> I'm skeptical of how counterhegemonic - as Doug would put it -
> Katha's ideas about old-young hetero relationships really are. There's a
> current advertisement for Forbes magazine -- seen in glossy mags, on buses,
> etc. - showing a well-off, middle-aged woman riding in a convertible with
> the top down and a twenty-something guy in the passenger seat.
>
> The copy says something like: "Our readers include wealthy
> executives at some of the top companies in the world. Inevitably, some
> choose to take trophy husbands."
>
> If there were more ads like Forbes', would the world be a better
> place?
>
> Seth
Well, one answer might be: yes! sauce for gander, sauce for goose! another might be: Seth, by moving the discussion into forbes and its ads you are skewing the discussion by summoning up a visceral distaste for the magazine, advertising, and the world of conspicuous consumption and commodification they represent. but what if the media and pop culture -- and even Bruce Springsteen, and those other pop stars beloved by LBOers -- presented a wide variety of possible couplings? If ancient male movie stars got together with ancient female movie stars in romantic pictures? If the rolling Stones, who are practically geriatric, stopped singing about "little girls"? I think the world would be, in this one small area, a better place. Just as it would be a better place if we saw more women of normal weight, more interracial relationships, more men in equal relationships, more women with interests beyond love and family etc. The relative invisibility of women over a certain age in the media does have, I think, a subtly dampening effect on real women. And since many posters have written about age-reversals in their own families, I'd think you'd be sympathetic to my point of view. According to you, women marry younger men all the time! So how come it is never represented, except very occasionally as a Mrs. robinson style seduction?
I certainly never thought I was opening a big box of controversy when I made my mild observations on the lack of reciprocity in May-December couplings. Why the resistance?
Katha