For decades, Bollywood, Hollywood,and society in general, celebrated one kind of age-gap relationship: older men with younger women. It was framed as normal, aspirational even. But reverse the equation, and suddenly the jokes, judgment and whispered opinions begin.
That’s why today’s high-profile couples — Miley Cyrus and Maxx Morando, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Nick Jonas, Cher and Alexander Edwards — feel culturally significant. Their relationships are testing a long-standing double standard around who is “allowed” to date whom.
As therapist Jyoti Das puts it, "A one-word answer for this is patriarchy. Older women who date younger men are judged more harshly because they're going against what is expected of their sex in a patriarchal world."
The notion that women must be youthful, accommodating, and more devoted to care-giving, persists, informing how society evaluates romance and desirability.
Miley Cyrus has never been one to shy away from defying expectation, and her relationship with musician Maxx Morando is just another example. Their age difference is rarely, if ever, the focus of their public image, which is a quiet yet powerful statement in itself. Instead, their fans celebrate compatibility, creativity, and shared values, showing how younger audiences are less invested in outdated relationship norms.
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When Priyanka Chopra Jonas married Nick Jonas, the world discussed the age difference between them. But the two have continued to prove skeptics wrong, establishing a solid, visible partnership based on the core values of equality, ambition, and emotional maturity. Their marriage epitomizes a trend: love defined by compatibility and support, not numbers.
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Cher's unapologetic romance with Alexander Edwards remains one of Hollywood's boldest age-gap relationships. Cher treats love as something that belongs to her, not to public opinion. In so doing, she models a freeing idea: desire and companionship don't have an expiry date.
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The more these women show up publicly with confidence, humour and zero hesitation, the more they chip away at the stigma around older women dating younger men. They signal that love can be expansive — not dictated by age norms or society’s comfort levels.
If cultural narratives are fashioned through repetition, visibility and confidence, then these celebrity couples are changing the style of contemporary romance itself. In so doing, their relationships normalize the idea that women can choose love on their own terms — unapologetically, and without waiting for society's approval.
In a world where patriarchal expectations still try to dictate what “acceptable” love looks like, Miley, Priyanka, and Cher remind us that age isn’t the boundary, outdated thinking is.
