Last week as I was taking the train in to Toronto I overheard a fellow passenger make the following pseudo-biological claim:
“It’s natural for girls to date guys who are 3-5 years older than them because they are the same maturity level.”
This concept seems widely accepted: that girls are more mature than guys. And while it is also widely accepted that women should date men who are older than them, the two concepts seem to overlap.
On teen television, the Older Man trope is a frequent narrative event, yet while popular wisdom claims that these relationships should be successful, they seem to inevitably defy reason. Girls on TV who pursue or are pursued by older men are more often traumatized than romantically satisfied. In the teen drama universe, older men are either sexual predators (as when a teacher impregnates a student on Veronica Mars, and another teacher sexually assaults a student on 90210), or a world apart (as when on BH 90210 Brenda is rejected by the lawyer she has been pursuing when he discovers she is 16, or when Angel leaves Buffy despite their mutual love citing her youth as a significant reason why they cannot make their relationship last.)
Alternatively there have been some complex variations on the theme, from Paris’s relationship with an elderly professor who eventually dies, on Gilmore Girls, to Julie’s affair with her married T.A. on Friday Night Lights. Yet despite the diversity and ingenuity in some of these interpretations of the trope, there seems to be the inevitable claim that teen girls are not a match for adult men. They end up in tears, hiding from their parents or from the world, ashamed or scared.
On the other hand, there is a similar tendency on teen dramas to depict teen boys pursuing older women, yet the differences between these narratives are astonishing. Relationships between boys and women are inevitably sexual, and bizarrely egalitarian.
Mutually satisfactory sexual relationships seem to reign between teen boys and adult women. While these relationships are no more likely to last than those between girls and men, there is an odd sense of mutual understanding, and maturity (with the exception of Dawson’s Creek‘s Pacey, who is heartbroken when his relationship with his English teacher crumbles).
Despite the popular wisdom that girls mature faster than boys (or alternatively that men never mature), teen television seems to take a contradictory position. Teen boys’ active sexualities translate into an ability to embark on mature, sexual relationships, while teen girls’ stereotypically reticent sexual development results in emotional immaturity in the face of sexually mature men, or men who somehow “know better.”
While sexuality should probably not be confused with maturity, on teen TV, the simplification of many relationships to compatible sexual desires results in the positioning of adult women and teen boys on a strangely level playing field. Boys are obsessed with sex (even if they are not mature in other areas) and women have matured enough to handle casual, sexual relationships. Teen girls, meanwhile, are left with what? Emotionality, naiveté, uncertainty about their own sexuality, and victimization? Maturity never looked so good.
Hey there! Your blog looks great. I look forward to exploring more, in the wake of our conversation this morning!
On the topic at hand (sort of): I recently gave “Pretty Little Liars” a try and was kind of taken aback by the portrayals of sexuality etc. in that (haven’t watched past the first episode, though). Has a bit of a Heathers/Mean Girls feel but didn’t watch enough to get a full handle on it. Have you seen that at all? Thoughts?
I have heard some interesting things about “Pretty Little Liars,” but I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet. I will look into it though so we can discuss it in the future!
[…] Older Man. It’s such a cliché, it’s no wonder my first reaction to Julie Taylor sleeping with her T.A. irked me. In fact, […]