‘Twilight’ as emotional porn January 5, 2010

The Twilight book series is impressively popular. I got roped in by girlfriends at work – mostly because lunches were becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with when the convo switched into talking about Bella, Edward, Jacob and Alice. So I watched the first movie with them to be a part of something with my friends, and then picked up the first book.

I found myself quite surprised at how much the book was dripping with neediness on Bella’s part, how much sexual and lustful pull was in the book (though glossed over by using blood lust instead), and how often Bella spoke of how ‘unbelievably perfect’ Edward was.

Then I read the rest of the series, and in the midst of that attended the release of New Moon (the second book) in the theater. Inside the theater were tween girls around 12-14 years old, women my age (25-30 years old), moms in their 40s, and many more in between. What struck me was how much the women in our society today lust after movie stars (and even more gross, how many older women are attracted to a 17-year-old boy’s body)…but even moreso, how many girls and women don’t see that reading these books, and any other romance novel – no matter how it is disguised, damages their view of men in their life in the same way that porn damages how men view the women in their life.

Before you start thinking that this is an outrageous claim, think about it with me. Men view porn and see an ‘ideal/perfect’ woman. Then they start comparing their girlfriend or wife to this image, and over time can become extremely disappointed and extremely bored with the woman they have since she’s not like who they see on their TV or computer screen. And women are up in arms over this, as they well should be! I would hate to be compared in that way and to be forced to live up to a false expectation – some other woman’s fake body and fake actions.

Now, romance novels give women men who are emotionally perfect. These men meet every single need before the woman can even think of it or voice it. These men revolve their lives around the woman in the book, and take painstaking efforts to prove and show their love for this woman.

Twilight is no different. In fact, in reading these books, i remember thinking in the first one that in real life, Bella and/or Edward would both be considered stalkers. Both in thought and in action. And, in these books, Edward is the perfect emotional man. He’s strong and fierce, yet remarkably calm and patient and emotionally available to Bella. The books drip with her praise of Edward, and how he is perfect both physically and emotionally.

This is NOT real life. And there are many, many tweens, teens, and adult women reading these books and not realizing that they are now ready to compare their boyfriends or husbands to these fictional characters of Edward and Jacob. (In fact, just this weekend I heard a story about a boy who was dumped for Edward. He was dumped for a fictional character who is not at all real and whose ‘perfect’ traits cannot be found in any real, live, human man.)

So in my opinion, this is doing the exact same thing that porn does to men. What do you think – are these Twilight books cleverly disguised emotional porn?

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