Yesterday I read this very thought provoking article called, “You Can’t Marry a Hot Vampire”. The article starts with saying how there was another article that made the assertion that romance novels are to women what as pornography is to men, that they work the same because they are rooted in illusion. Interesting right? But WTF does that have to do with Vampires?
So, the author then talks about how Twilight is the penultimate in romantic / emotional porn for women because of what it stands for. You have a woman who has two different archetypes of the embodiment of the type of man women want. You have Edward, the “Prince Charming”- he’s well-bred, polite and sensitive with an air of danger (to quote the article). Then you have Jacob (the HOT Taylor Lautner) who is the “Barbarian Prince” -He’s wild, passionate, fun loving, adventurous – uncivlized yet alluring. Two men who are anything a girl could ever want, right? What the articles central point was is that
“In the same way that pornography creates false expectations for physical intimacy, Twilight creates false expectations for relational intimacy. It tells girls it is not unreasonable for them to expect to be hotly pursued by the two most desirable guys they know. It tells them their relationships should be defined by all-consuming passion from Day One. And it tells them their future boyfriends/husbands need not necessarily be “human,” but rather anthropomorphized checklists of masculine ideals.”
He pretty much asserts that women have traded marriage for myth … I think this is interesting.
I will be the first to admit that I romanticize things, in my head. However, to the world I’m always sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the article is kind of true. It’s like that episode of Sex and the City where they call Charlotte out about her “urban relationship myths” and how it’s always a friend of a friend of a friend, whose man came to his senses, left his wife and they moved to the suburbs and lived happily ever after. But does that stop us from dealing with the emotionally unavailable guy in hopes that he’ll realize that with us his world will change? But is Twilight and its romantic ideals any different from the millions of movies we watch? I am not alone if loving a great romantic comedy, and don’t we almost always finish it up with, “I wish I could find a love like that.” We all wish we could be shopaholics who find a millionaire who loves us despite the fact that we pretty much lied about who we were for our whole courtship (or whatever you call it in 2011).
What’s wrong with fantasy? Is romance as foreign as a wizard academy? What does Harry Potter stand for? Are we telling people that all these movies about triump and discovery are bullshit too? Aren’t we encouraged to have imagination and to live our wildest dreams? In The Last Lecture Randy Pausch talks about not letting go of your childhood and how imagination gets your everywhere. I refuse to give up romantic ideals and settle in reality. I have to believe that my “Prince” is out there or else I have to resolve to the fear that it might be a long lonely life!