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In the least surprising news of the year, actor Leonardo DiCaprio has broken up with yet another girlfriend once she reached the ripe old age of 25. The 47-year-old actor’s apparent allergy to dating women over 25 is so well-documented that one Redditor deemed it “Leo’s Law.” And the whole of the internet seems to agree: This is weird, and kind of funny, and also gross. I mean, there’s even a graph:

But this is also one of those moments that I suspect we will look back on in 20 years and wonder why we thought it was humorous and not… pretty icky.

Listen: Not all relationships that have a significant age gap are gross or predatory. But the younger one of the participants, the grosser, and the greater the probability of manipulation, coercion, abuse, or just you are a really pathetic person. A 70-year-old dating a 60-year-old (or an 80-year-old) is fine. A 40-year-old dating a 50-year-old? Yeah, you’re probably at similar stages of your life, it makes sense. A 30-year-old dating a 20-year-old? Dude (and it’s almost always a dude), get a life. A 47-year-old dating a 25-year-old? Truly, deeply, extremely pathetic.

Because the thing is, it’s not just luck of the draw or random connection that has Leonardo DiCaprio dating a string of women in their early 20s. Surely he meets a wide variety of attractive women who span all ages. There is something about women in this age range that DiCaprio, an adult man, finds uniquely attractive. And I would suggest it is not just that women in their early 20s are often admittedly extremely hot; I don’t think Camila Morrone woke up looking like a crone on her 25th birthday (which was June 16th, by the way). I suspect it is that for a particular type of extremely insecure and self-involved man, teenage girls and early-20s women are generally more pliable and forgiving than women their own age — particularly of older men who have resources, status, and authority.

Men who serially date significantly younger women are not looking for equal partners. This is especially true when they women they date are less successful, less wealthy, or less independent — which tends to be the case with early-20-somethings, who are typically just beginning their adult lives, while men in their 30s, 40s, and beyond are well into them; the inequities are baked in, and that’s the point. These men are indeed looking for someone who will admire them, who they can mold, and who will make them feel sophisticated and important. This is why a larger relationship age gap later in life is less and less of a problem: Those first 25 or so years of life are each pretty long; as you age, each subsequent year becomes less and less meaningful in terms of maturity and life changes. The years between 18 and, say, 30 are for most people completely transformative: You go from being a teenager to finishing your schooling to getting a job to actually growing into something resembling a future. Your brain literally hits maturity. This past semester, I taught undergraduates at NYU, who were roughly 20 on average. I’m in my late 30s, and while my students were brilliant and talented and mature and delightful, we were not peers, and talking with them made me feel extremely old. They were in a completely different life stage. Their day-to-day had almost nothing in common with mine, and neither did their concerns or stressors or interests. And that is as it should be. The experience of teaching undergraduates also drove home for me: wtf is wrong with male professors who are my age (or older) and seek out undergrads to date?

Women in their early 20s who date men in their 40s or 50s aren’t children — this isn’t pedophilia or anything that should be criminal — but they are often taken in by the idea that there is something especially mature and unique about them that makes an older man choose them; in reality, the special and unique thing is that the older man needs an ego boost, not a partner, and it’s harder to find that in adult women whose brains are fully developed.

This isn’t to say that every relationship with a significant age gap is bad. Human beings are a diverse bunch, and relationships between individuals are complicated and unique. Power is also not always an easily-defined thing, and it is not marked only by wealth and status. I certainly know many couples with significant age gaps who are nonetheless equal players in their relationship and have beautiful connections (although the women I’m thinking of are all at least in their 30s). I am sure there are some women in their early 20s who have had wonderfully egalitarian relationships with men in their 40s or beyond, and I am sure those men were not at all insecure egomaniacs looking for someone they could mold and define and therefore unable to date women their own age. If that’s you and your relationship, wonderful.

But then there are patterns — like the men who get older while their girlfriends stay the same age, or the men who seem to have an age cap of 25 even while they careen toward 50. And because we’re talking about relationships and love and romance, it’s often seen as mean or judgmental or inappropriate — or, when coming from a woman over whatever age, a sign of jealousy — to suggest that there is just something not great about men well into middle age are dating women who have barely graduated from college. But power matters, not just in our politics and our workplaces, but in our families and intimate relationships. And when men with significant power continually seek out women who have less, that should at least raise some eyebrows (and send some eyes rolling).

xx Jill

This is the free weekly version of this newsletter. If you’re enjoying it, or if you want to support feminist journalism, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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