The Young and The Old

In response to Shannon Ciuk's question, "What is your first impression when you see a young female with an elderly man or the opposite, a young male with an elderly woman? Thanks to the media and stereotypes I bet most people think the younger person in the relationship is in it for the money. Do you agree or disagree?"...

     As unfortunate as it is to admit it, when I see an elderly person in what seems to be a relationship with a young person, I think what many of us probably do, "What is he/she doing with him/her?" As Shannon mentioned, in our society our perceptions have been shaped so that we assume that the young should not be in relationships with the old. In some evolutionary sense, it makes sense as to why the pairing would seem so odd to us. First of all, when looked at from a eugenic viewpoint (and I am not saying that it is correct to think this way), the young ("fit") should mate with the young (also "fit") to produce the strongest children genetically. Additionally, if the young mate with the old, the old are likely to die sooner, which would leave the young to take care of the child by themselves. Not to mention, older women often cannot even produce children with a younger man. So, perhaps some of these perceptions are automatically built into our minds, causing us to feel such uneasiness when we see a young woman with an old man, for instance.
     However, I also believe that we see the relationship as odd because "looks" are such an overpowering force in a relationships, as much as we would like to deny it. After all, we do not think the relationship is odd because of the personalities of the individuals, but rather because of how they each look. In other words, we do not understand why a young, and in our view, and automatically more attractive person would want to be with an older person, who we automatically assume to look worse because of their age. Considering this, we do not see young paired with young as odd, for they are considered both relatively attractive. We do not see old paired with old as strange because they are on the same level of attractiveness in our minds. So, young and old is processed in our minds as an odd pairing.
     Personally, I do not agree with Shannon's statement that most people would assume the younger person in a young and old pairing to be in it for the money. I feel like primarily people feel subconsciously uneasy about the pairing for the reasons I have mentioned, and some, in an attempt to justify it in their minds, attribute the pairing to money for they cannot think of any other explanation for it. I know when I see a young man with an older woman I do not automatically assume that he wants her money, but instead I first register how different of a couple they are. However, with media promoting Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Bunny, it makes sense as to why people would assume this money connection. Imagine there were two suitors available to you and you had to pick one of them to marry. Would you choose the very attractive, poor individual or the very rich, but highly unattractive person?Do not take personality into account.