Glaring detail as Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau confirm romance with PDA on yacht

This weekend came confirmation of one of those plot twists that you could not make up – the former Prime Minister of Canada and Katy Perry are officially an item. The couple ‘announced’ the news by enjoying a sunny day of frolicking and grabbing in full glare of a boat load of tourists on a nearby whale-watching trip. Subtle? I don’t know her.

It’s felt like this moment has been coming for months, with the unlikely pair having been spotted having dinner in July and then the currently unemployed pollie seen dancing like the dad of three he is at her Montreal show. Now with these pics we have hard proof that they are definitively enjoying a summery romance, heavy on the canoodling and, hopefully, adequate SPF.

Superficially, all that has happened has been two hot people doing some maritime snogging – but there is so much to unpack here we’re going to need to pay for extra bags.

Trudeau is 53 and Perry 40. No one has blinked. No entertainment sites or magazines have been flapping their arms or gums or using the big headline fonts to point out the 13-year gap. It has not registered at all.

Now pretend that Perry’s fling was with a 27-year-old chap. Their age gap would be the story and you wouldn’t be able to move for all the oohh-err – ‘Cougar Katy, 40, caught in SEXY clinch!!’ – type pieces. Those 13 years would be the defining feature and not just a simple fact.

Only last week, songwriter and influencer Jackie Apostel had to defend her relationship with Cruz Beckham because he is, gasp, nine years her junior. (Well, it will be 10 years when she turns 30 later this month.)

And yet while Apostel has had to justify why she might want to date a good looking, wealthy man, Brad Pitt, 61, has been seemingly arranging his first editions of Milan Kundera’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on the bookshelves he now shares with now live-in girlfriend Ines de Ramon, 32, and there has not been a tabloid peep.

Male celebrities continue to date women who are but fractions of their age and it causes barely a ripple on the surface of the celebrity pond, it’s all so very unremarkable, but women who date younger men is still somehow taboo and a radical act.

When it comes to the bedrock-deep double standard around age and dating in Hollywood, I’m not sure I’ve ever been spoiled for so many examples.

A small sampling: George and Amal Clooney (17 years). Jason Statham and Rosie Hungtington-Whitlely (20 years). Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart (23 years). Jay-Z and Beyoncé (12 years). Chris Evans and Alba Baptista (16 years). Josh Duhamel and Audra Mari (21 years).

The godfather of this is Leonardo DiCaprio. He is 24 years older than his current girlfriend Vittoria Cerretti; before that his last four girlfriends clocked in at 23-years difference (Camilla Morrone), Nina Agdal (17 years), Kelly Rohrbach (16 years) and Toni Garn (18 years).

DiCaprio is blatantly a man who applies the same trade-in policy as a well run BMW dealership to his busty beauty du jour but by and large he gets away with all this reputation completely unscathed.

Would a woman?

Madonna has had a series of much younger chaps on her arm and it’s made her a figure of derision that it has not Mr Titanic himself.

Perry’s former fiance Orlando Bloom was linked to Sydney Sweeney in June after both attended Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s Venetian wedding-palooza and no one blinked at the 20 years between them.

For Perry, the unfair dealing over her new Canadian paramour does not end there.

On social media and in the comments sections she has been getting it with both barrels, kapow, blast, wallop!

In August a source told People about Perry and Trudeau, “They have a lot in common.” Not, sadly, when it comes to how the internet treats them.

How dare she. How dare she move on with such unseemly haste and enjoy herself a nice bit of Canuck tottie. That’s the most common argument, should one bravely wade into the sludgy waters of say X, being made about Perry – that she and Trudeau have distastefully shrugged off their former partners (Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, Orlando Bloom) as they embark on a multi-jurisdictional grope-fest.

Yes, she has been single for less time than Trudeau (three months versus two years) but both are completely free agents who can do whatever and wherever they like within the bounds of taste and public decency laws. Yet, she’s the one taking the blast furnace of heat.

So let me rectify that. Oh Justin, what are you doing? Are you really that much of a cliche? Because one thing that is not being said out loud is how cringe this feels for him. Not that Perry is not talented or a stunner but for such a serious person to embark on such a Hollywood rebound is just a bit toe-curlingly embarrassing.

Get the Porsche. Go to Burning Man. Hell, really throw yourself into Hyrox if you have to, but just have your midlife crisis away from all tourist vessels and shipping lanes.

And for the love of god, make sure you are wearing enough sunscreen.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.