ABOUT THIS BLOG

More than five years ago Twilight, the first volume of a four-book series, was published and when it hit stands, what it meant to be a 14 year-old girl changed. With the first part of the final movie coming out this November, I am finding it harder and harder to hold my tounge. We live in a culture full of books, movies and music where women are still objectified, where good men are viewed as boring, where drama and heartache and emotional abuse are invited and welcome into the lives and relationships of the characters we grow to love. We are a product of what we read and watch, but we aren't stupid. It's time for us to acknowledge what's out there and challenge it.

I came across these books when I was in college, and as a 20 year-old reader, I had already experienced what it was like to be in a good relationship versus a bad relationship. As an English major who was spending her days reading William Wordsworth, Charlotte Brontë, and Tim O'Brien, I also knew that Stephenie Meyer was a poor writer. But still, I found myself getting sucked in. My roommates and I read the "saga" simultaneously, often times late into the night. We'd finish a chapter and run across the apartment, demanding page numbers from each other or wondering excitedly, "Did you just read that?" The characters are simple, and while I find protagonist Bella Swan nothing short of pathetic and irritating, I understand how an insecure pre-teen might find it easy to put herself in Bella's shoes. And with a "heroine" like Bella, who literally throws herself off of a cliff after being broken up with and stranded in the woods by the man she loves, I must say that aiming these books and their characters at an impressionable young audience is both irresponsible and disrespectful.

We are taught and learn from a young age not only to enjoy, but to seek out drama--often times even mistaking it for passion. This is wrong. In Meyer's defense, it's not just Twilight: Something in our culture teaches us that constantly fighting with your significant other while simultaneously not being able to live without them is not only cool, but important. We've got The Notebook, where Noah and Allie are supposed to be soul mates but can't manage to make it five minutes without Noah screaming and Allie punching him, we have Lady Gaga in a sexy costume claiming that "when it comes to love, if it's not rough it isn't fun," and we have ridiculous songs like last year's Love the Way You Lie, which asks its listener, "you ever love somebody so much, you could barely breathe when you with 'em?" Because that's love, people. There are so many more examples to add to this list, and I hope to do that, but for now, these are the ones that have disturbed me the most.

So let's get to it.