The New Role Models
esterday I talked about the reality of books like Fifty Shades of Grey, but what I didn’t bring up is that it’s dangerous equivalent, Twilight is probably more troublesome than most people realize. Like Fifty Shades, Twilight follows the story of a girl who is clumsy and self loathing (and supposed to be relatable) and finds a man (or two) who basically are the only way she will ever feel as though she is worth while. What a dangerous concept to be teaching children. You wanna talk indoctrination how about the teaching of young girls that their self worth can only be defined by a man? What kind of lesson is that?
For better or worse (in my opinion worse) Bella Swan and company have become the new kind of role model, girls hoping to find their Edward try to model themselves after this girl (or see themselves in this girl already) and that’s nothing to be proud of. We can’t possibly know the ramifications of young girls and relationships they will get themselves into because of Twilight, but I’d venture to guess that if they grow up thinking that Bella and Edward’s relationship is a healthy one, they will no doubt end up in very unhealthy and possibly dangerous relationships of their own. Regardless of what you think of their romance, Edward is a controlling prick who tells Bella she can’t be friends with someone simply because he’s jealous. It’s never expressly said he’s jealous (or at least not that I can tell) but it’s a slippery slope. She alienates herself from friends and family and she’s so distraught when he leaves her that she throws herself off of a cliff. This is neither normal nor healthy behavior and anyone who believes that it’s romantic is seriously out of touch. Now sure, it’s a novel and some people would have you believe that as such it doesn’t really pose any threat because it’s fiction and you shouldn’t take fiction so seriously, but consider the age group for a book like Twilight. YA, teens, somewhere between 10-17 (or at least this is the intended age group). That’s rather impressionable, and reading about a girl who is so obsessed that she would throw herself off a cliff just to see her boyfriend angry at her. (That’s the keyword there folks, not to imagine him concerned, to imagine him YELLING at her). It’s at this point that Twilight stops becoming just a book and starts becoming a potentially huge problem. We may never know the full ramifications of letting teenagers read a book like this, and some people will argue that any and all effects are completely unrelated to the book, but let’s be honest, when a YA book that’s supposed to be some great romance begets not one but TWO novels about S&M what does that tell you about the story to begin with and the relationship to begin with? I’m not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with S&M, but something about the way in which it’s portrayed in Fifty Shades makes Rihanna’s song look like KidzBop!
For the record, I’m not insinuating that my own novel is perfect, there are some moments where I wonder: Is that really believable? I think every novel has a certain amount of imaginative stretch that is necessary in order for you to buy that this is really happening. Or in the case of Twilight we hope that you’ll simply be so enthralled with what passes as a story-line that you won’t question the ridiculousness of a teenage girl not being able to tell the difference between a rock and her handsome not-boyfriend-but-I’m-going-to-string-him-along-best friend, Jacob.
