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Notes -
I’ve been thinking about this as a puzzle all day and the best explanation I can come to that fits all the evidence is that the older women are mad at men being attracted to female youth because it breaks their suspension of disbelief that “I could get him if I wanted to”.
In the previous 30yo shlub billionaire x 30yo model example, I agree that this wouldn’t prompt as much rage as 30yo shlub billionaire x 18yo shlub woman - because when a man’s attracted to a 30 year old model, the 40 year old spinster can still tell herself “If I really crash-coursed my hot yoga class I could still look roughly like that and get that kinda guy”. But if they suspect the guy is choosing his woman specifically because he is attracted to the flower of youth, it breaks her suspension of disbelief that she yet still has time to turn her life around, and indeed tells her that actually that ship sailed 22 years ago. Bezos’ wife makes them mad for a similar but slightly different reason. My understanding it that Lauren Sánchez Bezos spends a lot of time harping on about how her routine to still look good at 56 is a brutal full-time job and most women couldn’t do it, which is sufficiently believable to again knock the spinsters out of the fantasy that they could get a guy like that if they merely doubled down on the hot yoga.
Jealous unmarried spinsters don’t get worked up about 30 year old women dating billionaires, or dating 50 year old men, or dating 70 year old men - because 30 year old women are inside jealous unmarried spinster’s own self-reference class, and they like seeing that women (perceived as) similar to them can still get married. But no amount of self-deception can convince the spinster that she’s in the same reference class as an 18 year old, so now she feels competition rather than solidarity.
TL;DR - women don’t like it when men are attracted to attributes that they (believe they) can’t have, held by other women outside their own self-reference class. Youth is the most obvious one, but this also serves to explain the hate for passport bros who like different colours.
I think another way to put your hypothesis is that if women see a relationship between (1) a desirable man; and (2) a woman they identify with, then it's ok. Otherwise it's a problem. Does that kind of sum things up?
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