Some questions on the Twilight phenomenon
Right, so every pubescent and pre-pubescent girl I know, and quite a few grown women, are currently obsessed with this Twilight thing.
Meanwhile there's been a bunch of stuff in the liberal media about the insiduous sexism of the books. This aspect clearly worries me, particularly as I care about some of the girls who are reading them. So I've read the first novel, I've seen the film and flicked through the rest of them.
I don't really know what to think. I don't know if the books are quite as sexist as some people are saying. I rather like the endless detailing of Edward's many beauties, for example - it makes a nice change to have a chap as the sex object, rather than the girl.
But what I don't like is this fetish of abstinence. (Much more obvious in the books than in the film).
I'm not saying I'm in favour of teenage promiscuity, or anything like that, and given that the readers of this book are in the main much younger than Bella herself (who is 18 for most of the story?) I can see that a rampant shagfest wouldn't really be appropriate. But the way the novels revolve obsessively around NOT shagging (dressed up as not turning Bella into a vampire) is almost equally unwholesome, I think.
Who here has read the books? (I know Sarah has, and didn't like them at all, for slightly different reasons.) Are they sexist? Are they unwholesome? Is it ok that girls on the cusp of 21st century womanhood are obsessed with them?
Meanwhile there's been a bunch of stuff in the liberal media about the insiduous sexism of the books. This aspect clearly worries me, particularly as I care about some of the girls who are reading them. So I've read the first novel, I've seen the film and flicked through the rest of them.
I don't really know what to think. I don't know if the books are quite as sexist as some people are saying. I rather like the endless detailing of Edward's many beauties, for example - it makes a nice change to have a chap as the sex object, rather than the girl.
But what I don't like is this fetish of abstinence. (Much more obvious in the books than in the film).
I'm not saying I'm in favour of teenage promiscuity, or anything like that, and given that the readers of this book are in the main much younger than Bella herself (who is 18 for most of the story?) I can see that a rampant shagfest wouldn't really be appropriate. But the way the novels revolve obsessively around NOT shagging (dressed up as not turning Bella into a vampire) is almost equally unwholesome, I think.
Who here has read the books? (I know Sarah has, and didn't like them at all, for slightly different reasons.) Are they sexist? Are they unwholesome? Is it ok that girls on the cusp of 21st century womanhood are obsessed with them?