Karen Wheeler having an affair with a teenager is not a good way for her to “reclaim her sexuality.” To feel “desired,” because her husband is neglectful in that department. Teenage boys are not instruments for freeing adult women from the impact of misogyny. The idea that women cannot be predatory and teenage boys can’t be victims of female predators is a result of misogyny and sexism.
Billy Hargrove is an teenager who seeks out relationships with older adult women, which isn’t a healthy behavior. If you get into it, this could reflect possible trauma and abandonment issues. You might think his behavior is gross, but the only thing gross about it is that adult women see that he responds to them in that way and they don’t put an end to it. They indulge it.
Those women at that pool have no business sexualizing him let alone contemplating actually having sex with him. That’s predatory behavior. Plain and simple. The first thing out of Karen’s mouth when Billy asked her to meet him at a motel should have been “No, you’re a kid.” “No, you’re my daughter’s age.” “No, I’m an adult and it’s my job to protect you.”
This is not that complicated. It’s insidious to suggest that older adult women deserve to be predatory because of some backwards notion of how misogyny and sexism work when you know right away that adult men preying on teenage girls is unacceptable. Teenagers may act out, but it’s the job of an adults to put those boundaries in place when teenagers don’t know how.
I don’t care if the actor is technically an adult, either, and you have to “suspend belief” to view him as a teenager. (Besides, he’s not even that old compared to some actors playing teenagers.) There are teenagers who look older than their age. Not everyone looks as young as the Stranger Things kids. Teens who look older get preyed on a lot. This happened to people I knew in high school.
Karen Wheeler isn’t some feminist icon, you weirdos.
Yes, this exactly.
The one good thing she did was opt to not cheat on her husband, but, as someone else pointed out, that wasn’t even about the wrongness of being with Billy, that was about not cheating. Which is definitely a good thing, but does very much miss the point that even if she were single, this would still be very wrong.