While there are plenty of reasons why people might have voted for Macron, apparently many French women took particular delight in supporting him because of the 24-year age gap between Macron and his wife. Something in fact which Macron has in common with Donald Trump, but in Trump’s case, the age gap looks like a predictable cliché while in Macron’s case, it’s the exact opposite.
 
As pretty much everyone knows, Macron is 39 and his wife just turned 64. Macron was only 15 when he met Brigitte Trogneux, a married teacher at his high school in northern France who had three children. Macron's parents sent him to Paris to put distance between the teacher who ran the drama club and their precocious son, but their bond lasted, she divorced, and 10 years ago they were married.
 
Just days before the French vote, nearly all women interviewed said they were more interested in Macron because his marriage breaks the mould in French politics which has long been dominated by men with younger lovers - from François Hollande, the current president, who separated from his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, after a very public affair with an actress 18 years his junior, to former president François Mitterrand who took a mistress half his age when he was in his 40s - a younger woman who famously stood near his wife at his funeral in 1996. When older women end up with much younger men, the women are pegged as desperate "cougars" as Macron’s detractors have called Trogneux on Twitter. Meanwhile the tabloid media have had a field day speculating about whether she has had hair extensions, veneers and botox.
 
Swap the genders and young men like Macron who fall for older women are seen in a much more positive light and generally applauded for their choice of partner, wrinkles and all. Further underscoring the double standards which see women painted as the villain no matter what, media accounts of the now First Couple's once illicit relationship have offered it as evidence of Macron’s daring personality and willingness to break with tradition, qualities that helped make him a presidential frontrunner without a political party or any experience in elected office. 

But as Christina Cauterucci writes on slate.com, this is a strange way to frame a romantic relationship between a teenager and his 40-year-old teacher. “If [the genders were reversed and] Macron had been a young woman who’d seduced her male high-school teacher away from his wife and family, her determination and ultimate success would not be proffered as signs of her leadership skills, the beginning of a life as an effective politician. She would be cast as an opportunistic Jezebel with daddy issues who slept her way into every political role she got.”
 
Indeed, swap their genders and the story of Macron "as a goal-oriented romancer" and his unwavering resolve to woo his teacher "would be spun as a conventional tale of an unhinged, desperate home-wrecker. Conquering resistance through patient pursuit would, to most observers, seem like obsessed-stalker behaviour coming from a young girl…”
 
Macron may have broken the cliché of the powerful older man and much younger trophy wife but we are still a long way from a bias and blame free society where women can act exactly like men and not be the subject of finger pointing and derision.
 
As always, we would love to hear your views on this and other topics! Please write to me at su-mei.thompson@twfhk.org.