Earlier this month, France elected their new president in a landslide victory for Emmanuel Macron.
Much has been reported about it in the media, but the focus has not so much been on 39-year-old Macron’s policies. No, the media is much more interested in the fact he is younger than his wife. And not just a by a few years. Twenty four years and eight months younger, in fact.
Over the past few months, the new First Lady of France, Brigitte Trogneux, has been subjected to endless comments, gossip and coverage ranging from tongue in cheek to cruel.
Of course, she isn’t the first woman to be quite a few years older than her husband. There is a 32-year age gap between Joan Collins and Percy Gibson, and 26 years between Barbara Windsor and her husband Scott Mitchell.
But for some reason the new French First Couple really seem to irk the media, because they just haven’t stopped going on about it.
Granted, the way they met wasn’t exactly conventional – he was her 15-year old pupil and she was married. But does that mean they deserve absusive trolling on Twitter and personal, nasty comments about Brigitte’s appearance 25 years later? I don’t think so.
Why do people have such a problem with older women with younger men? Donald Trump and wife Melania (23 years and 10 months younger than him) haven’t experienced half of the backlash for their age gap even though it is virtually the same.
Michael Douglas was patted on the back for bagging Catherine Zeta-Jones as his wife, who is a quarter of a century younger than him. And I’ve read virtually nothing in the media about the fact 30-year-old model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is having a baby with 50-year-old Jason Statham.
But when it was revealed Girls Aloud star Cheryl was pregnant with the child of someone a decade younger than herself, the media went into a right old frenzy.
Does it really matter? Who are these people harming by trying to carve out some happiness for themselves?
It is so unfair when a person is personally attacked for being in an unconventional situation. Sam Taylor-Wood, a successful artist and director regularly receives abuse about her looks for being married to Aaron Johnson, who is 23 years her junior.
‘What on earth does he see in her?’ ‘She looks like his mother’, blah blah blah.
Nobody’s holding a gun to the lad’s head, so perhaps he just genuinely really loves her? They’ve been married a few years now and have two children so I’m guessing there is some genuine feeling there. Perhaps all it comes down to with all of these couples, including Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron, is just true love?
Good for her, I say. If a man in his 30s can still find me attractive at the age of 64, happy days!
