One can't ignore the interesting fact that age difference in soaps is a given. How many times do you honestly see a male lead with a woman his age? Sure, the age difference may not seem drastic in appearance, but it is still there. This is a rule in Hollywood, on TV and in films, but it is an even stricter code in soaps. Men are allowed to be sexy leads longer while a woman gets one wrinkle and she's no longer on the short list for a love interest. I can't tell you how stunned I was to see All My Children's Tad even in Liza's orbit since he had such a young, um, agile lover in Simone. That is incredibly rare these days. So with such a short shelf life for women and such a long one for men, to create that really startling May/December romance, the guy either has to be in his fifties or sixties or the girl has to barely be out of junior high. But looking so much older can also be a bit of a backlash. When one character looks so young and the other so much older, it causes many fans to do a double take, especially when one character is his or her teens or barely out of them. The actual age of the character may be acceptable in theory, but when they look so much younger, that might elicit a "gross" reaction from fans. Put simply, I'm just not sure most of the romances on the air currently have what it takes for several reasons, regardless of the age difference. Nevertheless, the growing trend bothers me if for no other reason than most soaps are making no secret of courting younger viewers and with such a high focus on characters close to these teens and pre-teens age, that could really send the wrong message.
