J.Lo, My Queen, Blasts the 'Cougar' Double Standard on Ellen

Jennifer Lopez is on the stump for her new film The Boy Next Door, and currently rumors abound that the divine 45-year-old is dating her 27-year-old costar, Ryan Guzman. On Ellen, she denied it, but went on to lodge a brilliant complaint against the dumbass notion that an older woman dating a much younger man is a cougar, but an older man dating a much younger woman is just a dude. (Or, worse, a stud. Ew.)

Lopez, of course, has dated her share of younger men, just like Madonna and Mariah and Barbara Hershey (mmm… Naveen Andrews) and other excellent women whose juicy 40s and 50s and 60s I hope to emulate. After her divorce from Marc Anthony, she was most recently connected to dancers Casper Smart (now 27) and Maksim Chmerkovskiy (35), which is cool. On Ellen, J.Lo makes the very logical assertion that “if a younger guy’s interested in you, what’s the big deal?” Exactamundo. Of course, here is a pretty salient illustration of how most younger men respond to Jennifer Lopez:

Lopez’s point is not just personal, of course. If you live in New York City or Los Angeles or basically anywhere there is a concentration of very powerful, very rich, and often very old men, you will notice them solely dating women at least 20 years younger, if not more. Sometimes they are fashion models or actresses, but sometimes they are restaurant servers, strippers, bartenders and whatever else. George Clooney has spent his entire career dating younger women of this ilk, but the perception of him as a creepy old fucker has never dogged him the way the “cougar” reputation has dogged Jennifer Lopez. I do not need to explain why, but it is just dumb as hell. Good love and good sex are so rare in this shit world, especially for older women who society deems all but invisible once they hit their 40s, so if you find it, roll with it.

Incidentally, The Boy Next Door, is about a high school teacher who bones the hot dude next door, then finds out that he is totally her student—and when she breaks it off because obviously, he becomes a twisted stalker. Some people are mad but obviously this is a seamy Lifetime-ass plot, and while I haven’t seen it (YET; GONNA), there is no doubt in my mind that in ten years we will be viewing it with the same cultish, campy fervor that we normally reserve for great cinema like Poison Ivy and like, Showgirls.