First issues first: Paulina Porizkova is just not fascinated by being a Golden Bachelor contestant.
The supermodel is newly engaged to TV author Jeff Greenstein, so she’s off the market. However when the brand new season lead of The Bachelor franchise spin-off, Mel Owens, shared his standards of acceptable girls he was fascinated by courting on the present, Porizkova, on paper, would have been disqualified by his requirements.
She’s graced the covers of Vogue, Sports activities Illustrated Swimsuit and numerous different publications; she can also be 60 and had double hip alternative surgical procedure in 2024. However extra: She has turn out to be an vital voice in redefining growing old. The No Filter: The Good, the Dangerous and the Stunning writer is outspoken about difficult outdated magnificence beliefs and calling out persistent double requirements. So we introduced The Bachelor brouhaha to her.
It began when Owens, a 66-year-old former NFL participant turned legal professional, stated on the Within the Trenches sports activities podcast in June that he prefers so far girls ages “45 to 60,” and instructed producers, “In the event that they’re 60 or over, I’m slicing them.” He additionally instructed them “to attempt to avoid the unreal hips” too.
Owens has since walked again his feedback, which sparked a backlash, telling Glamour he didn’t perceive the present’s format or know the standard contestant age as a result of he “hadn’t dated in 26, 27 years.” He finalized his divorce in December. His season of The Golden Bachelor premieres on Sept. 24.
Porizkova sees this debate as greater than The Golden Bachelor. “Ladies are so used to this dynamic {that a} 60-year-old [man] courting a 40- or 30-year-old [woman] is ok,” she tells Yahoo. “If he is highly effective and has cash, then he can date any age he needs.”
Nevertheless it raises a deeper query: Do women and men have completely different expectations of what love and companionship ought to seem like of their golden years?
Beginning over
The older man-younger lady relationship pairing has been spoon-fed for thus lengthy that it’s normalized — and even romanticized.
It’s the age-old story: the person is robust and profitable, the girl is younger and delightful. And audiences have lengthy lapped it up.
“It was not that way back that the male actors had been 30 years older [than their leading ladies] and no one blinked,” Porizkova says. “Like [Entrapment co-stars] Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery — he was sufficiently old to be her grandfather virtually, and that was superb.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery in Entrapment. (twentieth Century Fox Movie Corp./Courtesy Everett Assortment)
She argues {that a} extra life like portrayal of mature love is lacking in exhibits and films, significantly in rom-coms and romantic dramas. As somebody who discovered love once more in her late 50s, she needs to see extra tales reflecting her life stage.
“That is why I [thought] that The Golden Bachelor — the unique thought — was such an excellent one,” she says. “There are lots of people beginning over … in midlife. ‘Grey divorce’ has a reputation, proper? Allow us to see middle-aged folks restarting. We truly restart from a a lot better place. Typically, we’re smarter. We all know what we would like and what we do not need. It makes it more durable to choose as a result of lots of [men] on providing are just like the Golden Bachelor.”
The truth of courting after 60
In keeping with Pew Analysis Middle information on single People in 2020, males considerably outnumber girls within the courting market: 61% of single males stated they had been at the moment trying to date or be in a relationship in contrast with simply 38% of single girls. These variations are starker after 40: 71% of older girls say they weren’t trying to date proper now, in contrast with 42% of males in the identical age cohort.
A 2025 Pew Analysis research confirmed that girls had been extra prone to be unpartnered later in life: 51% of ladies over 65 had been single in comparison with 29% of males over 65.
That helps clarify why somebody like Owens is trying to quiet down once more. Plus, it underscores the gender imbalance within the courting pool for that demographic.
Barbara Greenberg, a scientific psychologist, tells Yahoo that older males in age-gap relationships usually really feel a renewed sense of vitality. Relationship a youthful associate — significantly after lengthy marriages with girls nearer in age — can really feel like a recent begin, bringing with it the thrill of recent prospects, together with the potential for extra kids.
“It is the power to really feel younger once more,” she says. “And albeit, who does not wish to really feel youthful?”
Owens’s ex-wife is reportedly 19 years youthful, suggesting he might already be accustomed to courting exterior of his age bracket.
Nonetheless, the best way society views an older man courting a youthful lady — in comparison with the reverse — stays rooted in a double normal.
“Once we see an older man and a youthful lady, we consider a person who most likely has lots of monetary stability and a girl who … has lots of vitality, youth and vibrancy,” says Greenberg. “It’s: ‘Oh, they [must] have enjoyable collectively.’”
The notion shifts when it’s an older lady and a youthful man. “‘What’s psychologically incorrect along with her?’” she says of the bias. “We give it some thought as a mother-son type of factor [or that] the man is utilizing her for her cash, even when she’s lovely and good.”
We’ve seen this play out in popular culture, together with earlier this yr when Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy star Renée Zellweger defended the title character’s relationship with a youthful man. However whether or not it’s Nicole Kidman in 2024’s Babygirl, Sally Subject in 2015’s Hi there, My Title Is Doris, Cate Blanchett in 2006’s Notes on a Scandal or Anne Bancroft in 1967’s The Graduate, the older girls are sometimes portrayed as seductive, unhappy or delusional.
Bridget Jones: Mad Concerning the Boy explored love after loss with Bridget (Renée Zellweger) courting a youthful man, Roxster (Leo Woodall), after the demise of her husband. (Peacock)
Actual-life couple Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who’ve a 23-year age hole, have additionally drawn public skepticism, even now 13 years into their marriage.
In the meantime, extra {couples} are divorcing after 50 than earlier than, with the speed for that age vary doubling between 1990 and 2010. USA In the present day just lately explored the thought of “menodivorce” — or girls leaving relationships across the time of menopause or perimenopause. With greater than half of ladies over 65 single, it suggests there’s far much less urgency to repartner in comparison with males. On the whole, girls are additionally happier being single than males, analysis has proven.
“Ladies appear extra prone to be comfy with their independence,” Greenberg says of grey courting. “Perhaps at this level, they wish to give attention to caring for themselves, their friendships, their careers, no matter they’ve happening.”
A second likelihood at an equal partnership
For her half, Porizkova by no means thought she’d say “I do” once more after splitting from husband Ric Ocasek of the Vehicles in 2018. In 2023, she began courting Greenstein, 61, and the TV author proposed in July.
“Earlier than I met Jeff, I used to be steadfast about … by no means getting married once more,” she says. “What modified my thoughts was understanding that I had by no means actually been in a correct relationship earlier than. I lastly discovered my equal. And an enormous a part of that’s as a result of I discovered who I used to be.”
Heading into this marriage in her 60s, Porizkova brings a perspective she did not have the primary time.
“If you get married while you’re very younger, you are very hopeful and also you’re very naive about what marriage is,” says Porizkova, who met Ocasek — 21 years her senior — at 19 and married him when she was 24. “I used to be full of desires: ‘That is eternally. Sure, we should always completely merge our cash … as a result of we’ll by no means get divorced, despite the fact that he was divorced twice earlier than me.’”
Wanting again, Porizkova says, “I used to be a toddler once we met, so I did not know any higher. I used to be searching for a parental determine, and that … labored out nicely for me for some time.”
That early relationship provides her perception into the enchantment of age-gap dynamics and potential limitations. It’s additionally taken her to the place she is as we speak.
“I am any individual who grew up a lot too quick in sure methods and under no circumstances in others, so it is taken me 60 years to achieve a stability,” she says. “It is superb while you attain that stability, after which you will discover an individual that fits that stability.”
Time to inform the complete story
After all, it doesn’t imply all age-gap relationships are destined to fail.
Fifteen years in the past, Greenberg says she “was very skeptical” of Might-December couplings, however her perspective has shifted after seeing a few of these relationships succeed and produce real happiness to each companions.
What she sees as essential, nonetheless, is that {couples} have candid conversations early on about their future objectives, values and the separate growing old paths they’re on. She needs these sorts of trustworthy moments confirmed up on TV and in movies.
“They omit that the older individual goes to develop well being points, doable [changes in] sexuality or simply decelerate whereas the youthful individual nonetheless needs to go on journeys and do issues,” Greenberg says.
Owens, who’s newly divorced, is hoping to seek out life once more on Season 2 of The Golden Bachelor. (Kristina Bumphrey/Selection by way of Getty Photos)
“Growing older points — that is what will get missed,” says Greenberg. “What’s going to occur in two, three a long time?”
Porizkova says she’s disenchanted that The Golden Bachelor — which started with the promise of casting contestants over 65 — has veered into what she views as “sensationalism” with viewers tuning in to see him get a selection of gorgeous girls a lot youthful than him. In the meantime, the ultimate record of contestants has but to be introduced, so it is unclear if producers even adopted his standards.
She provides with a wink, “I [hope] producers have thrown in a lot of girls with hip replacements [and] he will not discover out till he is hooked.”
