Vicki Iovine of the Huffington Post has a funny article about what women are really fantasizing about in the midst of recent tales of wussy, cheating men:I have joined millions of tween and teenaged girls as a devotee of the "Twilight" books. I'm not the first mid-life mom to discover the love story of a clumsy high school girl and a vampire; my girlfriend Cheryl was the first of my peers to recommend them. My 15 year-old daughter made fun of my secret interest in the series, but ended up giving me the first book on audio disc for my car. The plan was that we'd listen together while she practiced her driving under my supervision. But I started sneaking listening sessions when I was driving around town alone, and I was up to disc 6 before I had to confess to her that I was hooked.Are you a little shocked and disturbed too? :-) Read the rest of the article here.
I am shocked by this and a little disturbed by this inconsistency in my feminist politics and here's why: These books portray the archetypal barely-civilized man lusting, actually hungering, for a frail and naïve woman. She loves him because he's physically superior--tall, broad-shouldered, the whole Greek god thing, he knows her in a deep way that the rest of the superficial world has overlooked, and best of all, he can beat up anybody who messes with her. I am capable of some introspection and I, like you, can see that for a traditionally non-violent person who believes that a woman stands alone as a force to be reckoned with, there's an obvious disconnect here. Yeah, but I'm in a mood.
Manip by smirky_turkey :-)
