I’m a Girl in My 20s and I’m Tired of Seeing 40 Year Old Men at the Club

  • By: Amanda Coscarelli

This story has been submitted by a LOOP reader…

I’m 26 years old, which in club years means I’m basically in my prime. I still get excited about picking an outfit on a Friday night, texting the group chat “we going out?” and pre-gaming on someone’s couch while blasting throwback Rihanna.

I’m not pretending I’m above the club scene yet. I still love a crowded dance floor and the moment when the DJ drops a song everyone screams along to. What I don’t love is looking around the room and realizing half the men there could have been my camp counselor.

It’s something my friends and I started noticing a couple years ago. At first it was funny. We’d spot a guy in the corner wearing jeans that were just slightly too expensive-looking, nursing a vodka soda like he had a mortgage to wake up to in the morning.

“Why is someone’s dad here?” my friend Mia would whisper.

But lately it’s not just one or two guys. It’s a whole demographic. There’s always the same type: perfectly fitted button-down shirt, expensive watch, maybe a little too much cologne. They stand near the bar scanning the room like they’re conducting a job interview for a girlfriend who was born after Friends ended.

The worst part is they’re not subtle. A few weeks ago my friends and I were at a club in West Hollywood celebrating my roommate getting a new job. We were dancing, sweaty, screaming lyrics into each other’s ears — the normal chaotic joy of a girls’ night. Then this guy tapped me on the shoulder.

He had to be at least 42. You can just tell sometimes. Not in a bad way — just in the “this man has definitely filed taxes for 20 years” way.

There’s always the same type: perfectly fitted button-down shirt, expensive watch, maybe a little too much cologne.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked.

 

I told him I was good and turned back to my friends. Thirty seconds later he was still standing there like he’d paused the conversation in his head.

 

“You look really young,” he said, as if he had just solved a mystery.

 

“Because I am,” I said.

 

He laughed like I was joking. “Age is just a number.”

 

Sir. The number is the problem.

 

It’s not even that older men are inherently creepy. People date with age gaps all the time and that’s their business. But the club is supposed to feel like a space where people in the same life stage can be a little messy together.

 

When I’m out, I want to dance with someone who also had Taco Bell for dinner and is planning to Uber home and eat pizza rolls at 2 a.m. I don’t want to make small talk with a man who casually mentions he “owns a place in Malibu” and then asks if I’ve ever considered getting into real estate.

 

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Another night, a guy who looked like he’d just come from a networking event tried to join our dance circle. My friend Jess leaned over and said, “Why does he look like he has a LinkedIn Premium account?”

We all lost it.

But the vibe shift is real. You can feel it when a group of older guys moves into the space. Suddenly the dance floor feels less like a chaotic party and more like a weird social experiment. Girls start doing that polite half-smile you give strangers on airplanes. The energy gets awkward. Someone inevitably tries to put an arm around someone who absolutely did not ask for that. And don’t get me started on the bottle service sections.

Every time I see a group of men who clearly pooled together the budget of a small startup just to sit around a glowing table and stare at the dance floor, I wonder what the end goal is. Are they waiting for us to wander over like confused deer?

We will not.

Suddenly the dance floor feels less like a chaotic party and more like a weird social experiment.

My friends and I have developed a strategy at this point. If someone who clearly remembers dial-up internet approaches us, we scatter like pigeons. Bathroom break. Smoke break. Sudden urge to check the DJ booth. It’s survival.

Look, I get it. Turning 40 doesn’t mean you have to sit at home watching cooking shows. People should be able to go out and have fun at any age. But maybe… not the same clubs packed with people who were in kindergarten when you graduated college? There are lounges. Cocktail bars. Literally thousands of places with lighting bright enough to read a menu. Let us have the sticky floors, the bass that rattles your bones, and the terrible decisions made between midnight and 2 a.m.

Because someday I’ll be 40 too. And when that day comes, I promise I won’t be standing at a club bar trying to convince a 23-year-old that age is just a number. I’ll be somewhere quieter — judging the girls in the club from a safe, dignified distance with a martini.

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