MIND THE GAP

With young males disappearing into the manosphere, Gen Z women are now opting to date older guys,

- Chloe Combi

One of the questions I'm asked most in my work is what distinguishes Generation Z from older generations millennials, Gen X and boomers? The most obvious answer is Gen Z are the first true digital natives raised on a diet of social media, giving them instantaneous access to information and an experience of never having to wait. Want to see that film or hear a piece of music? It's there at the touch of a button. This has obviously shaped every aspect of their lives, from the cultural to the emotional to the intellectual.

But there is another more subtle change happening – and that is their acceptance of, even desire for, age-gap relationships.

As little as 10 or 15 years ago, and even further back to the Nineties, Eighties and Seventies, relationships with big age gaps were everywhere. These were predominantly the older man/younger woman dynamic, and nobody blinked when a celebrity older man married a young ingenue or a silver-haired actor got off with a much younger woman in films or TV.

Whether it was the 39-year age gap between Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in 1999’s Entrapment or a (then) 17-year-old Keira Knightley marrying Chiwetel Ejiofor (26 at the time) in 2005’s Love Actually, the audience reaction wasn’t so much “meh” as they didn’t even notice. And that’s because art was imitating life. Back then, there was an insouciant acceptance–celebration even – when rich, older men married pretty young girls.

Looking back over near-ish history, the largely approving tabloid excitement over 35-year-old Chris Evans marrying 18-year-old Billie Piper, or Bill Wyman getting together with Mandy Smith (he was 47 to her 13 when he began the relationship), is astonishing.

The “boys will be boys” tabloid tone of that era (despite the fact that neither Evans nor Wyman were remotely boys) and intimation that that’s just what