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French author sparks outrage for saying women over 50 'too old' to love

by Lin Taylor | @linnytayls | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Tuesday, 8 January 2019 11:34 GMT

ARCHIVE PHOTO: French author Yann Moix poses at the Drouant restaurant in Paris November 4, 2013 after he received the literary Renaudot Prize for his book "Naissance". REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

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"I prefer younger women's bodies, that's all. End of. The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all."

By Lin Taylor

LONDON, Jan 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A popular French author and presenter has sparked widespread criticism around the world for saying that women over 50 are "too old" to love and "invisible" to him.

Yann Moix, who is 50 himself, told women's magazine Marie Claire he was "incapable" of loving a woman his age, and preferred dating younger women, especially those of Korean, Chinese and Japanese descent.

"I prefer younger women's bodies, that's all. End of. The body of a 25-year-old woman is extraordinary. The body of a woman of 50 is not extraordinary at all," said Moix, an award-winning author and television host.

"It's perhaps sad and reductive for the women I go out with but the Asian type is sufficiently rich, large and infinite for me not to be ashamed," he told the magazine.

Moix's comments attracted global outrage, particularly on social media, with one 52-year-old journalist posting a now-deleted photo of her backside on social media.

"Voila, the buttocks of a woman aged 52 ... what an imbecile you are, you don't know what you're missing," journalist Colombe Schneck wrote on her Instagram account.

Others posted photos of movie stars aged their 50s, including Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston and Monica Bellucci, to argue against his claims that older women were not attractive.

Responding to the criticisms, Moix told local radio on Monday that he could not help that he preferred younger women.

"I like who I like and I don't have to answer to the court of taste," Moix told RTL radio.

"Fifty-year-old women do not see me either. They have something else to do than to get around a neurotic who writes and reads all day long. It's not easy to be with me," he said.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking and slavery, property rights, social innovation, resilience and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

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