Most of us grew up in front of a TV watching animation, movies, and young teen shows of the 2000s. When I was younger, I was obsessed with a lot of these series. I became invested in the characters’ lives and agonized over the mistakes they made or the struggles they were facing.
When I was an avid fan, there was always a big focus on the different characters’ love lives. Fans advocated for their favorite ships and debated over which pairing was the best. Sometimes these “iconic” and canon couples could be seen as somewhat problematic for young teens to be idolizing and aspiring for in future relationships. Many of the couples that were shown on these types of series could be seen as unhealthy or toxic. While maybe a few aspects could be explained away as the individuals being “teenagers,” a lot of the time, some of the relationships portrayed were predatory in nature.
TV Series like Pretty Little Liars actively promoted these predatory relationships during its seven season run. From the first episode, one of the main characters, Aria Montgomery, enters a clandestine relationship with one of her high school teachers, Ezra Fitz. This doesn’t even touch on the fact that it’s later revealed Ezra knew exactly who Aria was when they met. He purposefully became her teacher and, later, her boyfriend to conduct his investigation on how her friend, Alison, disappeared, another young girl whom he had a relationship with when she was 15. This 25-year-old man engineered a meeting with a 16-year-old teenager at a bar to prey on her vulnerability for his own gain. While many can argue that he “didn’t know” Alison’s age at the time, how does that excuse his behavior with Aria? Many still do, and are happy that they ended up married at the end of the show. Meanwhile, now, I look back and wonder how I could ever root for that relationship? Is it because, in a sense, it has become the “new normal”?
I say this since Pretty Little Liars isn’t the only series guilty of encouraging these types of relationships. In Gossip Girl, Dan Humphrey had a fling with a drama teacher during his high school years and Serena, while in college, entered a relationship with one of her teachers from Boarding School, who had been in jail up until that point due to accusations he was in a relationship with her. We, of course, learn that never happened; they “just had feelings for each other,” and when he was released from prison, they started a relationship. I believe there is a word for this; it’s called grooming. Grooming is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as, “the criminal activity of becoming friends with a child in order to try to persuade the child to have a sexual relationship.”
These types of age gaps are not just seen on screen; they transcend the stories being told. Oftentimes, underage actors are cast to play the love interest of adult actors. When Shasha Pieterse was cast to play Alison DiLaurentis, she was in middle school. During this period of time, she became a highly sexualized minor playing the love interest of multiple adult actors. This was also the case for actress Peyton Kennedy, from Everything Sucks!, who had to play out a kiss scene with an adult actor.
I think, in a certain way, we have been groomed by the media from a young age to believe that these types of relationships are okay. I say this because I’ve had the experience of trying to explain why Aria and Ezra’s relationship makes me extremely uncomfortable, and people will still fight me on it and say they had one of the most romantic relationships on TV. They will also justify it since Ezra was an attractive man. And while it may be uncomfortable to talk about these types of situations, we need to do so. Otherwise, we become vulnerable to these predatory behaviors.
I think this experience made me realize that, in a way, we have been so consumed by what we have watched and maybe enjoyed, that we can’t realize the real dangers we could face. This imbalance of power in relationships can occur at any time, whether it be at a job or at university, and we won’t be able to recognize the inappropriateness if it’s been normalized by all the media we consume.