The problem with Billy Corgan’s rationale for his 26-year age gap with his wife

Do you ever feel like everyone around you is just so broken? Too broken, to the point where there’s nobody left because they’re so undateable? Unmarriable, even? That’s how Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan apparently felt about the women of his own generation. So, instead of trying to understand why he thought these women were “too broken” for him, Corgan started dating a 19-year-old, Chloé Mendel. He was 44 when they met in 2012. And now they’re married.

In a new interview with The New York Times’ Popcast, the musician explained the “advantages” of the 26-year age gap between him and his wife, which he began with the caveat of all caveats: “I don’t want to make all the feminists mad” (spoiler: we got mad).

Corgan, 59, said that he struggled to connect with women of his own generation because they had been “wounded” by politics (he didn’t go into the specifics), while his wife’s youth, by comparison, “was an advantage because she hadn’t been wounded like so many people are.” Essentially, he wanted a fresh slate of a person, if you will; someone who “wasn’t affected by the same politics” (again, he didn’t specify) and “had a different sense of self-confidence.”

It took me a second to sift through his attempts at intellectualizing his argument, but now I see his point as clear as day: most men want to marry women who are perfect and pure and don’t have a past. He didn’t use words like “virginity” or “untouched” here, but I don’t think he really needed to.

Now, this is not an article about whether age gap relationships are good or bad; but rather the way Corgan uses a set of old-fashioned ideas about purity culture to explain being 26 years his wife’s senior. In the interview, Corgan tries intensely to philosophize his rationale, where he sandwiches thinly veiled, long-standing misogynistic ideas (whether knowingly or unknowingly) between buzzword topics like the feminist movement, political upheaval and even the abuse faced by an entire generation of women. He explains how “the correct and proper rise of feminism” benefitted his wife who was born in the Nineties, and that women of his own age, by comparison, “were going through that without a lot of help and coming out of a lot of abuse.” It’s the sort of grand argument that almost makes you nod along, because surely, it sounds like an informed cultural observation.

Then he continued: “I was shocked at the stories I would hear of what they’ve been through. When I met my wife — and having that gap — she just wasn’t affected by those same politics. She just had a different version. She had a different sense of self-confidence…her youth was an advantage because she hadn’t been wounded like so many people are — because you just go through life and you get wounded.” He added that he had met “a lot of broken women along the way,” and that it was “harder to put those pieces together” with them because “you’re broken and they’re broken.” He concluded: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Now, I do understand that nobody wants to date someone who’s a complete mess. But what Corgan is saying is that as someone born in 1967, he did not see the women of his generation as eligible life partners. That alone is a perplexing generalization. And then, he explains that a natural resolution to this problem was dating a 19-year-old.

I’d also say that you meet a lot of messed up men, too, in this thing we call life. Corgan acknowledges in the interview that he was also “broken” – but why do men get to be the broken ones in romantic partnerships? Women can be full, complex human beings with life experiences, opinions and flaws. They can still be worthy life partners, and have the capacity to love and be loved. I don’t think that someone having a variation of life experiences makes them undateable, either. If anything, it makes them infinitely more interesting, and probably better equipped to deal with your woes.

Yet, society permits men to be the ones with flaws, while women have to be the perfect, contained ones. Sifting through eligible girlfriends by their levels of trauma or misfortune they’ve been dealt is not only out of touch, but makes it seem as though Corgan wanted a saintly angel to fall from heaven.

As for Mendel – a fashion designer, business owner and creative director who is now 33 – she could not speak for herself since she was not in the room. I do not know what kind of 19-year-old she was (perhaps she was just mature, as defenders of age gap relationships often say), but their relationship has obviously worked out because they now have three children. Their wedding was documented in the 2024 reality series Billy Corgan’s Adventures in Carnyland. Yet the tone of this interview, especially when Corgan is discussing Mendel, does seem to strike an infantilizing note. She is a wife and mother in her 30s, but he still paints her as extremely young. He depicts her as this plain, perfect figure that came into his life and “for whatever reason, just decided not to judge me for who I was.”

It’s worth noting that the two Popcast interviewers didn’t have the same reaction to his argument as I did, though they did push him to explain his thought process further when he was getting into the vague semantics of feminism in the 1990s. Anyway, they were probably ground down by the musician’s contrarian spirit at this point of the interview (only minutes before, he defended his friend Marilyn Manson despite past sex abuse claims against him). And, Corgan genuinely seemed happy as he spoke about his relationship, which is hard to argue with.

I don’t know what I would have said, either. But as a woman, my alarm bells went off. In a perfect scenario (look who’s wanting perfection now), I would have liked to have inquired whether he thinks women with trauma cannot be great life partners. Because women do not need to be plain or perfect to be worthy of love. And if a man finds himself a loud, opinionated and broken woman (god forbid!), I think it’ll be a full, exciting life.