Older women with wit, wisdom and strong portfolios can’t get arrested. Men, if they are smart, rich or powerful, can attract women of all ages, including much younger ones.
But plenty of inequities between the sexes linger, especially when it comes to romance age discrimination is different for men than it is for women. This yearning to become younger - not smarter, richer, more powerful - is telling in an age that considers itself postfeminist. Liza cheats the calendar by changing her look, getting a fake driver’s license, erasing her social media presence and memorizing the names of One Direction’s members. She doesn’t need a time machine, magical realism or a freak glitch of nature to go back to her 20s. The series, which has its two-episode premiere on Tuesday, follows Liza Miller (Sutton Foster), a 40-year-old divorced and unemployed mother in the suburbs who decides to start over by pretending she is 26.
“Younger,” an amusing new TV Land comedy about recapturing lost youth by Darren Star of “Sex and the City” and “Melrose Place,” is a case in point. Women in these stories seem to focus more on who they might be. Mark Twain’s hero uses 19th-century technology to outsmart medieval sorcerers in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” The time traveler in “Back to the Future” can perform “Johnny B. When it comes to stories about time travel, male characters often focus on what they would do.