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Mel Owens is shocking — but not necessarily surprising — the Bachelor Nation.

This spring, ABC announced the new lead for The Golden Bachelor.

It turns out that he has some pretty eyebrow-raisng criteria for who he’s willing to date.

For one thing, the 66-year-old former athlete insisted, he’s dismissing anyone 60 or older. And that’s just the start.

Mel Owens has some strict rules on his potential dates

In June, the titular Golden Bachelor Mel Owens spoke on the In The Trenches podcast.

“If they’re 60 or over, I’m cutting them,” he declared, indicating that any prospective girlfriends must be at least 7 years younger than he is.

According to Owens, he very bluntly told producers that he only wanted women from ages “45 to 60 … just being honest.”

“This is not ‘The Silver Bachelor,’ this is ‘The Golden Bachelor,’” Owens quipped. For the record, he himself has white hair.

He added that there is more to it than relative youth.

“They’ve got to be fit, because I stay in shape and work out and stuff,” Owens insisted.

“And I told [producers] to try to stay away from the artificial hips and the wigs.”

The backlash has been swift

“Mel Owens & @ABCnetwork @GoldenBachABC can take their ageist BS & shove it!” tweeted one social media user.

“Starting to explain why he’s 66 and single,” another pointed out.

“Wow, what an ass. Hopefully, no one will watch,” remarked another, adding:

“Reminds me of these recent men who were not hot complaining to me that women don’t age well.”

Obviously, everyone has preferences when it comes to the age of their partners.

Preferring a younger partner (within reason) is not necessarily immoral.

For the most part, people are just wired differently. Anyone else remember being in high school and having a friend who was into actors twice their age or older? There are all sorts of people in this world.

However, we can acknowledge that society tends to uphold older men as “desirable” while doing the opposite for women.

We can also acknowledge that Mel Owens is coming across like a total jerk.

Is Mel Owens a bad fit for ‘The Golden Bachelor’ lead?

When the Bachelor Nation spent years asking for a series like this, the idea of seeing a Baby Boomer dating an elder Millennial was not what they had in mind. (Yes, a 45-year-old born in 1980 would be the eldest of us)

And can you imagine being a woman in your forties applying to be on The Bachelor, thinking that you’ll be one of the older gals in the group? And then producers tell you that you’ll be on The Golden Bachelor?

It will be interesting to see if ABC and production humored Owens’ request to include women who were born after he turned 20. Audiences will have a lot to say about it. They already do.

Also? It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia spoofed The Golden Bachelor with Danny DeVito’s Frank Reynolds in this upcoming season. They likely could not have imagined the real lead coming across as just as much of a creep.