Sexist ageism comes with a gender bias

MAYBE don’t read this if you’re eating. It involves sex with Donald Trump. Consider yourself warned, writes Suzanne Harrington. 

Now the last thing I would ever wish to think about, or have you think about, or indeed anyone at all think about, is sex with Donald Trump. But for the purposes of this column, we must take a deep breath and go there. Steady yourself, squeeze your eyes shut, and just picture Trump and Melania. Doing it.

Why are we thinking about this? Because we are being asked to think about sex between the French presidential candidate and their spouse. No, not the fascist. The other one — Monsieur and Madame Macron. Naturally, the British Daily Mail has already waded into the marriage of Bibi and Mani, making all kinds of insinuations. He’s a mummy’s boy, wrote some fun-sponging old harpy. Or he’s gay. Or both. How could anyone want to be with a woman 24 years his senior unless she was his beard? Yes, say the Russian media, who prefer the fascist. Definitely gay.

You’ll probably be aware that Mme Macron used to be M Macron’s drama teacher, that he fell in love with her while still in his teens, that she was married to someone else, that her daughters are around the same age as the Presidential candidate, and that when he turned 18, she left her 54-year-old husband and married her Mani. That was in 2007, and they have been — according to Paris Match, at least — blissfully in love ever since. How French. How utterly, gorgeously, fabulously French. L’amour, c’est tout.

Anyway, what exactly does any of this have to do with having sex with Donald Trump? The clue is 24. Mr Trump is 24 years older than the current Mrs Trump, just as Mme Macron is 24 years older than M Macron. Spot the difference? There is none. Except there is, because we still can’t process the idea of a man being into a significantly older woman without assuming he is some kind of perv with a penchant for nannies and grannies. It couldn’t just be straightforward love and desire, could it? The French have always revered the sexuality of older women, but elsewhere our sexist ageism is as ingrained as the crow’s feet on the gorgeous face of Brigitte Macron.

Yet a man — even a preposterous orange man-baby — can marry a woman 24 years his junior without comment or censure. This is because he remains irresistible forever, virile to the last gasp, propped up by money, entitlement and Viagra. Is it unfair to suggest that possibly, just possibly, such marriages — between rich old men and younger lower-status women — might be a teeny weeny bit transactional?

The current occupants of the White House would like us to think not. There’s even a recording from 1999 of Melania Trump talking to tragic shock-jock Howard Stern about sex with Donald. I’ve listened to it so you don’t have to. Don’t. You won’t ever get the images out of your mind.