A 20 year old woman can be a responsible mother, a startup founder, a voter, a officer in the military, a nurse assistant in acute care, a graduate student if she started college early or a college dropout if she decided to try traveling the late Steve Jobs' path, probably a driver of a commercial vehicle, but cannot legally buy alcohol. This is far more absurd than what you are noticing, Shadix. You are talking about people's perceptions and prejudices. You can show a middle finger to people's perceptions and prejudices, and you should, and, those prejudices affect you only a bit. Likewise, a 20 year old woman does not need to care about what people think of her dating choices - she is free to ignore irrelevant input from 3rd parties. That she cannot LEGALLY buy a cocktail is far worse, but this inability is legal, and thus "hard". There is a hard limit on this which is broken all the time but it still exists and legal consequences do happen to some people, just not to most. In general, when there is a hard problem (the alcohol issue which is beyond absurd since 15 year olds are allowed to drive on highways but not drink in any sort of setting or company), it should be solved before proceeding to solving "soft" problems. The problem you are talking about is "soft" - perceptions, reputation, public opinion, prejudice are soft on an individual level. On corporate levels, public opinion can be viewed as a hard asset of the company and reputational harm can be viewed as a hard liability, but in the private situations you are talking about, this is all soft. Yes, the things you are observing and noticing are ironic, irrational, and curious, and your observations of the asymmetry of this whole layout are spot on, but it does not change the fact that this is a soft issue and you personally should not be concerned with what somebody might say about your dating choices. You are in your late 20s and women in their early 20s are essentially your age peers.

Larry - the example with 6-1=5 and 96-91=5 too was posted in an effort to preempt "a 45 year old was a 40 year old 5 years ago but a 20 year old was only 15 years ago".

At the very least, a 20 year old was 15 years old when she was 25% younger than her current age, and a 45 year old was 36 years old when he was 25% younger than his current age. That, at the very least. Not comparing 15 with 40 but 15 with 36. In reality, even that is not a fair comparison because human growth is highly non-linear. A 45 year old is an adult with the full suite of legal rights and responsibilities. 5 years ago he was also an adult with the full suite of legal rights and responsibilities. No drastic changes in his legal status have occurred in the past 5 years. His skeleton has remained largely the same, probably with some minor bone loss.

A 20 year old is an adult with an incomplete suite of legal rights and virtually a complete suite of legal responsibilities (this asymmetry was partially noted by Shadix on this thread). 5 years ago a 20 year old was an adolescent with limited rights and responsibilities. That in Texas a 15 year old can get a driving permit is an artifact of the vastness of the state. A Texan 15 year old is likely much less sophisticated than a Parisian 15 year old, and yet, in Paris there is good public transit and a 15 year old is unlikely to need to drive a car (plus, by American standards it is impossible to park a car in Paris so there is no point in having one...). So in the last 5 years a 45 year old has been slowly maturing, growing, aging a bit etc - he is on a continuous, smooth growth segment of his aging curve. A 20 year old had a completely different status 5 years ago. For a 20 year old, the last 5 years were a growth spike and not a continuous smooth and slow maturation. And a 6 year old who can read was a 1 year old who probably could not even speak at 1. So in the last 5 years a 45 year old has changed a bit, a 20 year old has changed a lot, and a 6 year old has changed tremendously. This is because human growth is not linear. It is highly non-linear. Also, some people do not hit puberty until 16-17, so a 20 year old who is now capable of reproduction might have been prepubescent 5 years ago - again, the growth is not at all a straight line.

To sum it up and make it clear - 5 years ago, a 3 year old had not even been conceived yet and a 93 year old elderly person was a 88 year old elderly person.