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It’s inevitable that, when one of the internet’s boyfriends settles down, his fans will freak out over the news. It’s a cycle as old as celebrity itself, whether it’s Elvis marrying Priscilla, the Beatles’ various couplings, or the One Direction guys sowing their wild oats. So, the news that Chris Evans, America’s ass, had married Warrior Nun star Alba Baptista was always going to make some of his more ardent fans a little frenetic. It was also sadly unsurprising that the reports elicited a startling level of misogyny towards Baptista and a renewed cycle of discourse over their age gap. Evans, who has never been married before, is 42. Baptista is 26.
There is something about a prominent couple with an age gap that inspires some of the more questionable opinions in online fandom. Very real questions about power dynamics and the historical mistreatment of younger women at the hands of older men quickly give way to a kind of concern-trolling that further reduces these celebrities to something less than human. In the case of Evans and Baptista, it’s led to people calling Baptista a “child bride” and Evans being labeled predatory. Some started to scream about how our brains don’t fully develop until we’re in our mid-20s, so by that logic, Baptista isn’t mentally capable of consenting to dating a fellow adult.
This particular strain of exaggerated panic over couples with any sort of age gap over, in general, 15 years has exploded in visibility across fandom. Some of it has come from a caring and reasonable place, but when two consenting adults face cries of grooming because one is in their mid-20s, it feels like something has gone very wrong in our wider understanding of consent.