This year’s Halloween, Billie Eilish dressed as a baby. The female singer wears a pointed hat with a teddy bear print and a matching camisole. Her newly announced boyfriend, Jesse Rutherford – lead vocalist of the alt-indie band The Neighborhood – dressed as an older man. He wore a cap, the tattoo on his neck peeking out from under his knit sweater and braces. He looks like a cross between Machine Gun Kelly and Benjamin Button. This odd couple’s costume performance immediately sparked a backlash from Eilish’s fans, who believed she was mocking their widespread concern about the pair. . For Eilish is 20 years old. Rutherford is 31 years old.
Sick and twisted” and “scary” are some of the words often used by fans to describe this couple. On Twitter, fans have alleged – based on little factual evidence – that Rutherford wields the inappropriate amount of power in the relationship, as Eilish is a longtime fan of his band. One Twitter user wrote: “This is crazy for me. Even with the age gap (which is worrying), she has been a fan of him since childhood. It is a natural imbalance of power.” Another concerned fan wrote: “Jesse graduated from high school while Billie was in second grade. I just don’t want Billie to be taken advantage of. I know they’re both adults but he’s 31 and she doesn’t even know how to drink.”
Anger and fascination about the age gap in celebrity romances have dominated the online fanbase in recent years. Commentators decided which couple was the scariest, hypothesized about an imbalance of power, and raised accusations of emotional abuse. Everyone stared at Madonna, 64, and her new boyfriend Andrew Darnell, 23. it was 42 then.
However, there are gaps in celebrity age, gender, gender, and ethnicity. Olympic diver Tom Daley is two decades younger than her screenwriter husband Dustin Lance Black. Chris Evans, 41, and actor Alba Baptista, 25, are 16 years apart. Cher, 76, is currently dating 36-year-old rapper AE. The list goes on and on. It’s attractive, it raises eyebrows, and it smells like scandal. But is it really scandalous to people in Hollywood?
For us mere mortals, dating your age is almost rudimentary. Even the most liberal non-celebrity families can never accept an age gap of more than 10 years. Paul Carrick Brunson, relationship expert and celebrity matchmaker, said: “The main reason people express awe at such an age gap is that it’s unusual. “Usually, we are looking for a copy of [ourselves]; same nationality and nationality. Even geographically, most people are looking for a partner within 25 miles. People are always looking for someone in the same age range.”
“When we see the age gap,” he continued, “there is also the assumption that a person [party] is to take advantage of others. One is considered an opportunist. That [idea] often appear in popular culture, movies, and television shows. That’s why people are so terrified.” And it’s true; These relationships are almost always set to fail. Remember on Friends, when Courteney Cox’s Monica was dating her parents’ friend Richard (Tom Selleck)? The 21 years between them caused major problems, namely that Monica in her 20s wanted to have children while Richard’s stepchildren were grown and had children of their own. Relationships expert Kate Daly says: “If your partner is married and says they don’t want more children, you can easily agree to this in the early days of the relationship. . “Then you can see – later – that having your own children is non-negotiable.”
However, in Hollywood, age is not a number, but a lifestyle. According to Brunson, the entire entertainment industry revolves around young people. “It fits this 18- to 34-year-old demographic,” he explains. “It is driven by advertisers marketing to people who [ages]. Anyone who works in the entertainment industry will dress like they are 18 to 34 years old and live a more youthful lifestyle.” In short, a shared celebrity experience creates more in common than a shared birth decade.
So why are fans so concerned about the age gap? Well, fans usually have good intentions – if you admire someone in the public eye, you tend to want the best for them. But sometimes it becomes toxic, even haunting at the boundary. When Florence Pugh faced similar waves of comments from fans about her relationship with actor and filmmaker Zach Braff, who is 21 years her senior, she called them “cyberbullying” “. “I don’t need you to tell me who I should or shouldn’t love,” Pugh said in an Instagram video in 2020. “It’s not your position and it really has nothing to do with you.” However, in the case of Eilish’s fandom, they defend the singer. They’ve watched Eilish mature since she released her first EP at the age of 16. They watch her annual interviews for Vanity Fair, which have seen her documentary in recent years. the most in her life since 2017. And most importantly, they tend to be her peers – young people who have grown up with her and watched her through each release. album. Every time change her hair color. Every new red carpet outfit she wears. Many people feel as though she is a friend. So it is inevitable that they will have an opinion about her love life.
With that in mind, though, what are we going to do with her and Rutherford’s Halloween costumes? It’s like a statement – a “bastard” statement to anyone’s concern. In fact, Eilish seems quite annoyed that she got the singer’s pocket. “I pulled his butt – it was all me!” she told Vanity Fair about her new lover last month. “I did that damn thing! I locked her motherfucker! What more can you say? Is the 11-year age gap between Eilish and Rutherford weird? Probably. Is she happy? Sure. And you can’t really argue with that.
https://www.independent.ie/style/celebrity/celebrity-features/celebrities-love-big-age-gap-romances-but-are-they-as-doomed-as-we-claim-42195696.html Celebrities love romances with a big age gap – but are they as doomed as we claim?
