Most people know I have a type and, well, as an elder Gen Z, I’m officially supporting hagmaxxing…It’s not a bad thing
For those unfamiliar, hagmaxxing is defined as follows:
A Gen Z term: Hagmaxxing is the act of young men/women dating and marrying older woman, resulting in a age disparity between the younger man/woman and older woman. Hagmaxxing benefits both partners in the relationship.
Sadly, many older women aren’t respected or desired by men of their own generation, and many people — both men and women in Gen Z — have realized that most only want hookups instead of someone to wake up beside and build something real with.
I mean, in a world gone mad, why not find the Nadja to your Laszlo rather than the Bella to your Edward? Hell, find your Yuno to your Yukiteru — someone who’d watch the world end with you — instead of the toxic mess that was Misa Amane and Light Yagami. Don’t settle for a Rick & Unity situation when you could have the beautiful madness of Millie and Moxie.
Hell, now I wanna listen to Moxie’s song for her.
That’s usually the part where people lose their minds — “Wait, she’s how much older?” Like it’s a crime scene instead of a relationship. Some act like I’ve joined a cult.
One thing that always pisses me off is the double fucking standard. I could walk into any casino in Vegas or club in Florida and see some college dropout hanging off a guy old enough to be her grandfather — and nobody bats an eye. But the second a Gen Z guy or girl dates a Millennial or Gen X woman, suddenly it’s “weird,” either because she’s older or because it’s a lesbian relationship.
Let’s be real — a 19-year-old woman dating a 70 or 80-year-old man isn’t even remotely the same thing, but somehow that’s what society finds acceptable? I’ll never understand it.
Some examples that always come to mind when I talk about this topic with others are ones like these:
Faye Valentine and Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop). Sure, Faye technically isn’t “older” thanks to her cryogenic freezing, but her emotional maturity often grounds Spike. She reminds him that beneath all the smoke and gunfire, he’s still human — and that connection matters.
Then there’s Beatrice the Golden Witch and Battler Ushiromiya (Umineko). Battler’s a cynical, fresh-out-of-school skeptic who refuses to believe in magic — until he ends up falling in love with the very witch who slaughtered his family in a twisted And Then There Were None-style mystery. It’s dark, ironic, and somehow beautiful.
But the best example — the one I always come back to is Professor River Song and the Eleventh Doctor (Doctor Who). Their story is tragically sweet. Their timelines run in opposite directions: the Doctor first meets her in his tenth regeneration on the day she dies, while she meets a younger version of him later on. Yet somehow, it works. They’re the textbook case of “older and wiser meets young and wild,” and it’s genuinely tender beneath all the sci-fi chaos.
There are a few other examples out there, but most don’t have quite the same age gap or emotional punch for this article.
Well maybe with one exception: Revy and Rock (Black Lagoon). Revy’s a hardened street kid from New York who had to grow up too fast, while Rock’s the polite, white-collar hostage who somehow becomes her moral compass. Sure, they’re technically the same age, but emotionally it’s night and day. Rock is to Revy what Faye is to Spike — the reminder that no matter how far she’s gone, how violent or jaded she’s become, she’s still human underneath it all. And that connection? That’s what keeps her from falling off the edge completely.
I should probably write an article about Revy and Rock for my fandom blog — but that’s for another time.