First issues first: Paulina Porizkova just isn’t thinking about 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 thinking about courting on the present, Porizkova, on paper, would have been disqualified by his requirements.
She has graced the covers of Vogue, Sports activities Illustrated Swimsuit and numerous different publications; she can also be 60 and had double hip substitute surgical procedure in 2024. However extra: She has grow to be an necessary voice in redefining growing older. The No Filter: The Good, the Unhealthy and the Stunning creator is outspoken about difficult outdated magnificence beliefs and calling out persistent double requirements.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 NFL veteran turned lawyer, mentioned on the Within the Trenches sports activities podcast in June that he prefers up to now girls ages “45 to 60,” and informed producers, “In the event that they’re 60 or over, I’m slicing them.” He additionally informed them “to attempt to avoid the bogus 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 everyday 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. “Girls 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 appear like of their golden years?
Beginning over
The older man-younger girl relationship pairing has been spoon-fed for therefore 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 person 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 effective.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery in Entrapment. (twentieth Century Fox Movie Corp./Courtesy of Everett Assortment)
She argues {that a} extra sensible portrayal of mature love is lacking in reveals and flicks, 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.
“Because of this I [thought] that The Golden Bachelor — the unique concept — was such an incredible 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 wish and what we do not need. It makes it more durable to select as a result of plenty of [men] on providing are just like the Golden Bachelor.”
The truth of courting after 60
In keeping with Pew Analysis Heart information on single Individuals in 2020, males considerably outnumber girls within the courting market: 61% of single males mentioned they had been presently 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 more likely to be unpartnered later in life: 51% of ladies over 65 had been single in contrast 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 companion — significantly after lengthy marriages with girls nearer in age — can really feel like a recent begin, bringing with it the joy of latest prospects, together with the opportunity of extra kids.
“It is the flexibility to really feel younger once more,” she says. “And, frankly, who would not need to really feel youthful?”
Owens’s ex-wife is reportedly 19 years youthful, suggesting he could already be accustomed to courting exterior of his age bracket.
Nonetheless, the way in which society views an older man courting a youthful girl — in contrast with the reverse — stays rooted in a double customary.
“Once we see an older man and a youthful girl, we consider a person who in all probability has plenty of monetary stability and a lady who … has plenty of power, youth and vibrancy,” says Greenberg. “It’s: ‘Oh, they [must] have enjoyable collectively.’”
The notion shifts when it’s an older girl and a youthful man. “‘What’s psychologically mistaken along with her?’” she says of the bias. “We give it some thought as a mother-son form of factor [or that] the man is utilizing her for her cash, even when she’s lovely and sensible.”
We’ve seen this play out in popular culture, together with earlier this 12 months when Bridget Jones: Mad In regards to 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 In regards to 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 At the moment lately explored the concept 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 contrast with males. Typically, girls are additionally happier being single than males, analysis has proven.
“Girls appear extra more likely to be snug with their independence,” Greenberg says about grey courting. “Possibly at this level, they need to deal with taking good care of themselves, their friendships, their careers, no matter they’ve occurring.”
A second probability 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 really 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 found out 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 goals: ‘That is endlessly. Sure, we must always completely merge our cash … as a result of we are going to by no means get divorced, regardless that he was divorced twice earlier than me.’”
Wanting again, Porizkova says, “I used to be a baby after we met, so I did not know any higher. I used to be on the lookout 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 at the moment.
“I am any person who grew up a lot too quick in sure methods and by no means in others, so it is taken me 60 years to succeed in a steadiness,” she says. “It is wonderful while you attain that steadiness, after which you’ll find an individual that fits that steadiness.”
Time to inform the total story
In fact, it doesn’t imply all age-gap relationships are destined to fail.
Fifteen years in the past, Greenberg says she “was very skeptical” of Could-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, nevertheless, is that {couples} have candid conversations early on about their future objectives, values and the separate growing older paths they’re on. She needs these sorts of sincere moments confirmed up on TV and in movies.
“They omit that the older particular person goes to develop well being points, doable [changes in] sexuality or simply decelerate whereas the youthful particular person 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 Photographs)
“Getting old points — that is what will get neglected,” says Greenberg. “What’s going to occur in two, three many years?”
Porizkova says she’s disillusioned 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 lovely girls a lot youthful than him. In the meantime, the ultimate listing 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 numerous girls with hip replacements [and] he will not discover out till he is hooked.”
