My birthday is May 23, 2003. Eden Polani’s birthday is March 2, 2003. That means the age gap between Leonardo DiCaprio and his alleged new girlfriend is 29 years. I wanted to get opinions from other girls my age about how they feel about Leo’s pattern of dating very young women. Here is what some college students, who are older than his current girlfriend, are saying about the situation.
The first friend of mine I spoke to said that as many jokes as she loves to make about dating Pedro Pascal if any of her friends told her that they were seeing a 48-year-old man she would be concerned for them. The age gap between Leonardo DiCaprio and his young girlfriends is important not because of just their age but because of the power dynamics that are present. She continued on that Leonardo DiCaprio already has an advantage over them by the many years of life experience but in addition to that he also has money, power, privilege and fame.
Other people have explained their reactions to this by pointing out people with similar age gaps such as different cast members on television. Some examples that come to mind very frequently in this conversation online are Millie Bobby Brown and David Harbour who play Eleven and Hopper in Stranger Things and have a father-daughter dynamic. Another father-daughter dynamic with the same age gap is the two leads of the new HBO Max show which is an adaptation of the video game The Last Of Us. The leads of that show also have a 29-year age gap between the two of them. By putting it in this context people are emphasizing how seemingly inappropriate this age in power disparity really is.
A girl from my hall that I spoke to about it was laughing and joking about how she is now too old to date Leonardo DiCaprio. However, I spoke to one person who said that she is an adult technically by the law and so she is free to make her own choices. This person’s argument was that by being concerned about the age gap in a relationship we are taking agency away from this girl. Their argument was that because she is an adult, she could make her own decisions about who she dates. No matter your opinion, it’s certainly a hot topic of conversation.
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