Famous Age-Gap Couple: Howard Hughes (40) & Teen Jean Peters (19)

Howard Hughes and Jean Peters, by Edward Sorel.

Sam Kashner posted on Air Mail "The Spruce Deuce: Before Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, there was Howard Hughes and Jean Peters" (SEPTEMBER 3, 2022)

We're not sure why Kashner compared Hughes and Peters to Depp and Heard. Clickbait? Especially considering that, as Kashner shared, 40-year-old Hughes and 19-year-old Peters had a Hollywood age-gap relationship. 

Howard Hughes, the 40-year-old, reclusive, and idiosyncratic billionaire first clapped eyes on 19-year-old Jean Peters at a party in Newport Beach over the July Fourth holiday weekend in 1946. Smitten, he invited her to watch him test-run the XF-11 plane he had designed for the air force. It was a helluva first date.

Howard Hughes and Jean Peters

The famous age-gap couple eventually married and remained that way for about 14 years. Kashner wrote that: "Peters would outlive him by 24 years, dying in 2000 without ever publicly uttering a word against her former [much older] husband."

Sissy Sheridan Knows [Teen] Sex Rules on TikTok? | Nymphet Sexualization or Self-Sexualization?

Sissy Sheridan Knows [Teen] Sex Rules On TikTok.
She Plays The Game To Win.

Nancy Jo Sales posted on Air Mail "The TikTok Star Who Hates TikTok: Sixteen-year-old Sissy Sheridan has 5.3 million TikTok followers [and a million on Instagram] and can’t imagine her life without the app. That doesn’t mean she likes it" (APRIL 3, 2021)

Sissy Sheridan's "Sink Video"

You may ask: "How did Sheridan get so many followers?" Of course, she took advantage of the allure nymphets by posting a "sink video" where the 15-year-old sat on the edge of her bathroom sink and "unbelievably arched" her back to "[...] make her butt look [even] bigger":

She explains: “Before Playlist [an annual industry convention for YouTubers, TikTokers, and other content creators] I did this trend where you sit on the counter and make your butt look bigger,” which she calls a “sink video.”

After the sink video, Sheridan’s follower count climbed to nearly 800,000, and “I got invited to go to Playlist,” she says. 

Oddly, Sheridan blamed TikTok for dancing, making her famous for being pretty, and having a ‘desirable’ body”:

Which was confirmation for her of what she already knew—that sexualized content is often what gets girls the most attention on TikTok, just like on other social-media sites. “You make little girls famous for dancing and for being pretty and having a ‘desirable’ body,” Sheridan says. Her first TikTok to get millions of views (6.3 million) was one of her and another girl dancing in crop tops in her bedroom.

But, after Sheridan's sink video went viral, she continued posting "sexualized content" (e.g., teen (cheeky) thong and teen twerking TikToks):

When the sink video “went viral for me,” she says, “I thought, I’m gonna keep doing this—it’s my thing.” 

“So I’m 15, and I’m getting a lot of attention from this,” Sheridan says.

“At the time, all I’m thinking is it’s making my numbers grow. I have, like, a million followers now—I’ve grown 300K in a day. Fans are coming up and congratulating me. So I’m like, Holy crap, this is huge.

Sissy Sheridan with @charlidamelio & @avani

Some may argue that Sheridan is engaged in a form of (softcore) teen prostitution, because fame wasn't the only item she received in exchange for her "sexualized content". Sheridan's income increased substantially, her free swag increased substantially, and she was afforded the opportunity to mingle with other famous teens:

(Generally, an influencer with five million followers can charge around $6,000 per Instagram story and $20,000 per feed post.)

“I come back from trips and it’s literally like Christmas,” she says. “If it’s a ‘gifting,’ they send it to me in the hopes that I’ll post something, but I don’t get paid for it.” She gets sent so much “it feels gluttonous,” she says. 

Being famous on the hottest app around, having millions of fans who shower her with millions of likes (over 363 million total), traveling and hanging out with the biggest influencers—not to mention the “avalanche” of swag—isn’t this what kids supposedly want?

(Unsurprisingly) Sheridan shared (indirectly) that she's going to continue posting "sexualized content", because she can't do without the app. And she'll do "whatever" to be a successful actress:

“TikTok is such a big part of my life now,” Sheridan says, “I can’t do without it.”

“Acting is my main thing,” she says. “That’s what I want to do. So I’m going to do whatever I can to get my name out there.”

Interestingly, Sales wrote that sexualization gets fame, slut-shaming and empowerment. But shouldn't it be that self-sexualization gets fame, slut-shaming and empowerment?

She finds herself in a familiar bind: Sexualization gets fame. Sexualization gets slut-shaming. Empowerment is undercut by sexist haters. But haters also get you fame.

Lastly, Sales shared that 16-year-old Sheridan was in an age-gap relationship with Milessdespair - a 19-year-old influencer. #noworries The age-of-consent in Washington DC, Sheridan's residence, is 16. 

King Louis XV: The Jeffrey Epstein of the 18th century? | Parc-aux-Cerfs' Virgins & Sex

14-year-old Marie Antoinette & Louis XV

We first, indirectly, learned about King Louis XV's (open) nympholepsy via Vladimir Nabokov but not Nabokov's Lolita but Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle. Nabokov wrote:

“Of the many ancestors along the wall, she pointed out her favorite, old Prince Vseslav Zemski (1699-1797), friend of Linnaeus and author of Flora Ladorica, who was portrayed in rich oil holding his barely pubescent bride and her blond doll in his satin lap.”

Brian Boyd annotated on Ada Online that the bride being referred to is Princess Sofia Temnosiniy and per Ada’s family tree, Princess Sofia Temnosiniy was approximately 14-years-old when she married 72-one-year-old Prince Zemski. 

François Boucher's Girl Reclining

In addition, the Prince’s son, Peter Zemski, married Mary O’Reilly. Boyd wrote: 

“John Rea [NABOKV-L, 30 November 2004] suggests that Mary O’Reilly may also echo Mary Louise O’Murphy (or Marie-Louise or Louison Morfy or O’Morphy, 1737-1814), who became mistress to Louis XVI of France [...]. She is said both to have been [Giacomo] Casanova’s mistress first, or to have been noticed by him, and to have been at fifteen the model for [François] Boucher’s famous painting, Girl Reclining [...].”

Casanova shared in Histoire de ma vie that when he spied 13-year-old O’Murphy in the nude, he found her so alluring that he commissioned a nude portrait of the nymphet. 

It’s not clear how King Louis XV discovered O’Murphy. One theory he that he saw Casanova's commission and requested to see the original. Another theory is that she was recruited by Madame de Pompadour - the king’s official chief mistress. Reportedly, King Louis XV impregnated O’Murphy, but she had a miscarriage at 15 but gave birth at 16 to the king’s illegitimate child.

And per Nancy Goldstone's AirMail post "The View from Here: It wasn’t all cake and Versailles for Marie Antoinette, the last queen of France…" (September 18, 2021), O’Murphy wasn't the only nymphet King Louis XV procured, because he kept a brothel, Parc-aux-Cerfs, of nymphets. So much so that Goldstone dubbed King Louis XV the possible Jeffrey Epstein of the 18th century:

While we are on the subject of who might actually have been responsible for the abject poverty and unrelenting misery that would eventually explode into the French Revolution (and who has to date gotten off scot-free from any blame for the deplorable conditions under which the general population labored), may I just make a small, quick case for the repellent Louis XV, the Jeffrey Epstein of the 18th century?

For nearly 50 years prior to Marie Antoinette’s arrival, Louis XV reigned over France and, during that time, pursued a corrupt, predatory, entitled, and contemptuous agenda. Government bored Louis. He spent his days hunting and spending lavishly on ostentatious entertainments, luxury goods, and sex. (He conveniently kept a brothel called Parc-aux-Cerfs, which specialized in young women, on the palace grounds.) Aristocratic privilege flourished during his rule, and the gap between the wealthiest 1 percent (who paid no taxes) and everyone else grew.

Geri Walton elaborated on Parc-aux-Cerfs in the post "Parc-aux-Cerfs and Tales of Louis XV’s Harem" where she wrote that, in addition to O’Murphy, Madame de Pompadour procured a bevy of beautiful virgins for the the king:

[...] organized a constant stream of very young beauties to entertain the bored King in his bedroom. The beauties were housed at a small house in Parc-aux-Cerfs purchased in 1755 by the King. This house was later described by some people as a seraglio. The King did not visit the beauties at the little house but rather had them escorted discretely to and from the palace when he requested a rendezvous, and, from all accounts, most people at the time had no idea anything inappropriate was happening.

The bevy of beauties that Madame de Pompadour supplied and supervised were low-class but supposedly virginal women. 

In addition, Goldstone wrote that 60-year-old Louis XV attempted to seduce 14-year-old Marie Antoinette:

When [14-year-old] Marie Antoinette first arrived, Louis XV kept showing up at her private apartment first thing in the morning, angling to get into her bedroom, and often pulled her onto his lap, demanding a kiss, until she figured out how to avoid him.

Incidentally, King Louis XV reminded me of Emperor Augustus whom I wrote about in The Allure of Nymphets due to his passion for deflowering virgins:

Matt Ridley related in the New York Times Notable Book The Red Queen that, Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire from 27 BC to 14 AD, had “a passion for deflowering girls” and according to Roman historian Suetonius, the virgins were procured by Augustus’ wife.