Remember when you were a seventeen and you were dating that guy (what’s his name again?), and you were so sure that you would never break up because THIS really was TRUE LOVE, and your parents were totally WRONG about him, he really was in love with you, and no two people as deeply in love as you would EVER break up, and no one, especially not an adult, could possibly understand how in love you were?
That’s the world view Twilight endorses. It’s not alone. In fact, most YA romances do. I don’t find that surprising at all: when I was a teen, I totally endorsed that view myself.
What I do find bizarre is how popular Twilight was with mothers of teen girls. My own children are boys, but I have two tween nieces whom I adore, and Bella Swan is the last girl on earth I’d hold up as a role model. Think about it: she falls in true “forever and ever” love with the first guy she ever dates. She practically becomes suicidal when he dumps her. And in the final insult, after he comes back, she contentedly decides to skip going to Dartmouth—or college at all—so she can get married and have a baby at age 18.
I think some parents buy into the Twilight world view because they think it will encourage their daughters to avoid casual sex--or even premarital sex altogether. I don’t really have any time for the abstinence-only, “True Love Waits” propaganda, but even liberal parents might be seduced by the fact that old-fashioned Edward doesn’t pressure Bella into having sex. I can see why he might seem like a reassuring character. Of course I don’t want my nieces dating boys that pressure them into doing things they’re not ready for, any more than I want my sons to pressure the people they date (or be pressured themselves).
But I still don’t buy it, and I think the impulse to hold up Edward as a model boyfriend is driven more by understandable but unhelpful parental panic over teen sex than a sober consideration of what advice might actually enable our girls to negotiate healthy, mutual sexual relations. How on earth can it help them to promote such utterly unrealistic notions of male behavior?
All this being said, I concede that so long as the depictions are talked about frankly not wishfully, the Twilight books could play a useful role in helping parents talk to their teens about sexual relations. However, I have another problem with Twilight, a more serious one in part because I see it in a lot of YA books (as well as Fifty Shades of Grey that was based on Twilight) that otherwise don't have any time for Meyer's religious conservatism.
I CANNOT STAND the way the author holds up for praise Bella’s lack of ego. It’s repeatedly made clear that Bella does not realize how physically attractive she is. Moreover Meyer plays this as a big part of the reason Edward loves her so much—she’s nothing like the vain, snobby, mean girls who think they’re going to win the class Prince Charming. But really CinderBella deserves him because she’s so adorably humble.
Yuck Yuck Yuck!
Like a lot of romance novelists, Meyer succumbs to the temptation of piling on the superlatives with her hero: the Adonis-like good looks, the classy wealth, the soulful piano playing. But since the novel is narrated in first person, what we get is Bella’s endless musings on how lucky she is and how she just can’t believe someone this amazing would want her—as if she doesn’t believe she really deserves him. The implication is that the only way for a girl to know she’s attractive is if a highly desirable male wants her.
All I can say to that is what a godawful notion to impress on a teenage girl. Fuck humility. A healthy ego is not the same as a fat head. I want my nieces to have a strong sense of self-worth—like Jane Austen’s Emma strong! Or Elizabeth Bennet, who scornfully tells an extremely handsome and much richer guy he’s not good enough for her because he doesn’t know how to treat her. And the best part is that it’s absolutely true—he’s not good enough, not until he learns how to respect her. As Darcy tells Elizabeth in an achingly beautiful scene of reconciliation: “I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”
Romantic, certainly, a fantasy, most likely, but one I would wish for the two young women who are most dear to me.
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