She's 15, brah

And as we all know, 15 gets you 20.

I watched Mermaids ages ago and remember enjoying it. It's pretty chick-flicky but it has some substance. And I'm the last person to yell "She's too young" at a movie. I'm way too liberal about that shit to begin with. But in this instance I'm definitely thinking the age disparity in the main romance is pretty damn egregious. Winona's character is 15, pre-Heathers. And her love interest is 26. And Cher's not putting the kibosh on this either, she's encouraging it from day one. It's a cute movie and it's early 90s so again, shit like that you could get away with it. I think Alicia Silverstone was barely 15 in The Crush and that's way worse. Lolita exists. So I don't really know why I'm bothered by this, except I've probably spent too much time on Degrassi boards seeing people get bent out of shape about older man younger girl narratives. I don't like the double standards where women get a free pass because every boy by the age of 12 wants to get laid and she'll make a man out of him. It's BS.

But I barely remember this movie now and if I saw it at 15 I was probably fine with it. I thought the boy was 18 at best. I don't actually see why he couldn't have been, he looks too young for 26 anyway (Scratch that, dude looks old enough so I guess a younger looking guy wouldn't have worked. And I thought he was Matt Dillon for a second. So yeah, not a bad movie just a bad thing in it. It's nothing I've not seen before but it's definitely something you could gloss over way easier back then. I try to explain that to kids who gawp at that shit now. They have higher moral standards, which is a good thing. It really is, it's awful I've come to just accept this shit being a reality.

Oh, and Cher's a better actress than she is a singer.

Ironically, in the movie Boys, Ryder plays a 25 year old who sleeps with a minor (I assumed he wasn't until it's mentioned she's contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and the parents obnoxiously call him "sonny" the entire time). She's basically using him to evade the cops, it's a pretty terrible movie that wouldn't pass the creep-o-meter by today's standards. But yeah, the 90s were all about them hot double standards. I think I thought these movies were way more romantic than they were, they all had the same aesthetic and melodrama I was in love with at the time.