so you could go out with seniors or even college guys. They had cars. And money. And knew stuff. And had gone through puberty. La-dee-dah! Same story in college. How many of y'all wanted to go out with an established man, and turned down me, errr, men your age who were still struggling to figure out how to do laundry and feed themselves? Now looking back, this was totally acceptable because men basically are useless before they're 28. They're even dangerous to themselves. So I got it, even then. But time passes, and now all of a sudden, Ron Johnson at Pacific Stereo, ("That's a really nice jacket") who you thought was so bitchin' and it was so cool when he was interested in you when you were 18 and he was 26, now is a sicko because he's 46 and doesn't want to date your 39 year old self. Yeah, men are dogs.

More? What's the woman equivalent of the NFL season? No, not the Oscars. Its The Bachelor. Women watch this atrocity in record numbers. My own mother and sister in law would watch this show at their respective homes and keep a running commentary going over the phone. You know what happens on the Bachelor?  A (theoretically) hot, well off, idealized single guy, who rescues puppies when he's not visiting his mother or curing childhood brain cancer, chooses his ideal mate from among a couple dozen luscious young NFL cheerleaders, swimsuit models, and dance instructors. What's the Bachelor's average age? Mid to late 30s? What are the bimbettes' average age? Mid to late 20s? Yeah. Exactly. This has not gone unnoticed. But y'all eat it up.

The fact is, people are attractive or not, or interesting or not, or useful or not, at any age. I've known tons of horrible, butt ugly men with interesting personalities who have no problem dating women. Likewise, I've known plenty of older women who don't necessarily look like Kate Upton but are fun and happy and interesting and they likewise go out with men and have lots of compelling relationships and don't get dumped for receptionists. If there's something holding you back in attracting others, such as your Spiro Agnew-like personality or that extra pie storage space flopping over your belt, maybe you could, you know, do something about that. Stop carping about your age and step your game up. You're not going to get younger. Deal.

OK, let's get on with it. That's what she said. The Top 5 Things About Dating Younger Women:

5. Prolonged silence. Its almost like being by yourself. Plenty of chances to think about what you need to do tomorrow. Or enjoy how pretty she is without having to think of things to say.

4.  Fewer "my horrible ex-" stories. Just the law of averages. Younger girl, fewer exes. If I had a nickel for every one of those I've heard, I'd have $17,000. Which I'd gladly trade to avoid the steak knife plunging through your eyes feeling that these stories induce.

3. All your stories are brand new. Its like you're the smartest guy ever, for all the stuff they don't actually teach in school. "Oh, the Cars were this incredible band...." "Reagan was such a great President...." "Fixing your sink is easy, I can do it for you." "The Space Shuttle blew up twice. Oh, really? Well, there was this thing called a 'space shuttle'...." "You're totally gonna love this movie, its about this family that's in the Mafia but you really like them and its got Al Pacino...." Your conversation demands no more effort than just talking about things you've done that she hasn't, AND you're the smartest guy ever just because you know stuff other than how to tap a keg or play World of Warcraft on line or how to skateboard.

2.  Energy. They've got it. They're enthusiastic. Ambitious. They want to learn and explore and do things. No "oh, I'm really too tired, I had a big day." Unfortunately, you don't have energy. This means they want to go out clubbing at 11:00, instead of watching TV and eating Chee-toes in bed like most civilized people.

1. Cleaning. They'll clean your house without even asking, when you've been working non-stop and going crazy.

OK, this was fun and totally non-traumatic, right?

NEXT-Top 5 Rock and Roll Acts. No, John Mayer didn't make the list. Sad panda.....