Older women romancing younger men are a hot pop culture topic. But have we moved on from the ‘cougar’ stereotype?

Next came “A Family Affair,” in which Zac Efron, 36, plays a movie star who falls for the mother of his personal assistant, played by Nicole Kidman, 57. Despite Kidman’s A-list presence and skill, here’s a clue to the movie’s sophistication level: the original working title was Motherf****r.

Iconic romcom heroine Bridget Jones is steering in this direction too. Set to hit screens on Valentine’s Day 2025 is “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy,” the fourth instalment of the smash franchise, in which Renée Zellweger, 55, embarks on a romance with Leo Woodall, 27, fresh off “One Day” and “The White Lotus.” Reportedly, Bridget tries her hand at online dating and meets Woodall’s character; original heartthrob cad Hugh Grant, 63, returns too, and a “love triangle” ensues.

“A Family Affair” is actually Kidman and Efron’s second go at playing age gap lovers — 2012’s “The Paperboy” was “sexy swamp raunch,” per Roger Ebert — a reminder that cultural texts exploring romance between a 40-plus woman and a younger man are hardly new.

In the early 2000s alone, we had “The Proposal” (Sandra Bullock fake-proposes to her assistant, Ryan Reynolds), “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” (Angela Bassett meets a younger Taye Diggs on vacation) and an IRL 40-year-old Demi Moore marrying a 25-year-old Ashton Kutcher.

The fascination with age-gap relationships is perennial, but is our understanding of these kinds of relationships any different now than when the Courteney Cox-starring TV series “Cougar Town” aired in 2009?

The first clue is in that term itself: Etymologists of the internet suggest the term that refers to a “predatory older woman” has Western Canadian origins, as regional slang for “older women who’d hang out at bars to go home with whatever men were left at the end of the night,” codified with the launch of a Canadian dating website, cougardate.com, in 1999.

In pop culture around that time, this kind of age-gap seduction was the punchline for raunchy, bro-y comedy, existing alongside the MILFs embodied by Stifler’s mom in “American Pie” (played by Jennifer Coolidge, who was in her thirties at the time) and “Stacy’s Mom” in the Fountains of Wayne song.

But it wasn’t limited to content aimed at teenage boys: Think of Jane Seymour as the voracious 50-something Kitty Kat pursuing hapless 30-something Owen Wilson in “Wedding Crashers,” and Eva Longoria’s seduction of the younger gardener, played by Jesse Metcalfe, which cemented “Desperate Housewives’” status as a titillating must-watch for Wine Moms everywhere.

This sex-crazed-older-woman-pursues-hot-young-guy storyline tracks with most earlier examples of this trope. “When you think about ‘The Graduate,’ Anne Bancroft’s character was meant to be this seductive older woman with a younger man who was very naive, immature,” says Dr. Jess Carbino, a former sociologist for Tinder and Bumble and clinical psychology researcher, referring to the 1967 ur-text in this genre. In the current wave of films, however, “these women are seeking personal and sexual liberation, and happen to be doing so with younger men.”

This has “historically been a taboo,” says Carbino, whereas an older man dating a younger woman is, if not widely applauded, seen as a shoulder-shrugging par for the course.

Even in 2024, the older woman-younger man dynamic is seen as “transgressive and subversive,” spicy in a way that lends a certain intrigue to hookup scenes between Hathaway’s middle-aged gallerist and Galitzine’s Gen Z pop star, absent in another recent rom-com “Anyone But You,” however swoony Glen Powell looks in a tux alongside Sydney Sweeney.

“Relationships between people of significantly different ages are always going to be transgressive and taboo, namely because of the generational differences between them and the capacity to form a family,” Carbino says. “The lens, the critical eye, and our perceptions may change and be different, but I think that overall there will still be broader questions about those individuals relative to individuals who share a similar age.”

What is different now? “People don’t feel they can vilify women in the same way,” Carbino says. “People still find it shocking and revelatory, but they no longer can be as critical of her.”

Part of that, Carbino adds, is down to a larger “erosion of traditional institutions and relationships.” Much like polyamory, these age-gap relationships fundamentally challenge long-held ideas about what the purpose of a romantic partnership should be.

Her concern is that these relationships are being used as shorthand for women’s personal growth. “Why do film and television need to portray women’s liberation and empowerment as involving something transgressive? I find it off-putting that a woman has to do something so radical and vilified by society to find herself,” she says. “It’s offensive, frankly, that women have to do something that’s considered beyond-the-pale historically in order to be ‘liberated.’”

There is still certainly a discomfort with this dynamic. Nancy* recently started dating again after ending a 15-year marriage, and has been shocked by the number of significantly younger men hitting her up on dating apps.

“At first I was like, ‘Wait, me? You sure? I have my age on my profile. Did you look at it?,” she says. “I’m finding that the younger men are actually leading the charge here, making it completely normal and natural. It’s the ladies who are the ones who are worried about the age gap initially.”

While it took her aback at first, Nancy says her perspective has changed as the interest has helped her realize “there is power and beauty in age.”

Larissa* puts dating younger guys into the “why not” category, alongside other new experiences a woman might explore in her second or third act. “I think once women are done with their first marriage, their kids are older, why not? It’s not like you have that goal of trying nuclear family life because you’ve already had it,” she says. “Just YOLO. Have fun now.”

Clare*, who is married to a man older than her, has found her own ideas about age-gap relationships evolving in the wake of “The Idea of You” and “A Family Affair.” “Honestly, I thought I would hate it, but the women in both those movies were not creepy at all,” she says. “If anything, it reinforced the idea that women’s beauty and appeal doesn’t just die at 45. Like, how refreshing to see older women cast in these roles when 20 years ago, anyone over 35 was considered decrepit!”

On social media, too, there’s a wave of posts made by women talking about their “age gap” relationship with a younger man. (The Outfield song “Your Love,” with its lyric “I like my girls a little bit older,” is often used as a soundtrack.)

In one post, a 43-year-old woman talks about “proving people wrong” in her long-term relationship with a 24-year-old. The many, many comments are a chorus of agreement.

“He pursued me for five months. I was hesitant. I’m 57, he’s 32,” wrote one commenter. “He’s the best and my best friend.”

“Get it girl! Me and my husband are 13 years apart. He will be 28 this year and I’ll be 42. Happiness and love have no limit (as long as you are both adults).”

Another TikTok video centres on a couple who explain she was 32 and he was 22 when they met. “Does it bother you that I’m so much older than you?” she asks him. “Not at all,” he answers.

The comments resound with support. “My husband was 22 and I was 32 as well when we got together. Here we are almost 15 years later,” said one. Concurred another: “Age is just a number.”