The Jailbait Wait



""The only reason to wait a month for sex is if she's 17 years 11 months old.""

- Barney Stinson

When an adult (almost Always Male) expectantly waits for the day a minor (almost Always Female) will reach the age of consent and be fair game for sexual conquest. A key component in any good Wife Husbandry plan. Can become very Squicky very easily. Bonus Points if a daily countdown is kept of exactly how long someone has to wait before they can legally deflower their target.

In Real Life, the age of consent varies from place to place, but in fiction it is almost always 18, partially due to SoCalization. (For example, the above quote has it wrong; the age of consent is 17 in the state of New York.) In a few jurisdictions, it may be perfectly lawful for sixteen year olds to engage in sexual activity, but completely illegal for them to be depicted in any form of erotica or porn (whether they're underage in real life or not) - or for them to even buy porn. Despite the age of consent being under 18 in some places, it is still possible to get arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and there are higher minimum ages if one partner is in a position of trust or control over the other (such as a guardian, a coach or a school teacher) or if money changes hands, so 18 - or 21 - might still be a good age to wait for.

And yes, someone will inevitably lampshade the patchwork of laws by creating a character who just turned eighteen today, just became a porn star or a sex worker, but still cannot buy beer in some backward jurisdiction because of their age. Or, if they're exactly eighteen right this minute, it's still child porn one time zone further west.

See also Ephebophile, someone who specifically doesn't wait for legal age.

Related to Legal Jailbait. Sometimes goes in the opposite direction with a Precocious Crush.

Anime and Manga

 * Sort of alluded to in Hunter X Hunter, where Hisoka's impatient waiting for Gon and Killua is made out to be a parallel to a pedophile waiting for his target to become legal. His wording of how he can't wait to "pluck the fruit that hasn't ripened yet" doesn't help his case.
 * At first he was very definitely just looking for good fights and they had potential, but after Greed Island where he unabashedly got a (speech-bubble-covered) erection after they found him bathing and ogled their butts, he's apparently equal-op. Especially remarakable in that Gon was probably aware of this (and Killua definitely was) when Gon produced a plan to win at extreme dodgeball that involved Killua being driven face-first into Hisoka's crotch. (By Gon and a super-sonic dodgeball, so mostly it's just a matter of owch, but still.) Hisoka cackled about it.
 * In the Japanese version of Pokémon, Brock has sometimes done this.
 * In FAKE, Carol promises to go on a date with Dee in five years (when she turns 18). However, she later cancels because she's going out with Bikky. (And the whole thing was pretty much a joke meant to tease Bikky in the first place, since Dee only has eyes for Ryo.)
 * In My Wife Is a High School Girl, High-schooler Asami marries her physics teacher Kyosuke, but Asami's father forces them to sign a contract that forbids them from having sex until Asami graduates high school or else the marriage is null-and-void. Incidentally, most of the Unresolved Sexual Tension that results is actually on Asami's side.
 * Happens in Cardcaptor Sakura with the Teacher/Student couple. Note that the student is in third grade. A fair bit of a wait.
 * In Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Dr. Irie says he's waiting for Satoko to become older. How serious he was when he said he wanted to marry her is a matter of debate.
 * Happens twice in Kare Kano. The first is comparatively normal, between Maho and Takashi. But the second, between Made hilarious
 * Occurs in Loveless. College-age Soubi engages in an (as of yet) unconsummated relationship with twelve-year-old Ritsuka. Dialogue suggests that Soubi intends to wait until Ritsuka is of age. Still kinda squicky, since that doesn't stop Soubi being extremely physically affectionate with the kid (Your Mileage May Vary, of course).
 * There's also a degree of Fridge Brilliance as to why Soubi's decided to wait (besides the obvious):.
 * From SHUFFLE!, "Would you go out with me in about 5 years?"
 * We see a variant in Dance in the Vampire Bund with the Royal Three. It is not that Dukes Ivanovic, Li, and Rozenmann are waiting for Mina to become legal (she is at least 80 years past that point) so much as for her to become pubescent.
 * A more straight example is used later on in Mina's Lotus Eater Machine.
 * And a thoroughly straight example occurs between Akira and Mina during the no-supernatural-creatures dream sequence in volume six.
 * Inverted in Inuyasha—Ayame is the jailbait who received a Childhood Marriage Promise from Kouga, but she waits until She's All Grown Up to seek him out and take him up on the offer.
 * There's also a bunch of NPC girls Miroku asks out, and no he didn't stop asking an 11 year old. Interestingly, after 4 years they meet again and she tries to take him up on the offer noting how she's become much more mature in the time. Miroku is notably shocked (he had forgotten) while Kagome mentally notes how awesome girls in this time period are.
 * Subverted in the case of  in One Piece. The Stalker with a Crush had no interest in marrying   but decided that if , it would be better, in a weird, speeded-up sort of Wife Husbandry.
 * Minoru from My Hero Academia is a pervert at the best of times, but the time he really crossed the line (and failed to do so twice) was when he told a five year old how he couldn't wait until she was sixteen.

Comic Books

 * In DC Comics, an alien Green Lantern named Arisia had a crush on human Green Lantern Hal Jordan. He could not reciprocate because she was only 13 years old. When her feelings for him caused her ring to age her body into adulthood, though, Hal was okay with it.
 * Then about a decade later it was retconned into being okay when it was revealed that 13 years on Arisia's home planet was over 200 earth years. She still acted like a kid, though . ..
 * After Infinite Crisis, teenage Supergirl started a flirtatious relationship with twenty-something Anti-Villain Captain Boomerang, with no invocation in sight. Then suddenly enforced with a vengeance when, after a Journey to the Center of the Mind storyline had kept her away for a few months, Boomer, Beast Boy and every other Y-chromosome who so much as glanced at her suddenly went out of their way to confirm that they had no intention of actually acting upon their attraction to this stunningly hot super-babe. Must have been a few letters. That or her cousin let everyone know she was off limits, and nobody argues with the Man Of Steel.
 * An issue of Archie Comics takes place a couple of centuries in the future, and Archie helps Betty babysit her young cousin. Among the cool devices they have in the future is a mirror that can show what you'd look like at any age. The cousin uses it to show what she will look like when she is sixteen, and Archie quips that he might just put him self into cryo-freeze to wait until then.
 * In Incorruptible, Max Damage breaks off his relationship with his sidekick Jailbait after his Heel Face Turn, citing this reason.

Fan Works

 * Common trope in Star Trek XI fanfiction regarding Ensign Jailbait Pavel Chekov. Who is, as he loves to remind us, only seventeen.
 * Lord Archive subverts the Cardcaptor Sakura trope with mentions in his fic Be Careful What You Wish For with the third grader aged up considerably, but not enough. She even mentions they have been trying to get pregnant, even though she's only thirteen.
 * This is a point in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fic People in the Mirror are Closer Than They Appear. Zuko hurriedly mentions that he'll be sixteen in two months (sixteen being the age of legal majority in the Fire Nation), and the result is both funny and sad.
 * Appears in modified form in the Harry Potter fanfic Backward With Purpose, a Peggy Sue story in which Harry, Ron, and Ginny travel back in time to prevent the gruesome deaths of their friends and family. Only their minds travel back in time, so that they wake up as 11-year-olds with adult minds. Harry and Ginny are married and the fact that they have the minds of sexually-active married adults but the bodies of prepubescent children is a source of great tension (and is a recurring issue throughout the story).

Film
"Sherry: Mitch Taylor? Mitch: Who? Sherry: I'm Sherry Nugil. And I've been waiting three years for this. Mitch: For what? Sherry: For you to be old enough. Mitch: For what? Sherry: For this. [kisses him]"
 * Jenny Agutter's nudity in Walkabout was effectively a bait-wait bonus when she turned 16 after delayed production.
 * In Waiting, Monty.
 * In The People vs. Larry Flynt, Flynt meets his future wife Althea at one of his clubs, and asks her to pose for Hustler... even though she's 17 at the time.
 * Not explicitly stated, but Magneto in X-Men: First Class, telling Mystique, after shows up naked in his bed "Maybe in a few years", could be taken to mean this. Since we don't know her actual age (plus she ages at half the speed as everyone else), he could either mean "When you're legal" or "When I've killed my mother's murderer and dealt with my serious emotional issues".
 * In Hard Candy, it was proposed at one point the character Hailey reveals she's really 18. This was rejected by a few (including Elliot Page, who played the character), as this would greatly diminish the impact of the movie.
 * Big ended with this possibility being mentioned.
 * In "Beautiful Girls", Marty tells Willie to wait 5 years until she's 18. He actually turns her down but very sweetly...
 * The film Blank Check has a bit at the end where the thirteen year-old protagonist asking the woman he has been pursuing for the film when he might see her again. She says to give her a call in ten years (though he argues her down to six). Then she kisses him (as in, an actual kiss on the lips).
 * It should also be pointed out that there were cops on the scene (they were rounding up would-be robbers). One of those officers had to have seen that.
 * Real Genius:

"Bobby: Dude, she's like thirteen. Jeff: Finally!"
 * In Drowning Mona, Jeff Dearly is a little too friendly with the daughter one of his and Bobby (Casey Affleck) Calzone's clients (they're landscapers). This leads to the following exchange between Bobby and Jeff:

"Todd: I think I'm in love with her dude. Marty: She looks like she's about eleven years old, but... Todd: I can wait! I solemnly swear to save myself for her. Marty: I can see how that would be really difficult for you."
 * In Kick-Ass Todd, Dave's lanky friend, instantly falls for Hit-Girl after seeing her slaughter several gangsters, much to Marty's disgust.

"Charlotte: Who would have thought the prince had a younger brother? How old did you say you were? [looks down towards her feet] Little boy she's dancing with: I'm six and a half. Charlotte: Well, I've waited this long."
 * Played for Laughs in The Princess and the Frog:

"Mia: Letty grew up just down the street. She was into cars since she was like ten years old. Dom always had her attention. Then she turned sixteen... Brian: And she had Dom's attention. Mia: Yeah, it's funny how that works out."
 * The Blue Lagoon knockoff Paradise features a 17-year-old Phoebe Cates in her movie debut, spending most of the film naked. They did use a body double for the sex scenes, but it was Phoebe taking that shower.
 * The Italian teen sex drama Melissa P. stars Spanish actress Maria Valverde, who appears nude and engages in simulated sex for most of the film. She was 18 when it was released in 2005.
 * Mentioned, if not seen directly, in the first The Fast and the Furious movie. When Mia is telling Brian about the ins and outs of the relationships among her friends and family, she summarizes her brother and his girlfriend's relationship thusly:


 * In The Reader, the filming of the sex scenes between Kate Winslet and David Kross' characters was put off until Kross' 18th birthday.

Jokes

 * The usual joke is to calibrate the wait down to the minute or second. A constable stumbles across a car with two occupants on Lover's Lane; one is reading a book and the other is knitting. The cop asks their ages and is told "I'm nineteen and my special friend will be eighteen in (checks wristwatch) nineteen minutes and fifty-three seconds".

Literature

 * In The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salman Rushdie, Ormus proclaims melodramatically that he won't touch Vina until she's sixteen years and a day old. And he doesn't.
 * In Teresa Edgerton's second Celydonn trilogy, Gwenlliant is married to her cousin when she is twelve; he is more than a decade older and would have preferred to wait at least four years before courting her, but her father forced the issue by setting up an Arranged Marriage for her with a Domestic Abuser. A long period of Innocent Cohabitation follows. At one point Gwenlliant spends about a year longer in the Inner Celydonn than has passed in the real Celydonn, which has two unintended side effects: reducing the wait, and of separating them for so long that a Wedding Deadline is introduced.
 * Robert A. Heinlein:
 * The Door Into Summer uses cryogenic suspension to skip the wait.
 * Time for the Stars uses relativity to accomplish both this and dilute enough genes to avoid incest charges.
 * In the Talent series by Anne McCaffrey, Sasha (who is in his thirties) is patiently waiting for Tirla (who is approximately 12) to grow up. It seems to be mutual. We get this again with Afra and Damia later in the same series. In the case of the former, definitely mutual. They marry on her sixteenth birthday (the minimum legal age to do so in their society), and it's implied that it was Tirla who was pushing to get married so quickly. In the case of the latter, Afra was waiting not for Damia's legal status, but for her to see him as something more than "Good ol' Afra; Mom's best friend."
 * Twilight. The teenage wolves who imprint on a 2-year-old and a newborn have the longest Jail Bait Wait ever.
 * Considering Renesmee will be physically 18 in 7 years, Jacob doesn't have as big of a problem. Apparently Meyer doesn't understand the difference between physical maturity and mental maturity.
 * Did the 100+ year-old vampire dating a 17-year-old not tip you off?
 * Done by the main characters in The Time Traveler's Wife. The female lead is a bit impatient about it, but the time traveler wants to avoid any Squick.
 * In Katherine Kurtz's In The King's Service, we learn that Jessamy MacAthan was made to marry her husband at age 11. Sief MacAthan thought waiting to consummate the marriage until Jessamy turned 12 was quite generous, but Queen Dulchesse pulled rank and made him wait till Jessamy turned 14.
 * Brutally subverted in Lolita, when Humbert plans to impregnate his already underage Lo so that once she gets too old for him, there'll be another one on the way.
 * In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Colonel Aureliano Buendia falls in love with Remedios Moscote when she's only about ten or so, but waits to marry her on her father's prompting until she reaches puberty—when, in fact, she's still only about fourteen....
 * In Meg Cabot's 1-800-Where RU series, teen psychic Jess falls for older bad boy Rob... who turns her down. Of course, he later explains that he turned her down because he had a criminal record and was on probation until he turned 21 . He didn't want to get in further trouble for dating a minor. However
 * Justified in the Morganville Vampire series. Shane insists on waiting the few monthes until Claire is legal, but they're no more than a year apart.
 * In the Black Jewels series, Daemon and Jaenelle meet when he's 1,700 and she's '12.' However, circumstances keep them apart until she's 25 and he's ... still a hell of a lot older.
 * Pages could be written on this for the works of Piers Anthony - well, perhaps not, given that some of them don't wait - but a particular note needs to be made of the sixty-plus-year-old judge and the fourteen-year-old drug addict prostitute in And Eternity. She spends a few days in Heaven, during which two years passes on Earth, so it's legal (at least in that jurisdiction) - but she's still fourteen in body and mind! And they don't entirely wait, either - they get it on during a camping trip while the girl is possessed by a (to be fair, much older) ghost.
 * Used in the Danielle Steele novel Family Album which had a 15-year old girl falling in love with her best friend's father. What's more, they consummate the relationship while she's still underage. Her family is outraged, needless to say, but unable to stop them from marrying once she turns 18.
 * This was a long-running plot in the Emily books by Lucy Maud Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables fame). In the first book, Emily of New Moon, Emily Starr first meets Dean Priest, a distant relative who went to school with her father, when he is 36 and she 12. On that first meeting he explicitly tells her, "I think I'll wait for you," though Emily doesn't understand what he means. In the second book, Emily Climbs, in which Emily is an adolescent, a local man tells Emily that Dean is "just biding his time till ye get old enough for coorting," an idea Emily finds ridiculous with someone old enough to be her father. In the final book, Emily's Quest, they are engaged when Emily is about 20 or so, though she breaks it up when she realizes her feelings for her childhood friend Teddy.
 * With the May–December Romance pairing of Tom/Rose in the Casson Family Series, this is something of a given, but McKay handles Rose's Precocious Crush on Tom delicately and Tom's hints of attraction toward her so subtly, causing their relationship to be one of the least Squickiest examples of the trope around. Oddly enough though, this implication doesn't appear in many of the fanfics in the Casson Family Series archive at Fanfiction.net, although it would make a good plot point in story. But then again, the trope is employed so subtly most people probably aren't even aware of its existence in the books.
 * In the Mercedes Lackey book When Darkness Falls, the hero's sister makes a Heroic Sacrifice in the books climax. She then reincarnates. Her lover from her previous life arranges to be betrothed to her infant self. Note that 1: The lover (and the girl in her new incarnation) are both elves, so the wait isn't that long compared to the lifespan of either of them, and they will still be able to spend centuries together after the wait ends (This also resolves the Mayfly-December Romance concerns that caused problems with the relationship earlier in the trilogy), and 2: She was reincarnated as a noble-born elf, and their culture saw nothing wrong with betrothing newborns.
 * Queen Margaery Tyrell (16) of A Song of Ice and Fire is waiting for the day she can bed her husband, King Tommen Baratheon (7). Played with in that she's as much interested in the political aspects as any sort of sexual desire. In the meantime, she's getting him wrapped around her little finger.
 * Like most marriages in the ASoIaF series, this one was arranged, with Margaery's hand being the price for the Tyrell's continued support of the throne. The rule regarding marriages in this setting is that they can be set aside so long as they haven't been consummated. So it's the Tyrells who are eagerly counting down the years for the Rose's flower to be plucked, as that would cement Margaery's queenship when Tommen comes of age, while Tommen's mother Cersei is so paranoid about the expanding Tyrell power in the royal court that she spends much of the fourth book searching for and manufacturing evidence of Margaery's infidelity so as to dissolve the marriage. As far as the two lovebirds themselves, they actually seem to get along quite well, with Tommen looking up to Margaery like a Cool Big Sis.
 * A vast majority of A Song of Ice and Fire marriages among the nobility assume an age of consent of sixteen, give or take, with early twenties being looked on as Christmas Cake and hitting puberty being a good baseline in a pinch. Much angst goes into Sansa Stark having her period at thirteen, as that means she can be wedded and bedded by King Joffrey. One off-screen Arranged Marriage involves a landed knight taking control of a minor house by marrying its sole surviving heiress, who happens to be an infant. When he dies in a later battle, there's a bit of Gallows Humor about how the little lady is the first bride in the Seven Kingdoms to be wed and widowed before she'd been weaned.

Magazines

 * A men's magazine (GQ or some such) had a calendar in one of their 1999 issues with June 9 marked "Natalie Portman, whom we admire solely for her acting ability, turns 18 today."

Live-Action TV

 * lampshaded, or possibly subverted, by Lee Nelsons Well Good Show by a gag about implied sex, or at least the intention, following a local girl's 16th birthday.. "yesterday..pedo!! today... LEGEND!!" Lee's cheerful inanity, sentimentality ( especially about "his nan" ), naivety and imperviousness to Squick when he is committing it, versus his sensitivity when someone else is the culprit, make him the perfect vehicle for this sort of gag
 * On How I Met Your Mother, after Ted reveals that he and Victoria have decided to date for a month before having sex, Barney comments, "The only reason to wait a month for sex is if she's 17 years 11 months old."
 * A Friends episode that aired in 2001 had Joey hit on a woman who revealed she was actually 16 years old. His response? "See you in 2003."
 * In an episode of House, a 17-year-old is smitten with House and gives him a calendar counting down the days 'til she's 18.
 * On 3rd Rock from the Sun, Dick mentioned that a French film released years ago was finally coming out in the U.S. because "they had to wait until the actress was of legal age."
 * This describes part of the relationship between Jude and Tommy in Instant Star. Kind of ick.
 * There was a guy like this in the The Mentalist episode "Red Tide".
 * One episode of Off Centre revolves around the main cast talking about how they lost their virginity, while Euan is waiting for his latest conquest to turn 18.
 * Explictly stated in the episode of Steven Spielberg Presents "Taken" when Dr Chet Wakeman and Mary Crawford do it the day she turned 18.
 * In an episode of Reno 911!, the deputies appeared in a commercial for a pocket guide to the various U.S. states' legal age of consent.
 * Done with a musical number in Mongrels.
 * A Mad TV sketch parodying an Olsen Twins movie featured all the men in the high school faculty counting down until the twins' birthday, taking numbers to determine the order they'd take their turn... "befriending" the girls.
 * Inverted in The Thorn Birds. Meggie growing up and being of legal age is what makes Ralph start to push her away, knowing he can no longer hide his feelings for her or pretend that they're innocent.
 * Done rather adorably in a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch where a suspicious policeman knocks on the window of a parked car and ask how old the occupants are. The boy in the front seat says he's seventeen. The cop asks if the girl knitting in the back is sixteen, and he checks his watch and says, "Not yet... in about ten minutes."
 * The Olsen Twins referenced this trope in their Saturday Night Live appearance the week before their birthday. Also on a Mad TV skit about the Olsen's new movie. The co-stars are terribly excited at the twins turning legal.
 * The Brazilian Soap Opera Xica da Silva is one of the grossest examples of this. The soap's many nude scenes with leading actress Taís Araújo were shot when she was seventeen, but couldn't be screened before she turned eighteen. According to the actress herself, some tabloids actually kept countdowns to her eighteenth birthday, so they could see a half naked seventeen-year-old. The actress considers this work an Old Shame for this reason.
 * Lampshaded by Bill Maher in a Real Time segment about Emma Watson when he said: "Wow, she was just a cute little eleven-year-old girl in that first movie, who would have dreamed that eight short years later, she'd turn out to be nineteen?"
 * Soap: Billy has an affair with his teacher, but they wait until his 18th birthday before she gives him her "present." She also quit her job so they could be together without any ethical problems.

Music
"Hilary Duff is not quite old enough, so I ain't never seen a butt like that, maybe next year I'll say "ass""
 * "Pop Star" a parody of Nickelback's song "Rockstar," has a line that says "my listeners will be people in their 'tweens/and old perverts who can't wait 'til I turn 18."
 * Lil' Bow Wow had a song called "Just Playin' With Ya" in which the (then 12-ish) singer was macking on a woman pretty much old enough to be his mother. One of his lines includes: "I'll call you up when I turn 16."
 * The song "Does Your Mother Know?" by ABBA is basically about this trope, and Mamma Mia!'s use of it (actually, Tanya in general) resulted in a rare female example.
 * Referenced by Eminem in his song "Ass Like That":

"Soon, baby."
 * Mack Maine in the song "Every Girl" raps "And in about three years, holla at me Miley Cyrus."
 * A concert promoter once asked Lemmy of Motorhead if he'd sign an autograph for his daughter. Lemmy asked how old the daughter was. Promoter said "three." Lemmy wrote:

""I wanna hug and kiss you nearly every time I see ya, but I don't want the neighborhood to get the wrong idea. But the day will come when a love like ours is not a crime. Just give it time!""
 * Additionally Motorhead has a song called "Jailbait", Lemmy sings that "you're jail bait and I just can't wait."
 * The Vandals made a song called "Fourteen", which was about someone falling in love with a fourteen year old girl.

"We're one mistake from being together/Let's not ask why it's not right/You won't be seventeen forever/And we can get away with this tonight."
 * Nas' "Big Girl", where he basically proclaims his excitement over a girl now being old enough to legally pound into submission.
 * "Nørgaard" by The Vaccines: "Her mind's made up, she don't wanna go steady / She's only seventeen so she's probably not ready."
 * Metro Station's "Seventeen Forever". Coincidentally the band is fronted by the brother of Miley Cyrus (who was once the subject of more than a few jailbait countdowns). It's sung from the perspective of a guy lamenting about how the girl he likes is still underage.


 * And no, the trainwreck isn't complete without mentioning Céline Dion and "Lolita (trop jeune pour aimer)", released Sep 1987 on her vinyl LP "Incognito". She was 19.

Radio

 * A radio interview with Billie Piper when she was 15 had the host, Chris Moyles, quite openly (albeit humorously) commenting on her attractiveness, along with the statement that the men of Britain (including himself) were eagerly awaiting her 16th birthday, when she'd be legal in the UK.
 * Radio hosts Lex and Terry kept a daily countdown for several years. When the Olsens finally turned eighteen, they threw a birthday bash for them. They sent an invite to the girls, which was never answered.

Theatre

 * Uncle Peck does this in Paula Vogel's play How I Learned To Drive. Complete with daily countdown. Complete with SENDING the daily countdown to Li'l Bit in the mail.

Video Games

 * Referenced in two off-hand jokes in Final Fantasy VI, both involving Edgar.
 * Referenced in Jam Kuradoberi's win quote against Bridget in Guilty Gear XX: Upon finding out that Bridget's a guy, she suggests that he come see her again in five years.
 * In Mega Man Star Force series there is a Fan Nickname for Queentia, one of the antagonist called "Jailbait". Why? Cause her age is 17 and well, various reasons.
 * In Tales of Symphonia, Handsome Lech Zelos is caught being nice to a little girl, and claims that it's 'so she'll remember him fondly in fifteen years or so'.
 * The Sims 2 has a sort-of version of this. Teen sims can have romantic relationships with other Teen sims (although they cannot WooHoo), but cannot have romantic relationships with Young Adult, Adult or Elder sims. When one of the Teen sims Grows Up, the game will automatically turn their relationship into a platonic one. If you want them to stay together, you have to wait until the other Teen sim Grows Up and then rekindle their romance from scratch. This gets annoying, since sims only age if you play them, so if you want a teen romance to keep going, you have to juggle the families to keep both sims at relatively the same age, or else one will outage the other. This is even worse if your sim romanced an NPC teen, since NPCs never age, and so the relationship is pretty much doomed.
 * Until The Sims 2 University came out, that is... The "Send Sims to College" option can be used to instantly age up any Teen NPC in a town to a Young Adult and turn them into a playable character in the process.
 * Neverwinter Nights 2 features a crazy druid stalker who seems to have been watching the player since he was a child.
 * Played with a bit in The Legend of Zelda. A young (10-12ish) Link meets the Gerudo leader, Nubile Savage Nabooru. She enlists his help, promising a reward. Once Link (at the age of 17-19ish) saves Nabooru and she becomes a sage, she says "It's a shame. If I had known you'd become such a handsome man...I would have kept my promise!"
 * In Persona 3 Portable, Ken Amada asks the Female Protagonist to do this when he realizes that he can't be her ideal man while he's still a child. However in the original Japanese version, he still gets the "You spent a long time" phrase when maxing out the social link. The English version edits it slightly in order avoid controversy. Note that this is a Mature rated game already.

Web Comics

 * In Questionable Content, Steve was dating Ellen and got freaked out when he heard she was underaged; he's 24 and had assumed the age gap was a lot smaller (she entered college a year early). When she turned legal age (the following Tuesday), they pretty much locked themselves in their bedroom for a day.
 * Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: "Well, I have sort of a boss's daughter fetish, but little Marcy won't be legal for another 7 3/4 years."
 * Ghastly's Ghastly comic omages us with a particularly disturbing version of this trope here
 * An (exaggerated) older-female younger-male example occurs in Homestuck, in which Vriska's ancestor Marquise Spinneret Mindfang has used a magic cue ball in order to see that the person who will kill her, The Summoner will also be her lover. Due to the way trolls work, at the point she learns this he hasn't even been born yet.
 * In The Dreamer, Alan waits for Bea to be of proper age before he can court her.
 * Treading Ground makes it explicit. In fact it supplies the image for this trope. It also deconstructs the trope. Nate later discovers that the legal age of consent in South Carolina (where the story is taking place) would have made Rose at the age of consent from the moment he met her. Much later, they discuss the effects of being raised by popular media, complete with a name drop for SoCalization.

Web Original
"Audience: Holy shit, get a load of the– Emma Watson: Not seventeen until next year. Audience: –the purity and innocence of this young child."
 * Whenever a teenage starlet makes headway, you can be sure to find a website somewhere on the internet counting down—in seconds—to the day she turns 18. The more satirical of these websites will pointedly include pictures of said starlets from official sources that are obviously sexual in nature (e.g. Britney Spears as Catholic School Girls Rule in her "Hit Me Baby One More Time" video, or the cover of Rolling Stone where she appeared in lingerie, both taken when she was 17), commenting on the hypocrisy of considering someone perverted for being attracted to a media figure that has been overtly fetishized in the media. The rest of the sites are just plain creepy.
 * A running joke in The Editing Room's "abridged scripts" for the Harry Potter movies:
 * Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (when she appears at the Yule Ball):

"Audience: You eighteen yet? I'd really like for you to come over here and ride my-- Emma Watson: Next movie. Audience: -my magical broomstick! Oh what a fantastic world of innocent whimsy! Tra-la-la!"
 * Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

"Audience: Eighteen yet? Emma Watson: Yes actually, I turned 19 on– Audience: I WILL FUCK YOUR TITS OFF FAP FAP FAP FAP!! Emma Watson: Bloody fucking hell, I can’t wait to be done with these movies!"
 * Magical broomstick? Is that like your purple wand and hairy sack of magic?
 * Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:


 * More than one Web page collects information on age of consent and related laws in the U.S. states, Canada, and the rest of the world.

Western Animation

 * Family Guy:
 * In the episode "The Thin White Line" mega-pervert Quagmire asks Meg if she's 18 yet. When she says no, he quickly moves on to talk to someone else (an example of SoCalization, since the age of consent in Rhode Island is 16). What's really bizarre about Quagmire in this case is that he's quite willing to have sex with underage girls, including a 12-year old crossing guard and Connie D'Amico. but is willing to wait for Meg. Word of God suggests that since Peter's his best friend, he respects Meg as his friend's daughter, not just some bitch like Connie.
 * In the episode "Barely Legal" Meg is confused about romance as she's developed a creepy crush on Brian because he's nice to her. Quagmire advises her to come to his house so he can "set her straight." When she arrives, Quagmire puts on some romantic music, takes off his robe (revealing his tiger print bikini briefs banana-hammock underneath)... and gives Meg some heartfelt advice to help her work things out, before sending her home with a children's book he remembered fondly, being an almost-perfect gentleman the whole time. Go figure.
 * In the episode "Quagmire and Meg" Meg did turn eighteen, and Quagmire was trying to seduce her from the get-go. Peter and Lois' enraged reactions at finding their daughter in a love shack with Quagmire border on the out-of-character.
 * In the episode "Deep Throats" Meg is romantically involved with Mayor West, who has no problem waiting for Meg to turn 18, 21, or 25 (the age at which Meg could legally rent a car).
 * In the episode "Hannah Banana" Stewie tells Brian that Miley Cyrus is sixteen, and Brian responds, "I'm eight."
 * Robot Chicken:
 * Had men counting down until the Olsen Twins were of age, then referred to the fact that the girls would never do those guys anyway.
 * Another episode did this with Britney Spears in a parody of Citizen Kane
 * In the Home Movies episode "School Nurse," Nurse Kirkman, having been soured by an earlier date with Coach McGuirk, tells Jason (who has made clear his Precocious Crush on her) that she would like to be his girlfriend, but not until he turns 30. Jason realizes that she'll be in her 60s by that time, and he quickly loses interest.

Other Media

 * In Greek Mythology, Theseus kidnapped Helen when she was a young girl, intending to marry her when she gets old enough. However, she was rescued by Castor and Pollux.
 * In Islam, Aisha (ʿĀʾishah bint Abī Bakr, Arabic: عائشة بنت أبي بكر‎ 613–678 CE) was engaged to be the third wife of Muhammed (peace be upon him) at a young age; sources differ as to exactly how young.
 * Modern concepts on age of consent often find their way into fictional works centered on pre-modern historical periods, in large part due to Values Dissonance and Society Marches On.