# Thinking Gillian Anderson doesn't look like Scully any more = sexism?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-gillian-anderson-doesnt-look-like-scully-any-more-sexism/743948>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [January 23, 2016, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-gillian-anderson-doesnt-look-like-scully-any-more-sexism/743948 "2016-01-23T05:56:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 8

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**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2016, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-gillian-anderson-doesnt-look-like-scully-any-more-sexism/743948/141 "2016-07-12T23:50:03Z")

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> [@Bridget\_Burke](#):
>
> Are you homosexual? If not, I seriously doubt you know what makes a man sexually attractive. Donald Trump agrees with you; he’s traded a couple of aging wives in for newer models. Do those young things marry him because he’s sexy–or because he’s extremely rich? I know the answer.
> 
> Men still have most of the power in Hollywood, so they allow aging leading men to romance actresses who keep getting younger.
> 
> Mulder & Scully are essential to the\* X-Files\*. It’s the story of their relationship–they met in Episode 1. Otherwise, we’d have Mulder mumbling to himself in that basement office.
> 
> No matter how the new series goes, at least we’ve got the original pair back together–earning the same salaries.

> [@Kaio](#):
>
> Your OPINION that older women are not sexually attractive while older men are is not some immutable biological fact. It is, however, incredibly sexist.

You are both correct. My statement was unnecessarily absolute. I am incredibly attracted to a woman who is actually older than I am. I only meant to point out the way Hollywood frames actors, and that in itself is sexist. Dumb idea not to be clear about that.

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**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thinking-gillian-anderson-doesnt-look-like-scully-any-more-sexism/743948/142 "2016-07-13T15:31:33Z")

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Discussions of sexism as it relates to the looks of specific people who are employed _for their looks_ is an inherently low value conversation. Maybe not completely meaningless, but close. And hectoring people about viewing more negatively the appearance changes of aging women than men, in general, is not going to change it. It may not be molecular level biological, but it’s really deep.

FWIW I think Duchovny looks pretty beat up and kind of bloated, more like Quagmire on Family Guy (or maybe it’s just that Family Guy wasn’t around in the original X Files days). Anderson looks good for a women her age. Which of them to pay more though would surely depend also on what other role/career options the two have. Which I don’t know in that case (I know she’s been on successful shows in her alternative Brit version), but in general you’d expect reunion shows to face that. If for some reason they did a Seinfeld remake would you expect them to have to pay Michael Richards as much as Julia Louis-Dreyfus? It’s not sex there, but that one can’t get arrested otherwise now, while the other one broke the Seinfeld curse probably most of any of the four.

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