My intent was never to say: "it's about sex! So that makes everything ok!"
(And Just to be clear, I don't consider Twilight to be feminist, by itself. Neither the book with that title, nor the series itself. I consider their popularity to be an interesting phenomenon that demonstrates many ways in which feminism has and hasn't touched and improved the lives of 14 year olds girls. And I think that ignoring the "has" is just as dangerous as ignoring the "hasn't.")
I was mostly ranting at the condescending way that a lot of people have been worrying about it's popularity among teen girls. Which seems to assume that girls love it BECAUSE of the things Meyer's is trying to say about How Women Should Be and Why Romantic Relationships are Awesome, rather then despite of it.
My point was not that one shouldn't skewer Twilight with excellent take downs like this. Just that when one does, the takedown should be respectful to teen girls and the situation that they are in. Yours very much is, but the impression of the general tone of the reviews that I'd seen at places like Pandagon was that girls were being hoodwinked by the books. You can disagree with me or not on that point, just know that this is what I was responding to, not the arguments that Twilight series is disturbing.
I'd also seen several people (I can't remember if they were feminists or not) outright claim that they became popular because suburban housewives made them so, which is, by itself, a denial of the choices of teen girls, as the series was largely a word of mouth hit in my experience.
Also, the the general consensus seemed to be that girls should be reading books by Tamora Pierce and the like instead.
Which they certainly should. The problem with that assertion is that very many of them already are. If you go to sites like Westerblog, you'll see a lot of teen dissing Twilight and Twihards, but you will also see a lot of them admitting to liking them - and even some of them having Twilight inspired handles rather than Uglies style names. Needless to say, these girls at least don't just read books about pathetic lumps of nothing like Bella. If they did, they wouldn't be at Scott Westerfeld's blog.
Strong, female characters are important, but they aren't the antidote to Twilight.
Books like Forever and sites like Scarleteen are.
But to know that, you need to know that, for teen girls, Twilight is generally about sex, not relationships. There is a reason why they are only obsessing over Edward (and occasionally Jacob) rather than Bella and Edward (or Jacob) as a couple.
This is why one shouldn't blog at 1 am.
(And Just to be clear, I don't consider Twilight to be feminist, by itself. Neither the book with that title, nor the series itself. I consider their popularity to be an interesting phenomenon that demonstrates many ways in which feminism has and hasn't touched and improved the lives of 14 year olds girls. And I think that ignoring the "has" is just as dangerous as ignoring the "hasn't.")
I was mostly ranting at the condescending way that a lot of people have been worrying about it's popularity among teen girls. Which seems to assume that girls love it BECAUSE of the things Meyer's is trying to say about How Women Should Be and Why Romantic Relationships are Awesome, rather then despite of it.
My point was not that one shouldn't skewer Twilight with excellent take downs like this. Just that when one does, the takedown should be respectful to teen girls and the situation that they are in. Yours very much is, but the impression of the general tone of the reviews that I'd seen at places like Pandagon was that girls were being hoodwinked by the books. You can disagree with me or not on that point, just know that this is what I was responding to, not the arguments that Twilight series is disturbing.
I'd also seen several people (I can't remember if they were feminists or not) outright claim that they became popular because suburban housewives made them so, which is, by itself, a denial of the choices of teen girls, as the series was largely a word of mouth hit in my experience.
Also, the the general consensus seemed to be that girls should be reading books by Tamora Pierce and the like instead.
Which they certainly should. The problem with that assertion is that very many of them already are. If you go to sites like Westerblog, you'll see a lot of teen dissing Twilight and Twihards, but you will also see a lot of them admitting to liking them - and even some of them having Twilight inspired handles rather than Uglies style names. Needless to say, these girls at least don't just read books about pathetic lumps of nothing like Bella. If they did, they wouldn't be at Scott Westerfeld's blog.
Strong, female characters are important, but they aren't the antidote to Twilight.
Books like Forever and sites like Scarleteen are.
But to know that, you need to know that, for teen girls, Twilight is generally about sex, not relationships. There is a reason why they are only obsessing over Edward (and occasionally Jacob) rather than Bella and Edward (or Jacob) as a couple.