Just because we acknowledge this fact, though, does not mean we do so without a certain amount of derision and judgment. From the Instagram commenter who felt the need to remind Zach Braff that he is 44 after the actor dropped a cutesy emoji under a post from year-old girlfriend Florence Pugh to the collective eye-roll aimed at Leonardo DiCaprio every time the actor steps out with a new subyear-old girlfriend, the internet loves to hate an eyebrow-raising age gap. The first rule of not being the worst is to stop assuming that literally anything is ever true of all women or, for that matter, all people of any gender, race, age, sexuality, etc. It is to say, however, as Volz expressed in her thread, that while these conversations ostensibly intend to protect young women, they have a tendency to instead strip such women of their autonomy, relegating all women in relationships with older men to a state of presumed vulnerability. The heterosexuality crisis Also complicating this already nuanced matter? The fact that while the internet loves to shade older men for dating younger women, it also enjoys mocking young men for … being young men.
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