I feel like what I'm about to say may not be taken the right way so just walk with me here. This isn't me trying to kink shame anyone at all, btw, it's just an observation that I've made and I really want to talk about and I'm interested in what you guys think.
In the past fandoms I've been apart of, and I can't count how many, that have involved a significantly incredibly beautiful older man, I have seen the term "age-gap" and the phrase "controversially young wife" grow rapidly over the years. Which I myself have participated in, and I've also dated older men before so I get it! I'm 25 and if I married a man in his mid-to-late 40s and 50s then I'd also be considered his controversially young wife. I get that.
But sometimes I can't help but think the obsession with being a man's young hot wife has become slightly ageist toward older women. And this is where it might become a stretch, but as a black woman we have we what we call in our community, the grown and sexy, referencing to people of ages late 30s and up who are still sexy or in my opinion embrace their sexuality. This is a certain culture that I don't see so often in white culture, which makes sense, since I see mainly white creators spamming age-gap/controversial young wife content.
When I imagine myself being with Wilson Bethel or Bertie Cervel, as the most recent examples, or literally any 40+ year old actor for that matter, I don't imagine being with them now at 25. Automatically, I always age myself up to their age, and I still picture myself being youthful, sexy, and having the fun/slutty sex, and I feel like white women (not all but some) think when they get a certain age that they have to be more conservative and they can't have sex anymore or be submissive and call a man daddy anymore. Or that once they've hit a certain age, they're not as spirited in bed as a younger woman would be. Which isn't true.
I think of women like Halle Berry, Tracee Elis Ross, or Regina Hall, women who are well into their 40s and 50s. They're radiant and sexy and are FUCKING. Even women in my own family still embrace their sexuality freely, regardless of age. And as black women, we're already over sexualized, but I also think we're more inclined to embrace our sexuality as we evolve. It's celebrated and getting older and experiencing more, and being with someone who is as experienced as you are is something to look forward too. So I guess the obsession of being someone's controversial young wife doesn't really excite me anymore, because being experienced and seasoned sounds more fun, and the sex would be just as good if not better.
The obsession with age-gap relationships can also be rooted in the fear of getting older, and the responsibility of that comes with age, and the negative context around age and sex. But you guys you can still be submissive and degraded/praised at any age! Even Lana Del Rey at 40 years old is calling her man Daddy. So when I think about Wilson Bethel and Bertie Cerval and the nasty/unspeakable things that I wont to do to them, I'm also met with the thought that their wives are probably thinking the same thing and are already doing it to them, and that they aren't some sexually repressed old hags, and are equally as freaked out as we are, which is painful to consider, but it's also kind of hot. Idk.
I think what prompted this post are the age-gap fics I've read recently, and I honestly hate how infantilized and inexperienced the x reader is portrayed as. You can write an age-gap relationship without it being so obvious that one of the two is much younger than the other. Degradation and mocking are hot, and being nurtured and taken care of is also great, but I'm not a fucking innocent naive baby. And I think if any of the men I've been with were to actually treat me as such, I'd immediately get the ick and think they were a pedo. I have a job and I pay my own bills, I am a woman. Like yes I'm younger than them but being young doesn't always mean being inexperienced. There's already so much confusion and messiness in an age-gap relationship outside of the bedroom, that being fucked like a woman might actually make up for it.
There's this scene in the Materialist, where Dakota Johnson's character is trying to set an older man up with another one of her clients whose also his age (40), and he's persistent on being with a 27 year old. He's also a dick, who lacks responsibility and the ability to commit. A grown man btw. Which brings me to my next point. I loose attraction to men who like younger women, and I find it sexier when men date women their age. Because most grown men who date younger women, again from my experience, suck. It sounds weird, but the moment I see my favorite celebrity, who could easily be my uncle, date someone my age, I get the ick immediately. Like there's something about them that they know older women wouldn't stand for, so they go after younger women instead. Which is understandable because older men are hot. When Chris Evans got engaged to his current wife, who's only like three years older than me, I immediately lost interest in him (this could also be due to jealousy). He's a more than good looking man, he has a great job, he's a family man and has his own house and car, did women his age just not like him? And Why is that? When I fantasized about being with him, I imagined an aged up version of myself. Would a 40 year old version of myself like Chris Evans?
Anyway I'm going to wrap this up. Again, this is NOT to kink shame or yuck your yum. I do encourage you all to invite the idea of what if the wife of your favorite 40+ year old actor is fucking them exactly how they like it. Just a thought. I know tumblr is the wrong place to express these kinds of things, and I already know I'm going to be met with immense backlash from the Lolita/unresolved daddy issues community, but this has just been on my mind lately, and I felt like expressing my thoughts here. I think I've just outgrown the age-gap tag, and people commenting "I need to be his controversially young wife" on every tiktok or fic like it's the most revolutionary sentence ever. And before you comment "you must be new here", no I am not.
