On the Prowl: Why grown women are the real audience for Twilight

After my column, "Driving with Vampires," was published last week, I received scores of emails insisting that I'd missed the real point of the films. And what would that real point be? That Twilight isn't aimed at teenage girls like my daughter, Kerry--it's aimed at their mothers.

These emails reminded me of an incident that I'd somehow blocked out. Even though I can't bring myself to pay money to see Eclipse, I did see New Moon on the day after Thanksgiving in 2009. I was the only guy in the packed movie theater. While there were plenty of teenagers, most of the audience was middle-aged women who were, as best I could tell, hungry for some raw teenage boy meat.

They watched in delight as Kristen Stewart (playing Bella Swan) panted her way through a love triangle that included an amazingly buff and bare-chested wolf-boy, Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), and the amazingly pale and pouty vampire, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson).

I wasn't there for the story, but more as a kind of sociological learning experience. What would cause grown women to throw their panties at 18-year-old boys, as Lautner had reported to David Letterman? But being in that movie theater as women (several related to me) screamed with ecstasy when Lautner disrobed sent me into some kind of septic shock-induced blackout, one that that prevented me from recalling the experience when sitting down to write about Eclipse last week.

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Here is my favorite of the many emails I received in response to "Driving with Vampires," clarifying the appeal of the boys in the film to mature women, not just teenaged girls. It's written by Sarah Fleckner, a happily married mother and former attorney:

Oh, to be 16 again. I am old and jaded... It is so nice of you, Tom, to ask your daughter what she thought of Eclipse, but if you had asked a married woman--say, me for example--you would have gotten completely different answers.

(1) I think a huge draw is that Edward is a romantic and he is chivalrous, which is almost nonexistent these days. I am all for women's rights and equality, but I think with them, a good deal of chivalry went down the drain. (I am not blaming men for it; I think Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem would probably have been appalled by a man opening the door for them when they were perfectly capable of doing it for themselves, thank you very much, and so it went by the wayside.)

Since the women's rights movement, how many men (aside from my wonderful husband Jamie) pull out a woman's chair, stand up when she leaves the table and when she comes back, or gives her his jacket because she is cold--even if he is cold too? Edward would put his body [in front of a speeding] car for Bella. He would throw himself onto a werewolf or vampire for her. He would turn himself in to the Volturi and cease to exist.

And, while it is a bit strange that he watches her sleep--and in a normal situation that would be completely stalking, trespassing, breaking and entering, a whole host of other things, and she would definitely get a restraining order against him--in this story, he does it to protect and watch over her. I think all of those are things that women find so attractive.

(2) I think there is also a huge tension for Edward in that he so clearly has the upper hand in the relationship but doesn't want it to be that way. He doesn't want them to be an item because he knows it puts her at risk and it can't last. He keeps abandoning her because he knows the relationship is wrong, sort of like Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, but on a supernatural level.

I don't think that Edward enjoys having powers that Bella doesn't have; I think that is a huge reason why he doesn't want to be intimate with her. And in response to the question, then why doesn't he make her into a vampire so they can be equals, I would say it's because he doesn't want to take away her humanity, her soul, her ability to grow old and bear children. Which again goes back to my chivalry argument. Edward is one sexy beast, because he is so chivalrous.

So there it is, guys: Men, even those who come in vampire and werewolf varieties, should protect their women. Violence, it seems, is quite acceptable--in fact, a turn-on--if it's done in the name of chivalry.

This reminds me of a conversation I had recently while on a book tour for an anthology of first-person stories by men. A guy in a ponytail stood up and said that he liked our book because it "allowed men to embrace their female side."

I sidestepped the question, but one of my partners on the book was much more direct in making the same point Twilight does on this score: Women are not looking for their men to find their vulnerable and emotional side. The women of America are looking for their men to allow the women to have their emotions and for the men to be strong enough to protect those emotions--with force, if need be.

Then there's the old-fashioned power of fantasy that, it turns out, is a two-way street. "Did you notice Edward's nipples were different sizes?" my sister-in-law asked me on the way home from the movie.

I had not; I was snoring by that point. But it brought to mind the fact that the boy-gods were not even human. Where men might be accused of supporting a pornography trade built on explicit sexual fantasy, the fact that Edward and Jake are not human seems to heighten their appeal to women.

With all that longing and fighting and running and leaving and reuniting, these guys rise above the mundane, day-to-day stuff like doing the dishes and taking out the trash.

 

Follow Tom Matlack on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tmatlack

Comments

[bethace]

07:08 PM on 07/15/2010

I'm fighting the good fight, trying to talk grown women out of lusting after teenage boys.

http://fai­thvsfear.c­om/?p=153

[femme-nist]

08:35 PM on 07/14/2010

I disagree. The movies provide an extended sexual tension and foreplay of sorts for this grown woman.

[Twilight Site]

07:13 PM on 07/14/2010

I appreciate the fan's point of view, which is well written. And seawolf77 draws some interestin­g religious analogies as well. But your comments, Tom, seem to boil down largely to "eew, cooties." If Tom Barrack can get beyond that, then perhaps you could too.

I think some readers of Twilight may misunderst­and the series. Academical­ly speaking, Twilight is a God-and-ma­n allegory showing Bella -- an unreliable narrator, with an unpolished narrative style -- who reaches divinizati­on through commitment­, love, and sacrifice. The key here though is that she, like many people, fails even to see her own self very clearly (as her Edward points out often) until the very, very end of Breaking Dawn. You will notice many references to lying in the series, suggesting that Bella is "lying," or at least incorrect in how she sees things. The surprising thing, at least to me, is that so many people believe her wholeheart­edly. It concerns me when a cultural milestone like this awakes so many in our culture, yet is so widely misunderst­ood by its critics that it is criticized not on what it offers, but on what (they imagine) it doesn't offer. For example, feel free to visit TwilightNe­wsSite.com and have a look at the Meaning area, or listen to a recent podcast. There is more there than meets the eye. Which is Meyer's main point -- for Bella, for the series, and for each of her careful readers who she rewards in remarkably profound ways.

[Sunshine1970]

01:46 PM on 07/14/2010

You just grossed me out. *shudders at the thought of anything to do with Twilight* (grown woman here, BTW)

I wish Twilight had stayed as Meyers' dream....

[seawolf77]

01:28 PM on 07/14/2010

Ewwww! When you notice the subtle ways that women rule the world, from child rearing to chivalry, you also notice that much of the control comes from guilt, and most of that guilt comes from the church, specifical­ly the Roman Catholic Church, and as such inside these churches hangs the greatest vampire of them all, the King of the Vampires : Jesus Christ. Drink my blood and eat my flesh and you will live forever. I think Carmella Soprano revealed the almost phsycic hold the Catholic preisthood has over women. It almost makes them want to CHEAT on God. That is wht the Roman Catholic Church is the mother of all harlots becasue her impossible rules of celibacy create the result, men cheating with harlots. So it's no wonder another charismati­c blood sucker has got their attention.

[OMGimhotep]

02:53 PM on 07/14/2010

Wow! So deeply.
Though I would not agree with you about Jesus Christ being "the King of the Vampires" (it's not his fault the Roman Catholic Church is interpreti­ng him the way it wants), your comment is great!
I have to hurry up to fan and fave you before you get massively flagged as abusive and deleted.

[aofh]

05:20 PM on 07/27/2010

Most of the world's women are not Catholic, not even Christian you know. Men "cheating" with harlots was in existence long before Church came into being and is far more pervasive that the Church's reach. Indeed, the Church's attempt to expel the feminine from the realm of the Gods is an anomaly and the notion of the Church as mother seems to be a grudging capitulati­on by Church fathers to popular sentiment. Nonetheles­s, women's power is subtle.