Are we officially living in the era of boy-toy cinema? Next week, I Want Your Sex hits theaters—a film I co-wrote with director Gregg Araki. It’s a twisted little love story about a Dom/sub relationship, a “dom-com” if you will, where a provocative artist (Olivia Wilde) chooses her much younger, fresh-faced assistant (Cooper Hoffman) as her sexual muse. He falls hard—but has no idea what he’s gotten into.

I Want Your Sex is based on a personal experience of mine. When I was 25, I ended up in a BDSM situationship with my then-editor—a terrifyingly charming British man 20 years older than me. It was one of those life-changing, growth-spurt sexual experiences that transforms you, and also kind of blows up your life, but you’re ultimately glad it’s part of your story. At the time, I never thought: One day this hot HR violation will be played for laughs onscreen by Olivia Wilde. Life’s funny like that.

When I started working on the script 13 years ago (yes, Hollywood timelines are truly insane), I wrote it true to life—a young woman with a much older man. Gregg and I spent years trying to get it made (meaning endless meetings with people who loved the story but didn’t want to give us money) before we eventually gave up.

But a few years ago, Gregg suggested we dust off that old script. Re-reading it was strange—the screenplay was only a few years old, but #MeToo had happened in the meantime. Suddenly, a comedy about a 40-something man dragging his 23-year-old female assistant around on a leash seemed a bit, shall we say, problematic? Not to mention impossible to fund.

So Gregg suggested a fix: why not swap the genders? At first, it felt like a practical decision. But somewhere during the rewrite, it became clear that seeing a woman as the pervy boss and a man as her wide-eyed, willing submissive made for a much more interesting—and sexier—movie.

The culture seems to agree with me. The older woman/younger man dynamic is extremely hot in Hollywood—and with audiences. Just in the last two years, we’ve seen Babygirl, The Idea of You, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Vladimir, Marty Supreme—to name a few. But it’s not just trendy for women in their 40s or 50s to be with a man whose frontal lobe isn’t fully developed—it’s also a lot more palatable. A young woman being told to lap milk out of a dog bowl for a man’s pleasure? A little gross. But Nicole Kidman doing it? That’s liberation, baby.

But… why? It’s not inherently more ethical. Maybe the obvious answer is that it’s hot because it’s new. Female desire has been shamed and hidden for so long that when it finally shows up—loud, messy, maybe even a little unhinged—it feels like a win. We also almost never get to see a man be the pretty, naive, wanted one. In I Want Your Sex, Olivia Wilde’s Erika is sleeping with (and tying up) her younger male subordinate—but he’s also her artistic muse, historically a feminine role. Watching a man be ogled and objectified still feels genuinely novel, sometimes so much so that it’s played for laughs (like Leo Woodall plunging in slow motion into a pool while a slack-jawed Bridget Jones stares at his beauty). In boy-toy cinema, every woman who’s ever been reduced to a body gets to watch a man find out what that’s like. Turns out, it can be as deeply satisfying as it is hot.

It’s also just fun—and long overdue—to watch women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s be sexual onscreen. As a millennial, I was raised on the idea that a woman’s expiration date was basically 40, while at 45 George Clooney was the most eligible bachelor alive. That’s what we’ve been sold—and what got greenlit—since pretty much forever.

But there’s an exciting shift happening. Gen X and elder millennial women are aging into midlife and saying, “No, actually, I’m not going to become invisible.” Forty ju”Sexy” doesn’t mean what it used to. As Emma Rosenblum recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “In 1991, a 45-year-old Diane Keaton starred in Father of the Bride, dressed in pearls as the mother of the bride; in The Odyssey… a 43-year-old Lupita Nyong’o plays Helen of Troy, the most desirable woman on earth.” On screen and in real life, women are rejecting the old lie that sexiness is only about youth.

They say art imitates life—and in this case, that’s literally true for me. But I think it works the other way too. Watching a woman break the rules and get away with it gives the rest of us a new way to act. But beneath all the talk about age gaps, younger lovers, and the female gaze, I Want Your Sex is really a movie about a young person having a deeply emotional, eye-opening sexual experience that changes them forever. It’s about deciding that someone who’s clearly bad for you is still worth it. And that part isn’t about gender.

I Want Your Sex opens in theaters nationwide on July 31. Read Karley Sciortino’s Substack, Hotline, here.

Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the phrase I Want Your Sex and Hollywoods new favorite age gap written in a natural tone with clear answers

BeginnerLevel Questions

1 What does I Want Your Sex refer to in this context
Its a reference to the 1987 George Michael song In this conversation its used as a shorthand for the trend of Hollywood movies and shows explicitly highlighting or romanticizing large age gaps in relationships often with younger women and older men

2 What is Hollywoods new favorite age gap
Its the trend of casting actors with a significant age difference as romantic leads For example a 50yearold actor paired with a 25yearold actress

3 Is this age gap actually new
No Age gaps in Hollywood are very old Whats new is how frequently and openly its happening again and how its being framed as normal or hot in marketing

4 Why is everyone talking about this now
Because of a string of highprofile movies and TV shows that feature large age gaps and are being heavily promoted The contrast between the onscreen romance and the reallife criticism of power imbalances has sparked debate

5 Is this a problem
Many people think it can be Critics argue it normalizes relationships where the older partner has more money power and life experience which can create an unhealthy power dynamic Others say its just fiction and not a big deal

AdvancedLevel Questions

6 Whats the difference between this trend and the classic MayDecember romance
The classic MayDecember romance was usually framed as a scandal or a cautionary tale The new trend often romanticizes the age gap presenting the older man as a silver fox and the younger woman as mature for her age without acknowledging the potential pitfalls

7 Are there any realworld benefits to these large age gaps being shown in media
Some defenders say it can normalize consensual happy relationships between people of different ages However critics point