Madonna and Cher have boyfriends half their age? Good for them

Famous men do this all the time. So why are we so taken aback when a woman does it?

We stare desire in the face and we don’t know how to handle it – because we are hypocrites (Getty/Josh Pepper)

Apparently, Madonna and Cher both have boyfriends more than half their age. And?

Colour me unsurprised – for it’s just about the most rock and roll move these two female icons can possibly have made. Except... there’s a snag, isn’t there? Because they’re women. What they’re doing raises eyebrows, certainly, but it’s not just because of idle celebrity gossip. It’s because of misogyny.

Cher is 76 and her boyfriend, Alexander Edwards, is 37. The pair have met each other’s children and are working on two albums together. Meanwhile, Madonna, who’s 64, has seemingly confirmed her romance with boxer Josh Popper, by posting a selfie of the pair kissing to her Instagram story. At 29, Popper is more than half her age. So?

They’re happy (or certainly appear to be) – so why are we so quick to judge them for it?

I’ll tell you my theory: we are shocked because we have come to believe that an older woman isn’t (or shouldn’t be) sexual; that to be “mother” or even “grandmother” should be their sole goal and aspiration; that parenthood and quiet womanhood should define them in a way that men who are also fathers are never exclusively defined.

We are socially conditioned to do a double take when we see an older woman romantically involved with a younger man. It feels incredibly subversive.

What’s going on? Well, we need look no further, I’d guess, than the response on social media to these kinds of relationship revelations. It provides the perfect example of what happens when we are confronted with our own latent prejudices. We stare desire in the face and we don’t know how to handle it – because we are hypocrites.

When a man dates a younger woman – yes, even one more than two decades his junior (here’s looking at you, Leonardo DiCaprio), we sigh in a sort of, well, “exasperated aunt” way. It’s so obvious, we intone. “Typical man.” Eye roll. There’s a long list of famous men who do (or have done) exactly the same: from Eddie Murphy to P Diddy, Johnny Depp to Jim Carrey, Joaquin Phoenix to Al Pacino, Bruce Willis to Jeff Goldblum, Rod Stewart to Donald Trump.

But while we might think it sort of seedy, we still aren’t horrified by it. Not in the same way. Not enough for it to become a talking point or a notable rarity; until (and it is an “if” and “when”) it becomes noticeable by its consistency (DiCaprio, 48, and Camila Morrone, 25, split last year. He then dated Maria Beregova, a 22-year-old Ukrainian model living in London; and has now been linked to 28-year-old Rose Bertram. Leo has form, here).

Still, when men do it in everyday life, it usually takes a while to gather our attention – whereas with the likes of these famous women, the moment their elationship status is revealed, that in itself becomes breaking news. Why? It’s not just because they’re considered “headline worthy”. In my opinion, it’s something darker. More insidious and subversive. When women date younger men, it captures our collective imagination like nothing else.

Just look at Brigitte Macron’s relationship with the French president, Emmanuel Macron – the pair have almost 25 years between them; have been together for a decade – and we are fascinated.

Look at TV presenter Ranvir Singh, who revealed last October that she was dating a man 18 years younger than her – and the world was shocked, despite the fact that both are consenting adults, who were single when they met.

Singh, 45, first encountered partner Louis Church on the set of Strictly Come Dancing when she competed on the show in 2020. Church, 27, was working as a production secretary. Singh was free to date, having ended her marriage shortly before taking part in the TV series. The pair did nothing wrong. Yet we were still quick to judge her for it.

Or, look at the coverage of the movie Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, starring Emma Thompson, which was (predictably) labelled “groundbreaking” precisely because it looked directly in the eye of the age-gap relationship, where the older party is a woman. Would the same movie have been so significant if the protagonist was just another older man?

No, because we aren’t quite sure what to make of these pairings that transgress social norms; we stumble – it feels a little like a glitch in the matrix. And the reasons are complex. In my view, it all boils down to sexism – and it also has a lot to do with power.

We have become so comfortably entrenched in the idea of patriarchy that age-gap relationships the other way around – where a man is older than a woman – don’t really bother us that much (unless the gap is so wide as to be nakedly inappropriate). We expect the power dynamic to be skewed in favour of a man; we (almost) celebrate it. At the very least, we aren’t particularly shocked by it. We let it slide. And there are a whole host of other emotions, too: indifference, acceptance, even envy.

But we are taken aback by a case like Cher’s, because she is subverting what we expect from women of her age – this isn’t what we think middle-aged women should be doing. It’s a bit like the furore over Dame Helen Mirren growing her hair long at 77. We stand in judgement; we do a double-take, we are outraged.

But we shouldn’t be, because it is irrelevant. The gender gap persists. We know that regardless of what the particular age gap is, the power dynamic is still in place; because she is a woman and he is a man. And whether or not these anomalies rustle the fabric of our expectations or not, the patriarchy is our constant.

Some will cheer Cher and Madonna on for turning the age-old power play on its head – and we should let them. Because they aren’t the problem, here. We are.