Paulina Porizkova weighs in on Mel Owens's dating standards - and what pop culture gets wrong about love after 60. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis via Getty Images and TheStewartofNY/Getty Images)First things first: Paulina Porizkova is not interested in being a Golden Bachelor contestant.
The supermodel is newly engaged to TV writer Jeff Greenstein, so she's off the market. But when the new season lead of The Bachelor franchise spin-off, Mel Owens, shared his criteria of acceptable women he was interested in dating on the show, Porizkova, on paper, would have been disqualified by his standards.
She has graced the covers of Vogue, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and countless other publications; she is also 60 and had double hip replacement surgery in 2024. But
MORE: She has become an important voice in redefining aging. The No Filter: The Good, the Bad and the Beautiful author is outspoken about challenging outdated beauty ideals and calling out persistent double standards. So we brought The Bachelor brouhaha to her.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt all started when Owens, a 66-year-old NFL veteran turned lawyer, said on the In the Trenches sports podcast in June that he prefers to date women ages "45 to 60," and told producers, "If they're 60 or over, I'm cutting them." He also told them "to try to stay away from the artificial hips" too.
Owens has since walked back his comments, which sparked a backlash, telling Glamour he didn't understand the show's format or know the typical contestant age because he "hadn't dated in 26, 27 years." He finalized his divorce in December. His season of The Golden Bachelor premieres on Sept. 24.
Porizkova sees this debate as bigger than The Golden Bachelor. "Women are so used to this dynamic that a 60-year-old [man] dating a 40- or 30-year-old [woman] is fine," she tells Yahoo. "If he's powerful and has money, then he can date any age he wants."But it raises a deeper question: Do men and women have different expectations of what love and companionship should look like in their golden years?Starting overThe older man-younger woman relationship pairing has been spoon-fed for so long that it's normalized - and even romanticized.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt's the age-old story: The man is strong and successful, the woman is young and beautiful. And audiences have long lapped it up."It was not that long ago that the male actors were 30 years older [than their leading ladies] and nobody blinked," Porizkova says. "Like [Entrapment co-stars] Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery - he was old enough to be her grandfather practically, and that was fine."Catherine Zeta-Jones and Sean Connery in Entrapment. (20th Century Fox Film Corp./Courtesy of Everett Collection)She argues that a more realistic portrayal of mature love is missing in shows and movies, particularly in rom-coms and romantic dramas. As someone who found love again in her late 50s, she wants to see more stories reflecting her life stage."This is why I [thought] that The Golden Bachelor - the original idea - was such a great one," she says. "There are a lot of people starting over ... in midlife. 'Gray divorce' has a name, right? Let us see middle-aged people restarting. We actually restart from a much better place. Generally, we're smarter. We know what we want and what we don't want. It makes it harder to pick because a lot of [men] on offering are like the Golden Bachelor."The reality of dating after 60According to Pew Research Center data on single Americans in 2020, men significantly outnumber women in the dating market: 61% of single men said they were currently looking to date or be in a relationship compared with just 38% of single women. Those differences are starker after 40: 71% of older women say they weren't looking to date right now, compared with 42% of men in the same age cohort.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA 2025 Pew Research study showed that women were more likely to be unpartnered later in life: 51% of women over 65 were single compared with 29% of men over 65.
That helps explain why someone like Owens is looking to settle down again. Plus, it underscores the gender imbalance in the dating pool for that demographic.
Barbara Greenberg, a clinical psychologist, tells Yahoo that older men in age-gap relationships often feel a renewed sense of vitality. Dating a younger partner - particularly after long marriages with women closer in age - can feel like a fresh start, bringing with it the excitement of new possibilities, including the possibility of more children."It's the ability to feel young again," she says. "And, frankly, who doesn't want to feel younger?"AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementOwens's ex-wife is reportedly 19 years younger, suggesting he may already be accustomed to dating outside of his age bracket.
Still, the way society views an older man dating a younger woman - compared wit