what do you think of jeff and annie's creepy factor? like she's 18 and he's 35 when they meet. sure annie is mature but i still find it a bit creepy :(
(Before I posted this, @celerylapel posted a reply to a very similar ask that she’d received. Our replies are similar as well, which I can only attribute to the fact that great minds think alike. ;) Her post is here, if you haven’t read it yet!)
Short answer: I don’t think their age difference is creepy at all.
Much longer answer, because I have a lot of thoughts about this: Ages ago, I wrote about this in the tags of this gifset, partly inspired by some tags that @nyclove3 wrote:
#Jeff Winger has underestimated Annie Edison right from the start #much like the show’s writers half the time sadly #this is related to a thing I don’t get actually #which is why some people think the age difference is such a big deal with these two #because by the time this episode [2.17] aired Annie had been through so much #she was bullied and unpopular in high school but didn’t let it stop her from being a good student and even participating in activities #she was an addict but went to rehab and got clean with no family support #her parents disowned her so she went out and found an apartment of her own and managed to be responsible enough with work and school #that she kept that apartment ON HER OWN for 2+ years and got excellent grades #she dealt with the loss of scholarships and watched her dreams crumble to dust around her #and picked herself up and researched community colleges and enrolled herself #and through it all stayed positive enough to remain hopeful and to want good things for herself #like seriously do you get what huge accomplishments all those things are??? #by the time she was 20 Annie Edison was more mature and responsible than Jeff Winger was at 35 #and as demonstrated on the show time and time again all the way back to ep 1.06 #Annie is perfectly capable of standing up to Jeff when necessary #she’s the one who directly confronts him about what’s going on between them #Jeff is not the person in that relationship with all the power FAR FROM IT
When they first meet, yes, Annie is a few months shy of her 19th birthday, and Jeff is in his 30s. (His age was retconned in S5; prior to that, various clues pointed to his age being around 31-32 when S1 started.) And Jeff treats her like a cute kid sister at first, which makes sense, since he’s focused on getting into Britta’s pants and then on dating Slater.
After Annie attack-kisses him to win the debate in 1.09, they’re clearly a little awkward with each other, which is understandable. But Jeff pats Annie’s head, and they move on. Their friendship seems to strengthen and deepen after that, and they have several conversations which indicate that they like and respect each other, and value each other’s opinions.
Then the Tranny Dance happens. Annie confides in Jeff that she’s leaving Greendale for good, and he tells her they’ll miss her. Jeff receives two surprise public declarations of love (no pressure!) and quietly sneaks out of the dance to avoid the inevitable confrontations, and runs into Annie, whom he’s surprised to see has come back. They have a philosophical conversation about the nature of love and self before Jeff sighs and says he’d better go back to the dance and deal with what happened.
Note that when Annie announces her intention to leave, Jeff doesn’t try to talk her out of it. He doesn’t tell her that she’s “too young” to move across the country with her boyfriend. He simply tells her she’ll be missed and had better come visit, and agrees to not tell the rest of the group about Annie’s true plans. In other words, he treats her like the mature young adult that she is. And the conversation they have outside when Annie comes back isn’t Jeff sharing hard-won wisdom with a young girl; it’s two equals having a discussion about life and relationships.
Then Jeff tells Annie he’s really glad she’s staying, they hug, and Annie kisses him. It could’ve been just a friendly, I’m-glad-I’m-staying-too peck…but maybe Jeff was feeling something more than friendship for Annie in that moment, and after considering her for a second, and maybe reassuring himself that she’s made the first move twice now, he lets himself do what he wants to do: he kisses her passionately.
What makes any kind of relationship creepy to me is if there’s a power imbalance. If one person in the relationship has a lot of power over the other, it’s nearly impossible for them to see each other as equals, and it can cause a lot of emotional damage. This is why almost all workplaces discourage or forbid bosses from dating their employees, why a teacher dating a student is super-sketchy (and possibly illegal, depending on the student’s age), why a husband who keeps such a tight rein on the money that his wife has to ask him for every penny she needs to buy groceries or pay bills is manipulative and gross.
Jeff and Annie were good friends who treated each other as equals. They were different ages and had experienced different things in life, sure; but Annie didn’t hero-worship Jeff, and Jeff didn’t look down on Annie. They saw each other’s flaws as clearly as they saw each other’s strengths, and there was never a power imbalance between them. (”I care about what you think of me, you know?” “Yeah, well, I care what you think about me. That’s why this happened.”) If there was an imbalance of power, it was in Annie’s favor. (”You’re getting dangerous, Annie. It’s those doe eyes. Disappointing you is like choking the Little Mermaid with a bike chain!”)
Of course, all of this doesn’t stop Jeff from worrying that he is being creepy, being attracted to and having feelings for a younger woman. He’s thinking about the possible power differential and doesn’t want to do anything that would hurt Annie, even though he knows better than almost anyone that Annie Edison is a force to be reckoned with. After it comes out that he kissed Annie at the Tranny Dance and the rest of the group is giving him crap for it, he viciously tells Shirley, “Men are monsters who crave young flesh,” and he’s not excluding himself from that condemnation. (Imagine how angry that must have made Annie, though, to hear first Britta belittling her with the “you go and stick your tongue into a teenager” line, and then Jeff implying that all she was to him was “young flesh.” If she hadn’t already slugged him, she probably would’ve after that line.) Jeff has a conscience, and he knows right from wrong, and Annie uses that fact to her advantage occasionally (“Help, I’m being overpowered by a male teacher!”).
By the time Jeff and Annie are taking baby steps towards admitting they have feelings stronger than friendship for each other, they’ve known each other and have been close friends for at least three years. The gap in their ages has narrowed considerably as Annie has moved into her early 20s, and has spent years living as an adult on her own. In fact, by the time the series finale rolls around, Annie is (presumably) 24 and explicitly states that she’s ready for a more settled kind of life in which she gets to stop feeling like a kid and start being an adult.
Also, I’m about Jeff’s age, and I do have a few close relationships with people 10 or 15 years younger than I am (or older than I am, for that matter), and not only are those relationships on equal footing, but I’m barely aware of the age difference most of the time. How I click with people has a lot more to do with life experience and personality and worldview and sense of humor than it does with chronological age. It seems to me that Jeff and Annie—two people who’ve both dealt with abuse, abandonment, anxiety, addiction, depression, disordered eating, and being bullied, among other things—would, once they got over themselves, barely register their age difference as a challenge at all.
Finally, I do want to say that if a large age difference between two fictional characters makes you uncomfortable, that’s totally valid. You don’t even have to have a specific reason for disliking it, or to share that reason with anyone if you do have it. If a specific ship creeps you out, blacklist the tags or unfollow blogs that post about them, and enjoy your NOTP-free dash. I hope that when it comes to real life, though, you don't judge relationships with a big age gap so harshly. Plenty of real-life couples are quite happy together despite being 10 or 15 or more years apart (including my own parents who’ve been married for 47 years).
Thanks for the ask, and for giving me the chance to talk about one of my favorite ships!
