BRYONY GORDON: I fear I’m turning into a pervert, ogling men who are much, much younger than me. And so many of my middle-aged friends say they’re having the same intrusive thoughts…
My name is Bryony and I fear I am turning into a pervy middle-aged woman.
Admittedly, it’s not the most illustrious start to a column I’ve ever written. It doesn’t fill me with any pride to say these words. But I can no longer deny that I spend a significant amount of my spare time ogling men who are much, much younger than me.
Right now, it’s the cast of Off Campus, a hugely popular show on Amazon Prime about the spicy sexual chemistry between a college ice hockey player and a music student. It’s bursting with hunky young men, none of whom appear to be older than 21.
My teenage daughter, who I’ve been watching it with, tells me I’m an embarrassment. If only she knew the half of it. Because my crush on the cast of Off Campus is merely the latest in a long line of fantasies about famous men that border on the inappropriate. At 45, I’m not quite old enough to be their mother but I could definitely be their aunt.
I’ll try to explain in a way that won’t get me cancelled.
The problem started a couple of summers ago when I watched that terrible film starring Anne Hathaway as a middle-aged mum who accidentally falls for the young lead singer of her teenage daughter’s favourite band. (The Idea Of You, also on Prime, the streamer that is primarily enabling these tragic middle-aged fantasies of mine).
‘This is laughably ridiculous!’ I told my husband but it must have planted a seed in my mind because, before long, my mum friends and I were discussing which young pop stars we’d have as our ‘hall pass’ (the celebrity your other half gives you permission to cheat with because, let’s face it, it isn’t going to happen).
Harry Styles was obviously a popular choice and, at one point, I thought a couple of women might come to blows over him. Several expressed an interest in US pop star Benson Boone, a moustachioed 23-year-old who looks like he’s walked off the set of a 1970s porn film.
Off Campus, a hugely popular show on Amazon Prime, is bursting with hunky young men, none of whom appear to be older than 21
Anne Hathaway in The Idea Of You, where her character becomes romantically invloved with a much younger man
I had a soft spot for Bad Bunny, which my friends could not for the life of them understand until early last year when he, ahem, fronted a Calvin Klein advert in his underwear.
You can look the ad up but don’t be surprised if your Instagram algorithm cottons on and starts pushing you endless videos of the 32-year-old ‘dwerking’ – that’s thrusting his hips provocatively on stage like a boyband star from 1994 (the year he was born).
Recently, a new, young pretender has slipped into my Instagram algorithm and his name is Garrett Graham. He’s young, he’s hunky, he isn’t actually real – he’s the lead character in Off Campus – but that hasn’t stopped a whole host of middle-aged mumfluencers from creating content about him on social media, which I watch after dark when my husband has gone to sleep.
‘Be honest… after watching [Off Campus], did you immediately Google to see how old he was in real life so you didn’t feel bad?’ asked one woman, while another announced that ‘Garrett Graham really made me forget I’m someone’s mother for eight episodes’.
Are we all OK? The other day, I watched a group of grown women debate the relative merits of Jacob Elordi, 28, and 30-year-old Timothee Chalamet. This is the kind of behaviour you might expect from a 14-year-old – but a 40-something covered in HRT patches?
Then again, perhaps it’s these midlife hormonal fluctuations that are leading to this leery behaviour in the first place.
Given many experts now describe perimenopause as a ‘second puberty’, should we really be that surprised that so many of us end up developing crushes on the kind of men we fancied when we were first going through puberty? Indeed, there’s a reason that Harry Styles, 32, has got Shania Twain, 60, to open for him during this month’s record-breaking Wembley residency. It’s because the majority of parents attending his concerts with their teens today grew up dancing to her in the 1990s.
Forget about rage bait – this is Middle-Age Bait.
And it works. Off Campus is based on a series of books by 44-year-old Elle Kennedy, who clearly knows what midlife women want: the chance to imagine a world where we came of age with young men who treated us well and wanted to give us an orgasm (believe me, this was not the case for me and most of my friends).
I doubt this is a new thing for perimenopausal women – it’s just that we are the generation who have truly embraced HRT, and most recently testosterone, which has personally given me the libido of… well, a bloke.
Today, we don’t have to become frumpy old women the moment we start getting hot flushes. But should we be behaving like pervy old women? How civilised is it to be getting hot flushes of a different kind as we objectify shirtless young men? And how would we feel if our husbands started watching endless sexy videos of, say, Sabrina Carpenter?
I’ll leave you to ponder these questions while I nip off to get my Garrett Graham fix – and finish the last two episodes of Off Campus.
Forget WAGs, I can’t get enough of Emma’s ‘HAB’
Emma Raducanu spotted in London with new boyfriend John Friend while they walk the dog
Given I already sound like a pathetic old woman, I might as well say how delightful it is to see young Emma Raducanu looking all loved up this week. The tennis star, 23, was spotted strolling through a London park with her new boyfriend, John Friend, 32, who is a PR expert and the trustee of a cancer charity. Forget the World Cup WAGs, I’m far more interested in Emma’s new HAB (Husband And Boyfriend).
Now Meloni’s the one on the warpath
Big news from the G7 – nope, not the potential peace deals in Iran and Ukraine, but the fact that Giorgia Meloni has finally managed to quit smoking.
The Italian PM impressed fellow world leaders when she revealed this week that she’s been cigarette-free for the past month.
A hot mic captured Canadian PM Mark Carney asking if she was wearing a patch. For his sake, I hope the answer was yes – because I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of a powerful woman who has just gone into nicotine withdrawal.
A storm-in-a-teacup Ascot hat
Back in 2011, when I was a young and enthusiastic newspaper reporter, I was sent to Royal Ascot with a teaset on my head.
It caused quite the storm and I ended up on several front pages, as well as the BBC News website. Fifteen years on, fashionable racegoers are wearing fascinators featuring bats, lizards and parades of butterflies… and I reckon my char-peau (get it?) would barely raise an eyebrow now.
The World Cup? I’m fast asleep
A sleep scientist has revealed that England fans could forfeit up to 275 hours of kip during this World Cup due to the number of late night kick-offs.
I personally won’t lose a wink of sleep over the tournament – given that I’m 45 and tucked up in bed by 9pm most nights.
I wholeheartedly support the ban on social media for under-16s – as do all the other parents in our school WhatsApp group, which contains hundreds of mums and dads.
The handful of objections seem to be from people wondering how the ban will be enforced. Here’s a simple suggestion: what about with a bit of good old-fashioned strict parenting?
