I went out with a well-known professor when I was 20 and she was 38, and I suspect the appeal was pretty much the same as it is for female students: she made me feel older and smarter, and I made her feel younger and more desirable. It may not be the deepest or noblest basis for a relationship, but then, most of us aren't that deep. And sometimes it does answer to a complementary set of deeper (if not nobler) needs. It allows adolescents to magically solve their oedipal problems and win the approval of their parent. (I know people generally confuse adolescence with puberty, but if we keep to the Erik Erikson definition that adolescence is when you begin to think of your parents as normal people, it doesn't even begin until you move out of the house, and doesn't usually end until you approach the age they were when you were born. It's more a phenomenon of your 20's than your teens.) And on the part of middle agers, the lust for youth is, I think at least in part the flipside of their agonized realization that they are growing older. Their hair, their belly, their bruises are all telling them they are going to die. When I was young and in college, I found the older male attraction for younger women regardless of their intelligence inexplicable. Not that I wasn't interested in beauty -- it's just that I thought beauty that lacked facial lines was much less interesting. Besides, I was on a quest for the most intelligent woman I could find. But when years later I suffered the ridiculous blows to vanity that every middle aged man suffers, it all became clear to me: I wanted my youth back! Now young women I knew nothing about caught my eye because they had what I didn't and I wanted it. I desired what they embodied. And a relationship with a younger women is one way to consummate that desire.
Unfortunately I'm still obsessed with intelligence (which is just as cruel a criterion as looks), so this isn't really an option for me. But I can understand the impulse. And women who go down to Jamaica to find their groove are satisfying it just as surely as men.
I think the answer as to why male/female December/May relationships happen relatively more often in academia than in the business world is because, for all its feminism and affirmative action, academia really harkens back to a much older form of social organization, namely clientelism. Professors have more power over their graduate students than bosses have over their employees. It's a lot easier to get a new boss than a new Patrone, and you need the intervention of your Patrone on a much more regular basis if you're just to make ends meet. This means that the symbolic exchange -- I'll tell you you're smart if you'll tell me I'm handsome -- can be reinforced with a material exchange: I'll tell you you're smart and I'll get you a job. Usually it isn't even felt as an exchange. In the midst of feeling good about himself he wreaths whatever she says in a cloud of gratitude and the benefit of the doubt. And the fact that he takes her seriously not only makes her feel credible but makes other movers and shakers give her air time; a few publications and she is credible. And it complicates matters further that some of the women who get involved in these relationships are actually very smart and many of them are feminists. Having a big brain doesn't mean you can't also have a big oedipal hang-up. And fixing such a hang-up by marrying an older guy is not necessarily less authentic or less satisfying than working it out in therapy. You only have one life to live, and you don't get extra credit at the end for doing it the hard way. If one person acts out their relation with their parents through 3 different relationships with people their own age, and another gets married for six years with an older guy and gets over it that way, the end result is the same. They finish their adolescence and move on. Or don't.
I think there's also a second factor. If you've ever been a teacher and have just a teeny bit of charisma, then you know it's almost embarrassing to see from the inside the reverence inherent in having a ring of people staring up at you and writing down your every thought. I think there is something in this relationship that is much more prone to elicit resonances with parental admiration than anything one finds in office life, which is much more rude toward superiors. And if you combine the texture of this psychic life with the real dependence that underlies it, it's not surprising that you find more young women willing to be ensorcelled. Because I think that's the real question -- not why academic men are interested in younger women, but why they get taken up on it more often.
Which brings us, I think, to your real beef: how come it doesn't work as easily the other way? And I think you made your own answer a few days back: (1) Men on average rate physical attractiveness relatively higher in the mix of why they get involved -- you and I think a lot higher, but many on this list differ; and (2) Young people are generally considered physically more attractive than old people. So if two 22 year olds are in the same psychic space, and both have a hankering for an older mate, the young man is more likely to balk at the ravages of time than the woman is simply because, stupe that he is, he's more prone to balk at physical blemishes period.
And in addition you can add the fact that there are a lot fewer female full professors. So the deal just isn't as widely on offer as widely the other way around. Now both of those things -- the male gaze and the unequal distribution of top jobs -- you can certainly blame on the patriarchy. But who knows? Perhaps both those things are s-l-o-w-l-y changing. Perhaps someday, for better or worse, the Gayatri Spivaks of the world will have young escorts just like the Jacques Derridas . . .
As for 40 year old males that desire women their own age, you'd be surprised, but there are lots of them, and they sit around bemoaning their lack of suitable prospects in the same way as their female counterparts. They come up with different theories to explain it of course; they think somehow it's all your fault. But I suspect that real reason that neither side wants to admit is that unmarried 40 year olds are (a) very picky and (b) happier by themselves (at least in proportion as to how happy they would be ensemble) than they want to admit. People that need a mate find one. They just make big compromises.
Lastly, it might cheer you up to reflect that the vast majority of middle aged men that hit on younger women are hooted offstage with their tail between their legs. For most middle-aged men, the inability to learn to appreciate women for their deeper charms is its own punishment.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com