Kathy Griffin wants the internet to know she has a new boyfriend, and he's 43 years younger than she is. The 65-year-old comedian posted a photo to Instagram showing herself hand-in-hand with a blonde man dressed in black, captioning the image with characteristic provocation.
"He's 22. Have at it, internet," Griffin wrote, adding fire and comet emojis for emphasis.
The announcement, first reported by The Sun, marks the latest chapter in Griffin's post-divorce romantic life, and the latest test of whether celebrity culture applies its stated standards evenly. The unnamed young man had already been spotted with Griffin on a date night in Los Angeles back in May, but the Instagram post served as what entertainment media calls a "hard launch": the first public, on-the-record acknowledgment.
This is not Griffin's first relationship with a much younger man. Her marriage to Randy Bick, who was 18 years her junior, began as an on-and-off relationship in 2011. Lily Tomlin officiated their New Year's Day 2020 wedding. By 2023, the marriage was over.
Griffin filed for divorce at the Superior Court of California, citing irreconcilable differences. Court papers listed December 22 as the couple's date of separation. She requested the court uphold their prenuptial agreement, dated December 23, 2019, and asked to end the court's authority to award spousal support to either party, as Newsmax reported at the time.
Griffin processed the split publicly, turning to close friend Jane Fonda for comfort. "My girlfriends are going to get me through this," she posted on Instagram. Fonda's response, as Griffin recounted it: "Come on over kid. I'll make you something. You'll eat and I'll listen."
Celebrities including Debra Messing, Kristin Chenoweth, and Carnie Wilson rallied around her online. Messing wrote in the Instagram comments, as Fox News reported:
"Oh Kathy, You are loved and supported and you will rise out of this life's difficult chapter stronger. You are a survivor."
Roughly seven months before the Instagram reveal, Griffin published a personal essay in New York magazine's The Cut describing how she tried dating apps after her split from Bick, and "accidentally" fell in love with a 23-year-old. Whether that 23-year-old is the same person as the current 22-year-old boyfriend, or a different individual entirely, remains unclear. Griffin has not clarified the point.
In the essay, Griffin was candid about the appeal of a younger partner and the reasons it didn't last. She wrote:
"I really was in love with him. He touched my heart. He came along at a time in my life where I was like, 'Men suck, and there's only bad ones, and why do I pick the worst ones?' And then he appeared, and I was like, 'Oh, okay, well, he's cool, but it's dumb, because he's too young.'"
She said they gave it a shot anyway. "He made me feel sexy and special and smart and funny," she wrote. "It had a lot of the elements of what I think would've made a real, lasting relationship."
Griffin attributed the breakup to differing life stages and her own emotional history. "He hadn't been banged around that much. He's so young that he didn't have this baggage," she wrote. "And I just knew that my baggage was gonna get in the way."
The Instagram comment section offered the predictable mix of cheerleading and quiet discomfort. "Age doesn't mean a d*** thing," one commenter wrote. Another gushed, "i'm obsessed." A third praised the young man's manners: "If he is opening the car door for you, keep him. More class at 22 than most men!"
But one commenter cut through the applause with a question the entertainment press will almost certainly decline to explore: "Imagine if it were an older man with a 22 yr old girl tho lol."
That commenter identified the fault line precisely. A 65-year-old man posting a photo of his 22-year-old girlfriend with the caption "Have at it, internet" would not be met with heart emojis from the same cultural gatekeepers who police age gaps, power dynamics, and "problematic" relationships in every other context. He would be called predatory. The relationship would be framed as exploitative. Think pieces would multiply. The word "grooming" would surface within hours.
Griffin gets applause instead. The rules, as always, depend on who is breaking them.
Griffin has not publicly identified her new boyfriend by name. The length of the relationship remains undisclosed. Whether the current 22-year-old is the same young man she wrote about in The Cut, now a year older, or someone new is an open question she has not addressed. The exact date of the Instagram post is not specified in available reporting.
None of those gaps change the underlying picture. A woman approaching retirement age is dating a man who was born roughly around the time she was already a fixture on cable television. The cultural establishment finds this charming. It would find the reverse grotesque.
Griffin can date whomever she likes. Consenting adults make their own choices, and no one needs a permission slip from the commentariat. The issue isn't her love life. The issue is a media and cultural apparatus that enforces moral standards selectively, loudly, when the target is a conservative or a man, and with winking affection when the target is a progressive woman with the right friends and the right politics.
Griffin's Instagram caption dared the internet to react. Most of the internet obliged with exactly the response she expected: applause from allies, silence from the enforcers, and a pass that would never be extended in the other direction.
The double standard isn't new. But every time it shows up this clearly, it's worth noting, because the people who lecture the rest of us about power imbalances never seem to notice when the imbalance is on their side of the aisle.
