Social media reacts to Tommie Lee and Julez Smith rumored romance and their 20 year age gap
TheGrio...
Rumors about Solange’s son Julez Smith, 21, and Tommie Lee, 41, reignites conversations about age-gap relationships.
Age-gap relationships have never been far from the cultural conversation. From Aaliyah’s defiant “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number” to Netflix’s “Age of Attraction,” the topic has always drawn strong, split reactions with people either pointing to the potential for harm or holding up their own love stories as proof that age is just a number.
This week, that conversation was reignited when videos circulated of Solange Knowles’ son Julez Smith, 21, appearing to flirt with “Love & Hip Hop” veteran Tommie Lee, 41. Social media quickly went into overdrive, partly out of confusion about how the two even know each other, and partly because people were fast to point out that Lee is two years older than Julez’s own mother, Solange, who is 39.
Lee addressed the chatter indirectly on her Instagram Stories, stating she’s “not that typa girl #nexttopic.” But by then, the internet had already moved on to a bigger conversation.
Whether anything is actually happening between Lee and Julez, she wouldn’t be the first Black woman linked to a significantly younger partner. On Netflix’s “Age of Attraction,” 41-year-old Leah and 26-year-old Chris took their 15-year age gap relationship public, and are reportedly still together. In 2020, Jada Pinkett Smith and August Alsina’s admission of an “entanglement,” with a 21-year age difference, dominated headlines for weeks.
And according to Psychology Today, what some are calling the “reverse age gap,” older women with younger men, is increasingly common, particularly among women who have built financial independence, a strong sense of self, and aren’t looking for a relationship to provide either of those things. The publication points to a few driving forces: a rejection of the idea that women have an expiration date on their desirability, a growing preference for the emotional maturity and equity that younger, more progressive men tend to bring, and a fundamental shift in what women are looking for in love: less security, more self-expansion.
While age-gap relationships have always been seen as taboo, the notion of an older woman with a younger man feels particularly taboo, as it is often depicted as older men dating younger girls—a double standard that has social media users emphasizing the importance of talking to young boys about the potential dangers of these dynamics, just as they do with young girls.
Whether Tommie Lee and Julez Smith are simply acquaintances or something more is between them. But the reaction to even the possibility of their connection raises questions about how communities protect young Black men from potentially predatory situations, and on the flipside, how we police Black women’s romantic choices.