New Moon – Old Double Standard

 

Over the past two weeks, it has come to my attention that many women (friends and girlfriends of friends) are swooning over the movie, New Moon, the latest film adaption of the Twilight Saga written by Stephanie Meyer. These aren’t teenage schoolgirls declaring their allegiance between Team Jacob or Team Edward but women who are in well into their 20s and 30s (and even 40s). So what is the problem you ask? Well, Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob the shirtless wolfboy (pictured above), is only 17 years old (jailbait). Robert Pattinson, who plays the emo vampire boyfriend, is currently 23 years old (but was only 21 in the first movie). Both actors portray fictional characters that are in high school. So where is the outrage when women who are 30 or 40 years old, lust over the young and innocent Jacob and Edward?  

Back in business school, the male population would always get ostracized by their female classmates for hooking up with undergrads at college town bars. Even outside of business school, if a 30-year old guy tries to pick up a 21-year old female, he will undoubtedly be accused of being a child molester and lacking basic morals and hygiene. How come when a 30-year old woman dates a 21-year old male, she is labeled a cougar (or cougar in training) but when the genders are reversed, the man is labeled a pedophile? Perhaps this double standard was created and perpetuated by women in order to prevent competition from younger women while also allowing all women to have the option of dating younger men as they grow older (women can be cunning like that). 

During its opening weekend, New Moon distributor Summit Entertainment's exit polling indicated that 80 percent of the audience was female and 50 percent was under 21 years old. Therefore, if you extrapolate the population data, it can be inferred that 50 percent of the audience was potentially pedophiles, 80 percent of whom, were females.  

Comments

[judy]

faulty logic-- swooning over a character in a movie doesn't equal hitting on someone. men of all ages have been drooling over the likes of britney spears (when she first came out), taylor swift, and even dakota fanning now for ages. megan fox is something like 23 and i know for a fact that 40 year old men make no secret of wanting to bang her stupid.

as for cradle-robbing relationships, most girls i know date older guys, whereas dudes tend to date younger. way younger. case in point: a 32 year old male friend dating a 20 year old girl. for that matter, that same friend and i had sexy times and he's six years older than i am.

i think the reason cougars are lauded by some (while looked upon with disgust by others) is that they're an example of women realizing they can treat themselves the way men have been treating themselves forever-- like they can do what they want.

[Alexander Pan]

I never said that older guys don't lust after younger women. I'm just saying that women do it just as much as men. While at the same time, there is more of a negative "sleazy" stigma attached when the older counterpart is male.

[km80]

Very true..have you noticed that when a hotter older female teacher sleeps with her 16 y o male student, nobody seems to be that disgusted, Would it be the same if the teacher was male and the student female?