Milf Manor is making viewers upset and causing the media to collectively clutch its pearls – but not, I think, for the reasons they should be recoiling. If you’ve been spared hearing about TLC’s latest contribution to the reality television garbage heap, here is the recap: Eight “hot moms”, all women in their 40s or 50s, are sent to live in a seaside villa in Mexico, where, they’re told, they’re going to be dating younger guys (the ol’ hookup house conceit). When the guys, all studs in their 20s, appear, it turns out that they’re these same women’s sons in real life.
“You are not exactly on the show you thought were on,” a text from the producers tells them. Everyone looks shocked. “Wait, they’re our moms?” asks one of the sons. “Holy shit!”
Most reality shows are heavily staged, so who knows if the participants had fair warning. In any case, Milf Manor, which premiered on 15 January, has been deemed “a new low for reality TV, perhaps even a rock bottom” by the New Yorker, which called it “gross” and “disturbing”. Rolling Stone likened the show to “incest porn”, clucking: “Casual sex is no longer enough; kink must become mainstream.” Milf Manor has only 17% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, with audience reviewers split, describing it as both “degenerate” and “tantalizing”. On TikTok, users have called it “disgusting” and “great”. Meanwhile, some male commenters just talk about what smokeshows they think the Milfs are.
First of all, one wonders why TLC didn’t just make a show about older women dating younger men who were not each other’s kids? Why throw this bizarre, oedipal twist into a soup that’s already plenty hot? Milf porn has been a mainstay of the online porn industry for over 20 years; it’s no surprise that younger men find older women attractive, and vice versa. Just ask Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron (she’s 69, he’s 45). Or Cher and Alexander Edwards (she’s 76, he’s 36). Or Madonna and Andrew Darnell (she’s 64, he’s 23).
Oh, but wait. All of those couples, at various times, have been mocked and shamed for their age gap, which continues to be taboo. At a time when nothing seems out of bounds for anybody else any more, older women are once again being told to put on some sensible shoes and act their age. The real outrage of Milf Manor isn’t that the sons are nearby when their mothers are dating younger guys; it’s that the sons have been sent there to shame the mothers for wanting to date younger men.
It’s the very presence of the sons in the house that makes the women’s (healthy, ordinary) desire for sex and love with younger men seem icky. Not to mention the sons’ frequent expressions of outrage (“Mom!”) at their mothers’ flirting, as well as their petulant “cock-blocking”, as one of the mothers calls it. Despite some earnest conversations between its characters about double standards and female empowerment, Milf Manor, is, values-wise, a deeply conservative show, as so much of reality TV winds up being. Its actual premise (intentional or not) is: “How dare these women try to date men who are young enough to be their sons?”
A sense of this is driven home in every awkward “challenge” the cast undergoes, wherein the sons are subjected to a series of Freudian horrors: watching their mothers, blindfolded, feel up all the shirtless sons in order to identify which one is hers; hearing their mothers confess their sexual secrets. One of the moms admits to having slept with her son’s best friend, which causes him considerable distress.
The moms themselves (except for the requisite “wild girl”) seem to find all this quite uncomfortable. As soon as their sons arrive in the pilot episode, the moms’ demeanor goes from Girls Trip to I Remember Mama. They pat their boys and make sure they’re not getting into any trouble. It will be a surprise if any of these women actually sleeps with these young men – which is kind of the point: how would it look to their sons? But then, Milf Manor already has a reputation to live up to.
Nancy Jo Sales is a writer at Vanity Fair and the author of American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers
