BeBa

I just finished the Twilight series two nights ago, specifically vetting it for my 12 and 11 year old daughters who were hot to see what all the fuss is about.

WARNING: There are spoilers ahead.

HM finished the first two books and she’s done (for now) – she says Bella needs to get a life and she thought it was boring and that’s that.

Bailey also thinks Bella needs to get a life – she thinks Meyers wrote her WAY too hormonal (heh, an advantage to having a so-far non-boy crazy preteen reading it) and makes very bad decisions, including doing reckless and dangerous things in defiance of parental authority for very unhealthy reasons.

It’s already inspired some very spirited conversations in our household!

If you read amazon reviews, you’ll get the gist. It’s very much the stuff of fairy tales. As a theme, it really has this troubling inherent problem that underlies many of its other problems: To fulfill her dream (which is to become a vampire so as to be with Edward forever without physically aging beyond HIS physical age of 17) means sacrificing Bella’s very humanity. There is no way to turn that into a healthy decision.

Reminds me of the problem with The Little Mermaid. But at least Ariel has a talent – some aspirations. Bella has… NOTHING. She has no ambition, no dream, no aspirations whatsoever. I don’t understand why Meyer did that. I don’t understand why the editors didn’t suggest this simple improvement which would have given Bella even more to weigh when considering what she’d be sacrificing to be undead with Edward.

Ultimately, I kept turning the pages because Meyer IS a good storyteller. I wanted to see what would happen next – how this would all end. I wanted to see vampirism through Bella’s eyes (and that WAS cool in a fairy tale wish-fulfillment kind of way). But, damn, I was also frustrated because it could have been SO MUCH better in hundreds of different ways.

Back to values… There aren’t many values Bella represents that you’d want your daughter to emulate. Bella has no respect for her parents (nor does Meyers, nor does the reader), she is not a good friend – she is quite the user. She is attracted to Edward, but it seems to be a purely chemical thing. When Bella finds a good friend and Meyer paints a picture of relatively healthy companionship based on more than physical attraction and infatuation, Bella doesn’t pick that boy.

I think it’s a fun read, escapism and wish fulfillment galore, but it’s really important to help our daughters read with a critical eye, IMO. Just like we try to savvy them to all the unhealthy values expressed in media.

Ultimately, I think it’s a shame that Bella got everything she wanted without really sacrificing anything. The whole series really is about gratification of your desires, even at the expense of others, with little sacrifice required. I would say it’s definitely a mirror of much that is wrong with our society and its most superficial of values.

Read this series just a couple months after reading Reviving Ophelia like I did and it’s pretty chilling actually.

One friend of mine also made a good point about the unrealistic portrayal of having a baby in the fourth book. Bella becomes a vampire after having a baby, so she is immediately in perfect physical form and has superhuman strength and wants to have hot sex constantly. The birth – definitely not glorified, but problematic in its own ways. The postpartum period is beyond glorified, though, lol. Perhaps not the message you want to send teen girls about what having a baby is like.