(no subject)
For awhile now, the whole Twilight thing has bothered me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Thank Heavens that this guy could:
http://www.slate.com/id/2223486/
At least Angel, Anita Blake's vampires, Sookie Stackhouse, and most of the rest of them have a lot of sex. But Edward Cullen, immortal star of the Twilight books, does not have sex. Edward tells Bella, his human paramour, that they need to wait until they're married before doing the deed. In the meantime, he's fascinated by her, beguiled by her, he can't stay away from her-but he can't touch her. Instead, he lies next to her in bed and moons over her as she sleeps. Leaving aside the fact that he's a 90-year-old man, this is what stalkers do, not boyfriends.
Even the thought makes me shudder. Somewhere, there's a little girl reading these books, not realizing that they are going to ruin her life because she doesn't know how real relationships work. The 30 year old guy staring at you from his window across the street isn't swooning, he's stalking. If he comes over to talk to you, and not your mother, he's a pedophile. But she won't be able to realize it because her expectations are going to be skewed, and wrong. It's not romantic, it's creepy.
Just as America's young men are being given deeply erroneous ideas about sex by what they watch on the Web, so, too, are America's young women receiving troubling misinformation about the male of the species from Twilight. These women are going to be shocked when the sensitive, emotionally available, poetry-writing boys of their dreams expect a bit more from a sleepover than dew-eyed gazes and chaste hugs. The young man, having been schooled in love online, will be expecting extreme bondage and a lesbian three-way.
We complain about Disney fairy tales skewing our daughter expectations of life, but at least Eric and Ariel had a healthy relationship, no matter how unlikely their match! Prince Charming never followed Snow White home, to stare at her secretly while she slept.
Worse, I find this repugnant that this is what young women and girls of today seem to want. As evidenced by my sisters first boyfriend, (referred to recently and hereafter as The Felon, just follow the yellow brick tag at the bottom to get THAT story...) who I never heard speak a word. He sat beside her on the couch at family gatherings, just watching. Watching her, us, the cats. Four years and he never participated in anything (except one camping trip wherein he frightened us all with how well he knew is way around chopping up firewood).
Apparently he used to yell and complain when she wanted to do something without him, like the family reunion. He would regularly complain that she spent too much time not with him, I don't know when the fuck that would've been. In four years I never saw her or talked to her on the phone when they weren't together. I guess he was talking about all that time she spent at school, since she was 16 and he was 22.
And my mother thought he was such a nice boy.
Well, Cait did finally get rid of drug sniffing, armed robbing asshole. But trying to tear her away from the Twilight novels, and trying to convince my mom that they are not the good thing that my mom thinks they are, has been nigh impossible.
http://www.slate.com/id/2223486/
At least Angel, Anita Blake's vampires, Sookie Stackhouse, and most of the rest of them have a lot of sex. But Edward Cullen, immortal star of the Twilight books, does not have sex. Edward tells Bella, his human paramour, that they need to wait until they're married before doing the deed. In the meantime, he's fascinated by her, beguiled by her, he can't stay away from her-but he can't touch her. Instead, he lies next to her in bed and moons over her as she sleeps. Leaving aside the fact that he's a 90-year-old man, this is what stalkers do, not boyfriends.
Even the thought makes me shudder. Somewhere, there's a little girl reading these books, not realizing that they are going to ruin her life because she doesn't know how real relationships work. The 30 year old guy staring at you from his window across the street isn't swooning, he's stalking. If he comes over to talk to you, and not your mother, he's a pedophile. But she won't be able to realize it because her expectations are going to be skewed, and wrong. It's not romantic, it's creepy.
Just as America's young men are being given deeply erroneous ideas about sex by what they watch on the Web, so, too, are America's young women receiving troubling misinformation about the male of the species from Twilight. These women are going to be shocked when the sensitive, emotionally available, poetry-writing boys of their dreams expect a bit more from a sleepover than dew-eyed gazes and chaste hugs. The young man, having been schooled in love online, will be expecting extreme bondage and a lesbian three-way.
We complain about Disney fairy tales skewing our daughter expectations of life, but at least Eric and Ariel had a healthy relationship, no matter how unlikely their match! Prince Charming never followed Snow White home, to stare at her secretly while she slept.
Worse, I find this repugnant that this is what young women and girls of today seem to want. As evidenced by my sisters first boyfriend, (referred to recently and hereafter as The Felon, just follow the yellow brick tag at the bottom to get THAT story...) who I never heard speak a word. He sat beside her on the couch at family gatherings, just watching. Watching her, us, the cats. Four years and he never participated in anything (except one camping trip wherein he frightened us all with how well he knew is way around chopping up firewood).
Apparently he used to yell and complain when she wanted to do something without him, like the family reunion. He would regularly complain that she spent too much time not with him, I don't know when the fuck that would've been. In four years I never saw her or talked to her on the phone when they weren't together. I guess he was talking about all that time she spent at school, since she was 16 and he was 22.
And my mother thought he was such a nice boy.
Well, Cait did finally get rid of drug sniffing, armed robbing asshole. But trying to tear her away from the Twilight novels, and trying to convince my mom that they are not the good thing that my mom thinks they are, has been nigh impossible.