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Volume CXXXIII, Number 16 |
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The Mrs. Robinson scenario
KARA OPPENHEIM
COLUMNIST
Ashton and Demi are doing it. Cameron and Justin are doing it. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon have been doing it for years, and if you need any more reassurance, just look to The Graduate. So why aren't you? In an older girl/younger guy relationship that is.
As Us magazine bombards us with images of these disparate couples and single senior girls abound, it occurs to me that this is not just a flash-in-the-pan celebrity phenomenon. I remember sophomore year, when I was a guest on a BCN talk show and other students were phoning in. One girl (who, I might add, was a senior involved with a sophomore boy herself, later in the year) called to ask why I hadn't done an article on older girls with younger guys yet. To be completely honest-and I am very ashamed to admit this-I thought it was silly. It was not until now, my friends' and my own senior year, that I see that question in a different light. So this week I would like to discuss THE MRS. ROBINSON PHENOMENON.
"When I was in high school," Carrie explained, "or even a freshman or a sophomore, I didn't understand why an older girl would go for a younger guy. I thought it meant she must be desperate. But now, the older I get myself, I re-examine my earlier prejudices and wonder if this is actually such a shameful thing."
Although Carrie was probably not alone in her younger narrow-mindedness, it seems that this conviction is something that a person grows out of sometime between high school and the end of freshman year, much like the importance of SAT scores or the belief that having beer in your fridge makes you an especially awesome and badass person. Once and for all I would like to dispel these notions: cool older girls can and quite often do date younger guys without becoming ostracized, no one cares what you got on your SATs, and finally, most non-AA alums usually have some sort of beer in stock-and if you can even believe it, it's often better than Natty Ice or even Coors Light.
While I'm unveiling the deeper truths of upper-class existence, I would also like to add that aforementioned cool older girls can and quite often do like younger guys.
I asked Chad why he'd never asked out Megan, whom I knew he has a crush on, and he said, "Dude, no way! She's a senior, she'd never go out with me!"
So I asked Megan, since she knows Chad has a crush on her, why she hasn't done anything about the situation and she said, "I'd go out with him if he asked me. I just can't bring myself to ask him out, because maybe he just jokes about liking me and there's no way I'd let myself be rejected by a younger guy!"
Which brings me to what I think is the real issue here: convention is, for a variety of reasons, much more accepting of men in a power position, so that it is fitting for the guy to be the elder in a relationship. Both genders are uncomfortable when they are not in the roles to which they have been accustomed. When a girl is older, it throws things out of whack; because she is now supposedly in control by virtue of her age, is she supposed to ask a younger guy out when she wouldn't be expected to ask out an older guy?
One positive outcome of older girl/younger guy relationships might be, then, that both sides are forced to act more mature. Specifically that guys could possibly feel like they have to be grown up enough to [gasp] ask a girl out rather than drunkenly tell people they think she's hot. The same might even happen on the part of the girl!
On the other hand, I think girls are often paralyzed by the fear of being rejected by someone younger. If a girl is even feeling empowered enough to defy customs to ask a boy out to begin with, it is one thing for a guy her own age to turn her down; it is quite another for someone younger, who, in theory, should revere her, to make her feel unworthy. So it turns out that guys are actually the ones who have far less to lose here.
"I don't understand," Janie wondered, "It would be silly for age to be an issue if my boyfriend were older than I am, so why would it matter if he were younger, as long as we really liked each other?" Janie is right, of course, so long as both people are of legal age. And granted we are only talking about a couple of years' age difference here, but that's what we're working with at Bowdoin.
What it boils down to is that the Mrs. Robinson scenario is a tricky one because it forces people to think of themselves not as far as social norms might go, but in terms of sheer attraction-and by attraction I don't mean just physical, but all levels-If you're going to chart such unknown territory, you have to see if you actually like this person, which, as we all know, can be quite scary. I think, though, that if you do, the rewards are great. I could list endless successful relationships where the women were older than the men...but that would be more creative pseudonyms than I care to bother with.
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