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I suspect that the current age-gap discourse actually serves to benefit powerful/wealthy older men, as they become the only ones with enough clout to ignore the social shaming... and the only ones with enough appeal to convince a woman to ignore the social shaming. Acquiring a hot young girlfriend thus becomes even more of a flex and proof of their own status.
And of course it encourages them to keep it on the downlow, and this also suits the guy because she won't be pushing him as hard to make them 'official' or 'public' and gives her less leverage to push for a marriage.
And finally, by making it taboo, it actually becomes more appealing for a certain kind of woman to seek it out.
Bill Belichick is simply not bound by by same standards as your average guy. And because he isn't bound by them and can't be influenced by shaming, the shamesters won't target him, they'll go after the class of males they think they CAN influence, who were less likely to be able to attract a young lady anyway.
So as with many other things, the main effect of such social rules is to restrict behaviors of the middle group of men who are cowed by status games and shame.
And of course the bottom class of dude who is so outside the normal status hierarchy that it doesn't effect him will go after younger ladies regardless.
Well this is gonna be a fun little narrative violation then. That is just about marriage rather than girlfriend but wealthy people are also significantly less likely to divorce as well. They tend to marry when they're young and then stay with their wives.
Haha but you see the issue there.
Bill Belichick isn't married.
Leo DiCaprio doesn't marry his girlfriends.
Nor does Toby Maguire.
Likewise, consider the rise of Sugar Dating as an informal institution.
This is my point. It actually relieves the pressure to marry these women since they lose any real leverage they might have had.
They're getting to have the cake that is off-limits to normal guys, and eat it too by having no legal or social commitment obligations imposed.
I mean most of the age-gap relationships I see are more of the 'lifer hospitality worker in his mid thirties and random 19 year old cashier' type than the rich or wealthy involved in them. They're also generally more towards lower socioeconomic ends of society for a variety of reasons.
I agree that some subset of the rich and/or famous date down, but the majority of the rich don't have that much social clout and your average UMC middle-high manager with a mortgage and a 5M networth is generally not in any position to find a wife who's 20 years younger than him.
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The whole point @magicalkittycat was making (which I agree with) is that these guys are exceptional among rich/powerful/successful men. Most R/P/S men are still married to the mothers of their children, so they are facing weaker taboos against taking up a younger girlfriend than they used to - both the taboo against adult age gaps and the taboo against adultery in 2026 are weaker than the taboo against adultery was in 1980.
The informal institution of "rich men having mistresses but being discrete about it" was not created by seekingarrangement.com.
The purpose of the age gap taboo from the point of view of the feminists and allies imposing it is to force middle-aged divorced men with options to date middle-aged divorced women rather than dating prime-age never-married women. Middle-aged divorced women, and women who want to improve their options should they choose the life of middle-aged divorced woman, are the core constituency of feminism.
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