The Appeal of Twilight

I recently decided to get rid of my Twilight books as I don't think I will ever feel the need to read them again. Like many other girls, I was once a little obsessed with Twilight. Now, I've never had an Edward Cullen cardboard cutout or a shirt that I wore under all my clothes that says "Mrs. Jacob Black," but I did regard the books rather highly and saw the first movie 3 times in the theatre. 

I started reading Twilight at a time when a Facebook application called "Flair" was popular. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, it's basically buttons that you put on a board that display your interests or have funny quotes and things. "Flair" is a reference to the film "Office Space." Anyway, there was a lot of flair dedicated to Twilight, which I had never heard of. I ended up buying the first book (and eventually the rest) to see what everyone was talking about. 

While I enjoyed it immensely then, I've since come to realise that it is not a particularly good story (although I don't think it's as horrible as so many people say it is), and I've been thinking about why it appealed to me. The really obvious reason why it appealed to me and so many others is Edward's love for Bella. Who wouldn't want to be loved in the way he loves her? Stephanie Meyer created the perfect man (although looking back, he really didn't have much of a personality) who fell in love with an imperfect girl, just like me. It's an intoxicating love story that made me feel that if Bella could find someone who loves her so much, maybe I would too someday. And later a hot werewolf is into her, and I guess it would be pretty cool to have found the love of your life and also steal the love of another hot guy. 

It wasn't until later that I realised there was another reason why the story appealed to me: Edward made Bella physically perfect. She spent so much time begging him to make her like him, and he eventually made her body perfect with one bite. Sure, she had to endure intense physical pain for a little while, but after that she became flawless. To a deeply-flawed perfectionist, this transformation was just as intoxicating, if not more so, than the love story. If I could somehow become flawless like Bella, perhaps I would someday actually be worthy of love. Forget the fact that this fictional plan for flawlessness makes her crave human blood, it would be worth it for physical perfection. In the end, this is what made me really not like Twilight. It created in me an unattainable thirst for physical perfection. Such a shallow aspiration is not something I want for myself. 

Upon writing this post, it occurred to me that when I read Twilight, I wasn't much of a reader. Throughout Elementary School I was an avid reader. Mystery novels were my favourite. Sometime in junior high, my love of reading waned. Throughout junior high and high school I don't remember reading anything for pleasure, with the exception of Harry Potter, which I read pretty much every summer. So when I read Twilight, I forgot what it was to get lost in someone else's life, to empathize with the pain and joy of fictional friends. I do not think I would have been so easily caught up in Twilight had I been reading more at the time.

I'm sorry if this was boring, I didn't know what to write about today. I made it with a little over an hour to spare, though!

Listening to: The Return of the King soundtrack

Reading: Persuasion by Jane Austen and Sisters in Sanity by Gayle Forman