Monday, August 24, 2009

More on The Goldblum and Alex from Lost.

Judgmental article rife with jealousy and spelling errors (corrected below). Item!
There were rumors back in June that actor Jeff Goldblum, 56, had met an unfortunate fate and had died while shooting a film. As everyone probably knows by now, Goldblum was part of a celebrity death hoax that spread around the internet.

Goldblum is not only very much alive, but is being seen flirting and cuddling his 21-year- old girlfriend, actress Tania Raymonde.

Their thirty-five-year age difference is not something new in Hollywood, or in the history of dating and mating, but it brings up the question; "how much of an age difference is too much?"

The old guideline for socially acceptable age differences in western culture was, the arbitrary, " half-your-age-plus seven," rule. Under this mathmatical formula you would take Goldblum's 56 years and divide by half (28) and then add seven more years for good measure. This would mean that it was fine if Raymonde was 35 years old. This would be a more familiar twenty-one-year age difference.

Anecdotally, most people can point to some successful relationship that they know where there has been a difference of 15 or 20 years. But when that number climbs upwards, people might begin thinking of Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall. Motives come into question when the age difference becomes far greater; especially if the elder partner has their money, social, or professional status at risk.

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