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New York, 9:27 AM
Sat Nov 28
29 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/27/09
Last weekend (on a Twilight-related note), I was at a Native artists' panel, and someone asked them what they thought the contemporary portray of Native peoples was. One of the artists commented that the most common portray of a Native person in our culture is Jacob Black, a character played by a non-Native actor, based on one true Quileute legend and one false legend, as well as set on Quileute land but filmed on non-Q land. The Twilight franchise is making how many millions of dollars, and after appropriating their creation story, their heritage, and their land, the franchise gave the Quileute nation $2,000. Every other artist on the panel was in agreement as to the complete idiocy and sadness of the situation. I would be interested to see more evaluation of the series' and franchise's behavior and attitude towards the Native people who are such an important part of the story, yet so downplayed in real life.
11/27/09
That said, I would personally recommend the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett...or any of the Discworld novels, especially the Witch books.
And even though it too is imperfect (like everything) I hope a lot of these young women discover Buffy after this. You get all the hot vampire, werewolf, dude action you want...but you get a female hero who progresses as a character, kicks ass, is not a Mary Sue, and also Willow and Tara. Plus, it's funny AND melodramatic AND self-aware and feminist.
11/27/09
Now that that's dealt with, thank you for this post. I realized this about Twilight after thinking it myself, even though there are still plenty of good arguments against Twilight vis-a-vis the idea that it's in line with anything else that it puts in invasive, hysterical premium on virginity on girls (if not boys), without examining how individual teens might feel.
"Twilight" is appealing because of those "chaste sleepovers"....because someone who looks like Robert Pattinson wants to caress, embrace, make out with, and gaze longingly into the eyes of a character who is an otherwise "ordinary" teenager (someone else commented as much when the first movie came out....bingo.) She doesn't have to get a makeover or have sex with him to keep or hold his attention.
(Also...is Twilight REALLY misleading girls by saying they'll EXPECT guys to wait? Maybe they know better, and that's why the movies are appealing.)
I'm guessing Valenti (whom the linked Racialious essay author quotes) would flesh out the idea that the problem is really this: who decides when (without pressure and through mutual consent, or otherwise?) and how (with protection, after discussion, or under riskier/more coercive circumstances?) sexual activity is initiated, or rather, virginity is maintained.
You could argue that Twilight is STILL phony and in line with "purity balls" because the books themselves are a little less convincing than the movies, and also because Bella (from what I can tell) seems to WANT to have sex....but Meyer equates giving up one's virginity with giving up something permanent and deep (not to dismiss those to DO see their sexual boundaries as something deep and complex, so long as those boundaries come on their own terms).
THEN I can understand feminist/progressive protest. Hypersexualization and the equation of giving up one's virginity with trading your humanity for vampire status are both imposed from the outside and onto girls.
I struggled with the ideas written about in this post all through high school. If a relationship is (to some extent) about tit-for-tat, is it wrong for a guy to wheedle (but not physically coerce) his girlfriend into sex, in exchange for physical affection and whatever else is involved in being a boyfriend? (Not that I LIKE the idea, it depresses the hell out of me--but I don't think I could give someone a strong, non-moralistic reason why he wouldn't be right to leave, if he's fed up.)
Who am to tell to tell a senior in high school who's been dating a girl exclusively for six months that he's wrong to make sex a condition for leaving or staying at that point? How can anyone expect him to stay on moral grounds, or tell him that he devalues his girlfriend and that she may not be comfortable yet? Is it that simple? (Obviously, I suppose the question is applicable to a guy who isn't ready to have sex, being pressured by a girlfriend.)
Suppose SHE leaves. Maybe every other jackass in that girl's grade will feel the same, until she gives up and starts dating observant Catholics (as my mother suggested I do, in high school. That seemed like a prospective trade-off too--I could just imagine being asked, why would someone who feels so strongly about gay marriage, sexual health, or all the other causes the Church undermines STILL be a virgin/not ready to have sex yet at 18?)
People break up due to conflicts over other big decisions--their SO isn't "ambitious" enough or stays in a lower-paying, less demanding job; wanting vs. not wanting kids; marriage (versus simply staying in a long-term relationship, WITHOUT getting married). Those demands have even greater consequences on someone's life than giving up one's virginity. Assuming there is no physical coercion involved, why is sex any different when it comes to "dealbreakers"? (Again, going back to the original proposition, I personally identify with the girl in this scenario, big time, and hate the idea of intercourse as a condition for the friendship and non-intercourse physical affection in a relationship...especially considering having sex for the first time usually hurts for girls, so it isn't just a matter of principle or psychological discomfort.)
If a couple engages in everything other than intercourse or oral sex up until that point--kissing, groping, etc.--and one of party of the relationship is dissatisfied because s/he wants to have sex, is that a legitimate reason to leave? The conventional wisdom is that girls usually trade sex for affection. Beyond addressing date rape or physical coercion, I can't see what we're supposed to do to change a culture where the hypersexualized, misogynistic "Dreamworld" discussed earlier this week and Girls Gone Wild exist alongside purity balls. What if it isn't just a matter of culture--does culture legitimate the uglier aspects of sexuality that are already there, or create them? (Not that legitimating shit like date rape isn't a problem....of course it is.) Both?
"Twilight" DOES seem to provide a safe space where tweeners don't have to worry, to some extent...they get the medium between the "slut" culture demands them to be, and the virgin.
11/27/09
also, and this is something that we don't ever discuss. but twilight does invert the vampire seduction narrative. usually the vampire is tempting the human, but in this version it is the human that tempts the vampire. bella's (obsessive) sexual desire is what pushes the narrative forward, not edwards. its too bad that it was written by someone as moralistic as stephanie meyer and therefore edward has to insist on marriage before sex, but i do think its an interesting twist on vampirism-as-methaphor-for-sexual-repression.
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Part of any burgeoning imaginative life is realising that not all fathers are like Atticus Finch; not all lovers are like Fitzwilliam Darcy or Edward Cullen. No matter how hard we look, we'll never find the Tuck's fountain of youth, and no matter how hard we concentrate, we'll never, ever summon a patronus. We have all wished fervently that the world was as it is in novels, if only for a rueful second. But we move on. So will the Twilight kids. There's no sense shaming them into feeling embarrassed about what stories move them right now. A little time and access to a good library will see them grow up just fine.
11/27/09
How many of us read Sweet Valley High? And yeah, it sucked that it made the main heroines "perfect size 6, blue eyes, blond hair" but I really don't think that is the reason women have self-esteem issues now.
Why is Twilight always held up to such such a ridiculously high feminist standard? VC Andews anyone? They are fantasy. And as I said (and got yelled at by everyone on my interwebz for saying) if your daughter is old enough to read these books and doesn't know she can come to you with questions, or if it's actually possible that her entire future thinking as a woman will be irrecoverably altered in a horrible way by these books? You aren't doing your job.
As long as these kids are being exposed to other books, views, etc. leave 'em alone and let them read their crappy sparkly vampire books.
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And what about a gold lariat necklace, Mom?!? I don't even know what the hell that is, BUT YOU NEVER GOT ONE FOR ME!!!
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I honestly enjoyed the first one. In the beginning, Bella is smart, introspective, and occasionally sarcastic. I specifically remember one scene where she tries to forget about her boy troubles by reading classic literature.
But...that all goes away pretty quickly when the love story gets rolling. By the end of the series, Bella literally has no personality. The most interesting part of the books is probably the vampires' back-stories.
I felt betrayed in a way by the author. She had an opportunity to write an engaging series with a strong female character. What happened, was, well, Latoya put it more succinctly than I could.
11/27/09
1) My mom raised me to be quiet, polite, and deferential to everyone.
2) My dad reinforced this behavior in a big way.
3) If I acted like anything other than a doormat, all of my friends and peers told me I was acting like a bitch. Being a bitch was the worst possible thing in the world.
If you want young women to avoid Cullenesque relationships, encourage them to be assertive and to think for themselves. It's going to result in less domestic harmony and a lot more yelling, but in the long run, it's better to raise someone who can tell someone else to fuck off when she needs to.
Lecturing them about how their favorite novels suck and promote a negative world view does not constitute encouraging them to think for themselves. They need to be confident about their own opinions--ESPECIALLY when those don't coincide with yours.
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That's what I got out of it, and I don't even have kids. That's just what worked on me when I was a teenager.
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The question I ask myself now, when doormat/bitch situations come up, is: can I express how I feel honestly and politely? If not politely, at least honestly? And if not politely, is the other person worth a polite response?
Also, there are plenty of people who get called bitches all the time, and a few of them are running major parts of this country. I can handle being in the same group as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.
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Bella is just a one-size-fits-all POV for readers to slip on and inhabit; she's barely even a character, more of a narrative device.
This is key to the series' success: if she were described in detail, she would begin to alienate portions of her audience, who would find it more difficult to identify with her.
Bella in film is generic in personality and has no desires, only compulsions, as if she's ruled by fate and the whims of the "boys."
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11/27/09
Oh, so sex is dirty when it's your kid. The rest of the time, it's abstract. Gotcha.
I was sick of hearing that my cutoffs were the downfall of Western civilization when I was 15, and I'm sick of hearing that teenage girls are precious fragile darlings who must be protected from the Big Bad Wolf--er, mass media. It's incredibly important for young women to have a space to understand and get used to their own sexuality. Young men certainly have one, courtesy of all the porn they can download and a culture that says they're supposed to be crazed horndogs, and isn't it endearing? But as my dad said when I asked him why my curfew on the weekends had to be 10 p.m., "GIRLS GET PREGNANT!"
Yes. Yes, they occasionally do. Generally speaking, guys are involved, but hardly anyone is locking them up right after sunset. Until we address that double-standard, absolutely nothing will change, including posts like this one. Give girls a little credit, and recognize that most of the fussing and fretting over Twilight is about two and a half steps removed from honor killing culture. (The fussing about the bad writing and wooden acting, not so much.)
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Which is not to say that I didn't get about 40% of my early sexual education from Penthouse Forum, in those days before the Int0rnet.
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Yes. Yes, they occasionally do. Generally speaking, guys are involved, but hardly anyone is locking them up right after sunset."
I hate to admit it--I'd tell my daughter that girls have more to lose, period. It's a no-brainer when it comes to pregnancy--women are the ones with uteruses, so right from the start, there's more at stake for them when it comes to unprotected sex, a condom breaking, a drunken one night stand.
I don't trust either face of the culture--the one that denies female sexuality, OR the one that dismisses it and objectifies it--and would let her know that, but I'd still have to fight the desire to trust my daughter with distrust of everything around her (including some of the stuff that you can blame on culture--that "wink, wink, nudge nudge" to boys.)
Regarding the essay, specifically, her 7 year old was singing misogynistic lyrics. Maybe she doesn't know what they refer to yet, but you could also argue that she can incorporate some of these ideas without examining them critically.
That and...yeah, I wouldn't be happy if my 7 year old was hearing this song either, boy or girl.
11/27/09
In large part, girls have more to lose because society says so. If we came down hard on irresponsible men--especially teenagers--either tossing them in jail or garnishing huge chunks of their wages (I'm talking 75% or so), they'd be losing a hell of a lot. That's actually the approach the Puritans took early on, if a guy wouldn't marry the girl he knocked up. I'm not advocating Puritanism in any form--but there is nothing intrinsic about having a uterus and automatically having something to lose. It's societal, and it can be changed.
And can we please stop pretending that an adult's desire to see another attractive adult naked is somehow misogynistic or perverted? It's basic human sexual desire. It could be more poetically expressed, to be sure. For instance:
[oldpoetry.com]
01:44 AM
In large part, girls have more to lose because society says so. If we came down hard on irresponsible men--especially teenagers--either tossing them in jail or garnishing huge chunks of their wages (I'm talking 75% or so), they'd be losing a hell of a lot. "
Sure we can strive for that, and I would definitely teach either child about safe sex, but for the time being--if a girl gets knocked up, she has more to lose because 1) she gets pregnant (garnish a stupid high school dad's wages? What if he doesn't work?)and 2) pregnancy might not be a death sentence, but it's expensive and time-consuming for someone, if not the accidental, possibly unwilling biological parents.
"And can we please stop pretending that an adult's desire to see another attractive adult naked is somehow misogynistic or perverted? It's basic human sexual desire. It could be more poetically expressed, to be sure.
Are you just addressing the idea of porn as dirty in general (or maybe some vein in other comments)?
I don't have a problem with addressing the human "need", necessarily....just the cartoonified "she's either here to flash her tits for me, or a good virgin who will do what I tell her to do when the time comes" phenomena that boys seem to have escaped (although they DID make a "Boys Gone Wild" series and showed ads for it for a while).
11/27/09
I've wondered a few times whey there isn't a Team Bella. I guess you're right, it's that she's not that interesting; but also because rooting for Team Bella takes all the "romance" out of the series. Anyone advocating that Bella choose for herself ends up stamping out the epic battle between Edward and Jacob, and that's the entertainment value: two men willing to die for a woman, whether or not she happens to want that.
Sorry if this is rambly; my knowledge of Twilight comes from when my cousins tell me about it. And then I sadly shake my head.
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Also, maridiculous, I don't bash them because they don't fit into some wacky agenda of mine. I bash them because I've seen samples of her work, in blogs, magazines and at my cousins' houses, and it's just bad writing</i. I cannot get behind bad writing.
09:03 AM
As an example, in one of the other twilight articles on Jezebel, someone was complaining that Twilight was anti-choice because Bella doesn't get to choose whether or not to have an abortion. If that were the case, that would be problematic, but in the book, Edward begs her to have an abortion because of the danger to her health, but she refuses. It's those instances where people (who obviously haven't read the books) object to the series on moral grounds that bug me.
11/17/09
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Finally, a sample size that would fit some part of me! #newmoon
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