Skewering our beloved "and so the lion fell in love with the lamb."Is anybody else getting sick of all these random cast pics and non-Twilight news? Yeah, me too. Well, here's something more Twilight-related...
Twilight Examiner Amanda Bell discusses a recent critique of Edward and Bella's relationship by Women's Media Center's Esté Yarmosh, who argues that Twilight reinforces harmful gender stereotypes that we've long fought to dispel:
Read the rest of Yarmosh's interesting thoughts here.Yet it is the message in Twilight that is disturbing. Young readers encounter women, embodied in narrator Bella Swan, shoved back into traditional gender stereotypes that have taken years of effort to overcome. And millions of young girls (not to mention adult women) are devouring these books.
I worry about the girls who seem, with quite a bit of personal conviction, to put one of the main characters of the Twilight "saga,” the vampire Edward Cullen, on such a high pedestal that they think he is the ultimate ideal of a boyfriend. That he is not. These girls need a wake-up call: Edward Cullen is a caricature of an emotionally, psychologically and physically abusive boyfriend -- and one with supernatural powers no less. It can’t be healthy to have an attachment to a fictional character with those qualities, much less a real person.
Apart from the vampires who attack Bella at the end of the first book (Twilight), Edward is the source of most of her abuse. He is dangerously possessive. In the third book (Eclipse), for example, the vampire boyfriend removes the engine from Bella’s car because she wants to go visit her friend Jacob Black. Edward stalks her, constantly asks where she is going and what she is doing and plays hot and cold in their love affair. He neglects her emotionally in some passages; in others, he tells her he loves her and wants to be with her forever.
A phrase in the series is used to sum up the relationship between Edward and Bella: "and so the lion fell in love with the lamb.” A symbolic, romantic concept perhaps, but it only reinforces traditional gender stereotypes of males being strong and dominant, and females being meek, demure and passive. Feminists have fought for decades to eradicate this trope and to stretch the boundaries of how females are viewed by the dominant society.
While Yarmosh's point of view may offend some TwiHards, and I think she's got Edward Cullen ALL WRONG (Hello?? Edward's not a caricature of a physically abusive douchebag! Everything he does is for Bella's sake. Grr), I don't necessarily disagree with her perspective in its entirety and may even share some of her concerns.
However, doesn't stop me from loving fictional Obsessive Vampire Stalkers. *Swoon*
