Are age-gap romances finally giving older women the representation they've been waiting for?

Age gaps are having a moment in Hollywood that's unlike anything audiences have seen before on-screen. With the recent spate of romance films featuring older women and younger men, is Hollywood inching closer to resembling real life? Or are popular new titles like The Idea of You not quite the sign of progress we've been led to believe?

Today on Commotion, culture writers Kathleen Newman-Bremang and Sadaf Ahsan join guest host Amil Niazi to unpack the pros and cons of the trendy fantasy.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Amil: Sadaf, you wrote about [age-gap romances] recently and you called it "catnip for Gen Z and millennials." And obviously it's true; it worked on me. But why do you think it's so appealing?

Sadaf: Listen, I feel like we have been subjected to a plague of older, ickier men — Woody Allen, quite a few times, has put himself in this position — where they're wooing younger women, and I don't understand how they're nabbing these women. So it's first of all super refreshing to get to see these gorgeous older women have that part in the dynamic, where they get to pull the younger boys. It's nice to see a woman at an older age be considered desirable. It's a very hot thing to see a pretty boy look up at Anne Hathaway or Nicole Kidman in awe like I look at them. I love it.

Amil: Yeah, I don't even want to tell you what my face looked like when I was watching The Idea of You. Kathleen, we've had three of these movies in the past couple months — The Idea of You with Anne Hathaway, Mother of the Bride, and now A Family Affair. What do you think these movies have in common besides, of course, an older lady and a younger man?

Kathleen: I think the thing that they have in common is that these leads are beautiful A-list actresses that we've known for a long time, so of course we're going to believe that Brooke Shields, Anne Hathaway and Nicole Kidman would be desired after they turned 40. Speaking of those leads, this new iteration of this trope is very white. It's very aspirational. All of these characters are rich, and thin, and things that kind of make up for the fact that they are older. I think that when Hollywood thinks of fluffy, mindless fun, they think of whiteness.

And then the last thing that they have in common is the young men in these stories are all very hot, fit gentlemen: Zac Efron, Nic Galitzine, Chad Michael Murray. And let's make no mistake as well, they are grown men. I think the argument here is that, who wouldn't fall for them? Who among us?

Amil: They're also very mature, since we're talking about things that are not realistic, but we can talk about another time. There is something else I notice that all these films have in common, which is that even though we know women at that age are at their sexual peak, the women in these movies are very like, "Oh, no, I couldn't possibly hook up with you, hot desirable young man." Give me a break, you know? Sadaf, why do you think, as involved as these movies are trying to be, women still have to sort of play coy and be the coquette when they should be able to, at 40 plus, get what they want?

Sadaf: That's where, I think, the taboo squeezes itself in, where you can't just say yes to this because it's so not acceptable; you have to win it over in some kind of way. I think that's ridiculous because that is not how it happens in real life. I know plenty of people who've been in age gap relationships, and I think it's completely fine and it never plays out that way. It actually makes you feel more powerful, dare I say.

Can I just add one thing to that list? Because I'm also really disappointed that these movies never end with these couples together, spoiler alert. I feel like that was a stipulation for the audience where it plays into the same thing like, "No, we're still saying this is bad because we're not allowing it to fully happen." And I think that is so disappointing. I want to see them go all the way.

Kathleen: I also think that this is part of, maybe, the effect of this push for representation and seeing characters on screen who are more diverse in age, race, sexuality. You know, all of a sudden these characters have to be like arbiters of morality. They have to be these upstanding citizens who share pristine values because they are supposed to reflect an entire demographic. And that's not what I want when I'm talking about seeing more and better representation.

I want to see women over 40, Black women, queer women, be full human beings who make the mistakes sometimes, who do dumb stuff; they should be able to be antiheroes, like a Don Draper. I think this age gap conversation, it's that each of these characters don't have to protest so much. They can be horny for younger men without a caveat. Like, it's okay, do the dumb thing, hook up with Zac Efron — there doesn't have to be shame in it, absolutely. But I think it comes from the idea that they have to be like moral, upstanding women as well.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jess Low.