I’m not OK with that

I’ve become a weird mix of conservative and liberated as I’ve aged. Things I thought would shock me don’t faze me at all … and things I should let slide really bug me.

Yep, I’m going to be one of those loud, opinionated old people. Goodie.

Something that’s been making me mouthy lately are the hurrahs in my Facebook feed for French president elect Emmanuel Macron having a wife 24 years older than him.

They note that no one would bat an eyelid if it was a woman married to a man 25 years older than her.

And, yes, I agree. Awesome to break the mould. Go them!

But I’m uncomfortable with the whole 39-year-old dating a 15-year-old thing … which is how Emmanuel Macron and the new First Lady of France – Brigitte Trogneux – started out. (The pic above is the couple then and now.)

I don’t care whether you’re male or female. You don’t go around snogging teenage students – it’s not romantic, it’s ick.

That’s not a proud notch in the post for equality.

And don’t give me the whole “oh, the French have a different attitude to sex” thing.

The Independent writes: “Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in Sunday’s French presidential election, shares something with President Trump: a 24-year age gap with his wife. The difference is that Macron’s wife is the older one.

“That cliché-busting fact – a candidate young enough to be his wife’s son, rather than old enough to be her father – is a little social “revenge” that delights many French women.”

However, writer Anne Fulda, who penned the book Emmanuel Macron: A Perfect Young Man, spoke to the politician’s [French] parents about it and they weren’t so sunny.

They initially thought their son was dating Brigette’s daughter, who was the same age as their son. But nope, he was dating her mum, who was his teacher.

Emmanuel’s father, Jean-Michel Macron, revealed he “almost fell off his chair” when he learned about his son’s lover: “When Emmanuel met Brigitte, we certainly did not say, ‘How wonderful!”

The pair eventually married in 2007 when he was 29 and she was 54 years old. But I can’t help wondering whether he missed out on something by not being given the chance to date girls his own age.

Inappropriate beginnings aside, I’m quite loving how Macron is starting out as President, with that video defying Donald Trump’s stupid views on climate change and his promises to unite his fractured country.

So it’s swings and roundabouts … I’ll climb down off the soapbox now.

Song of the day: Rod Stewart “Maggie May”