Straight guys have a hard time when women evaluate men's appearance.
I'm all for directing an eye roll at the rich-old-dude-lands-much-younger-woman currency exchange, which Rhonda Garelick explores in her recent New York Times piece on 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch's bartering of his wealth and power for the (relative) youth and beauty of a woman 26 years his junior, Ann Lesley Smith. (Nothing against Smith, but as 66-year-old women go, I'm not sure how one could improve on recent Murdoch dumpee Jerry Hall.) Garelick points out that reversing the genders in this equation would be fairly unthinkable. But there's another, related double standard lurking just outside the frame. It's not just that men's appearance isn't weighted as heavily as women's; it's that the subject of men's looks is so often off the table.
