So another Valentine's Day has come and gone. I spent my February 14th on Staten Island and most of the early morning of February 15th trying to get home.
I've been meaning to write this post for a few weeks now. It's particularly pressing today because I'm about to watch the movie and I want to get this written before my thoughts are tainted by Robert Patterson's cheekbones. Now, I'm not one for literary crazes (except, I am, considering I've read every Oprah book, Pillars of the Earth and the occasional Harry Potter) but I decided to read Twilight after going on a bachelorette weekend where I was promised at least one vampire-sex dream. Well I did not have any sex dreams that week but I did have a TERRIFYING NIGHTMARE ABOUT VAMPIRES CHASING ME.
So I bought it at the bookstore and spent the next week trying unsuccessfully to hide the cover from my neighbors on the subway. I read it voraciously, I couldn't get enough and when I finally read the last page and put the book down it hit me: I hated Twilight. HATED it. Why? Well, let me explain.
1. It was written by a middle-aged Mormon housewife. Now I have nothing against the middle-aged, Mormons (except I do take exception to two lapsed Mormons who tried to drug me in Salt Lake City but that's neither here nor there) or housewives. I DO however have something against a middle-aged Mormon housewife who, in an attempt to rationalize her own submissive sexuality, writes a book about a domineering, sometimes cruel vampire (Edward) and the dumb, passive girl (Bella) whose blood he craves and with whom he starts a relationship. I also have a problem with this middle-aged Mormon housewife then marketing her book to tween-aged girls.
A few small examples of Edward's controlling behavior:
"You paid attention," he smiled approvingly.
"Are you going to tell Charlie I'm your boyfriend or not?" he demanded.
"Put on your seatbelt" he commanded.
"Are you okay?" (Bella) asked. "No," he said curtly, and his tone was livid.
A. No teenager smiles approvingly. Teenagers are, by nature, completely disapproving of pretty much everyone including their significant others.
B. No 17 year old boy in the history of the world has DEMANDED that his girlfriend tell her estranged father that they are now a couple. Oh wait, I think that has happened in EVERY single Lifetime movie about an abusive boyfriend (I'm talking to you Johnny Galecki).
C. No teenager commands another teenager to put on her seatbelt. That's why insurance rates are so high. Duh.
D. Just the fact that the middle-aged, Mormon housewife wrote the words "curtly" and "tone" and "livid" in the same sentence really pisses me off.
I know what everyone is thinking "but he's a Vampire, he's OLD, he's not a teenager." This adds a whole other layer of creepiness to the equation. If this guy is 109 years old and he's dating a 16-year old, isn't that's the definition of a pervert? And shouldn't we be discussing her obvious daddy issues rather than celebrating them? (In her defense, the middle-aged Mormon housewife does touch on the daddy thing by making Bella's dad Charlie an absent, clueless father).
2. As I mentioned earlier, it gave me NIGHTMARES. I read the part about the tracker chasing Bella right before I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night, adrenaline pumping convinced that a Vampire was about tracking me. I'm a 25 year old woman.
3. The sparkles. So, middle-aged Mormon housewife (from here on out I will be abbreviating as M-AMH) you expect me to believe that when this vampire goes out into the sunlight, he SPARKLES? Well played, M-AMH, well played. You've officially crafted a multi-million dollar fortune by writing a book about a vampire with sadistic sexual undertones who SPARKLES.
So basically it goes like this:
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So that's my Twilight rant.
Also, sidenote. When I googgled "sadism and masochism" to get the leather whip pic, this picture came up:
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