Leonardo DiCaprio and Hollywood's Age Gap Problem
The Wolf of Wall Street or the dog on Hollywood Blvd?
by SUMMER TAYLOR ★ FEBRUARY 28, 2023
You are forgiven for believing that Leonardo DiCaprio had taken up dating a nineteen-year-old, as the Daily Mail reported this week (because Twitter certainly did). The internet had a field day producing countless memes about DiCaprio’s habit of breaking up with past girlfriends once they turn twenty-five. Rest assured, however, DiCaprio is only rumored to be connected to Eden Polani, a teenage model who shares the same birth year as yours truly. It’s not like he was once spotted leaving a club with nineteen-year-old Juliette Perkins only five short years ago when he was a respectable forty-three years old (oh, wait… yes, he absolutely was).
Credit: New York Post
While the internet may have responded to his most recent link with a teenager with humor, DiCaprio’s tendency to date…. a little younger, to put it mildly…. reveals a disturbing pattern that exists prominently throughout Hollywood. I’m sure we all remember when it was revealed Billie Eilish was dating Jesse Rutherford, better known as the frontman for The Neighborhood, and Devon Lee Carlson’s less iconic ex-boyfriend. Eilish was twenty years old when the relationship started, compared to Rutherford’s thirty-one. Does the age gap feel problematic enough yet? Alright, let’s make it worse: the two first met when Eilish was fifteen and Rutherford was twenty-six.
Credit: People
Though these age-gap relationships usually consist of an older man and a (much) younger woman, it would be remiss to mention how men are affected as well. The most insidious example that comes to mind is Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s marriage to Sam Taylor-Johnson. The two met on the set of a movie. A classic meeting—he was acting, she was directing, he was seventeen, she was in her forties—it was, you know, a completely normal dynamic… definitely not predatory at all. Taylor-Johnson then proposed to his wife in 2009, when he was nineteen, and she was a middle-aged divorced mother of two who announced her pregnancy a few months later. While I’m sure we all know some college freshmen with a proclivity for cougars, I think most older women would recognize how creepy it is to be pregnant by a boy barely out of high school.
Credit: Pinterest
It’s tempting to make jokes about these truly baffling relationships, to add an air of levity (let it be known that I have absolutely participated). While I don’t support age-shaming women, I’m not above laughing at Sam Taylor-Johnson being widely referred to as a grandmother on the internet. However, the public nature of these age gaps is absolutely not something to be joked about. Fans of celebrities who see them engaging in relationships with those much younger will begin to think that this dynamic is normal. Beyond even being normalized, these relationships are often even romanticized. The media reports on big age gaps with something like an air of taboo, making generational divides within relationships seem sexy and scandalous. There is nothing wrong with an older adult dating another comparably younger adult, but an older adult pursuing a partner in their late teens or early twenties, while legal, feels questionable.
The difference in maturity between those with such an age gap assures that the relationship is not equal. Though most adults can understand this, teenagers do not have the same grasp of the concept, which makes the popularity of such relationships even more dangerous. If teenagers see celebrities, who are elevated to an idol-like status by the social media that dominates Gen Z’s lives, dating those much younger, they’ll begin to believe that it is acceptable. This puts teenagers at risk of mimicking such patterns in their own lives. That risk collides uncomfortably with the rising rates of digital grooming, which reached an all-time high in 2021. The internet has only made it easier for adults to prey on vulnerable teenagers, and social encouragement of this disgusting behavior will only normalize it.
So while I will inevitably indulge in making fun of DiCaprio’s inability to date women over the age of twenty-five, something in the back of my head gives me pause: who might be internalizing this?
Cover Photo Credit: Pinterest
Sources:
https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/leonardo-dicaprio-allegedly-not-dating-19-year-old-model.html
https://people.com/movies/aaron-taylor-johnson-sam-taylor-johnson-relationship-timeline/#:~:text=2008%3A%20Aaron%20Taylor%2DJohnson%20and%20Sam%20Taylor%2DJohnson%20meet&text=The%20pair%20first%20met%20in,musician's%20early%20life%2C%20Nowhere%20Boy.
https://www.popbuzz.com/music/artists/billie-eilish/news/jesse-rutherford-boyfriend-dating-how/#:~:text=The%2021%2Dyear%2Dold%20and,the%20LACMA%20Art%20%2B%20Film%20Gala.
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/about-us/news-opinion/2021/online-grooming-record-high/