The Twilight of Feminism

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Little Brown and Company,  2005.

---- New Moon. Little Brown and Company, 2006

---- Eclipse. Little Brown and Company, 2007

---- Breaking Dawn. Little Brown and Company, 2008

^{Illustration by Peter Oumanski}

The two things Bella Swan, supposed wallflower teenage girl of the Pacific Northwest, wants more than anything in the world are to lose her virginity to Edward Cullen and to become a vampire. Sex and death are supposedly comparable in bodily pain in the world of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga novels, for Edward Cullen is an eternally undead seventeen-year-old vampire with a body of impenetrable stone. To become a vampire, Bella must be bitten and venom rage through her veins, thereby replacing her blood and stopping her heart in an excruciating many hours long process. It’s never entirely clear why sex would be tantamount to Bella’s death (but not vampiric rebirth), but the reader is left to infer that Edward’s superhuman strength must extend to his superhuman member, which would—one assumes—shred her vagina to tatters. The extremely misogynistic creepiness of this inference is highlighted in this passage in which we are unsure whether Edward, in Eclipse, the third novel in the series, speaks of Bella’s transformation into a woman of the world or into a vampire:

“No. We’re doing this your way. Because my way doesn’t work. I call you stubborn,

but look at what I’ve done. I’ve clung with such idiotic obstinacy to my idea of what’s

best for you, though it’s only hurt you. Hurt you so deeply, time and time again. I don’t

trust myself anymore. You can have happiness your way. My way is always wrong.

So.” He shifted under me, squaring his shoulders. “We’re doing it your way, Bella.

Tonight. Today. The sooner the better. I’ll speak to Carlisle. I was thinking that maybe

if we gave you enough morphine, it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s worth a try.” He gritted his

teeth.

“Edward, no—“

Two things should immediately pop out. The first is the truly hammy, cornball writing, but not of the typical sci-fi variety as might be suggested by the spooky characters. Indeed, it is so far over the top and into the romance genre that it can quickly read as camp¹.  The components which group The Twilight Saga into the fantasy/science fiction realm are unidentifiable in relation to their literary counterparts; the Cullen clan, though vampires, live as a family, subsist on animal blood, and know none of the typical vampiric hindrances. These vampires cannot be in the sun not because the pure light will burn their evil flesh to a crisp, but because their skin sparkles like diamonds. The Native American werewolves (you heard me!) also spring from unknown lore, and serve largely as a source of Edward’s romantic foil, Jacob. No, The Twilight Saga is, in the end, a heavy-handed romance of marginalized groups who happen to have magical qualities.

The second pop-out is that Edward does not want either of Bella’s desires—becoming a vampire and losing her virginity—to come true. Bella is the constant initiator of sex and death, and Edward the stalwart naysayer to any of the usual teenage fun. Earlier in the same book, Bella finally understands Edward’s fifteen-hundred-page reluctance to have sex above and beyond the physical harm it would cause her: ‘“No,” he promised solemnly. “I swear to you, we will try. After you marry me.”’ A promise-ring-wearing vampire! The fourth undead Jonas brother!

“That’s it, isn’t it?” The short laugh that escaped [Bella] was more shocked

than amused. “You’re trying to protect your virtue!”

…

“No, silly girl,” he muttered against my shoulder. “I’m trying to protect yours.

And you’re making it shockingly difficult.”

“Of all the ridiculous—“

…

“Besides, I thought it was my virtue you were worried about [Bella said].”

“It is. If it’s too late for me . . . Well, I’ll be damned—no pun intended—if I’ll

let them [the angels and God in heaven, presumably] keep you out [of heaven], too.”

“You can’t make me go somewhere you won’t be,” [Bella] vowed. “That’s my definition

of hell. Anyway, I have any easy solution to all of this: let’s never die, all right?”

Bella and Edward do end up having sex while Bella is still human, but only after they are married. While on their honeymoon in the series’ culmination Breaking Dawn, on the South American island that the Cullen family owns, Bella wakes one morning and examines herself:

Under the dusting of feathers, large purplish bruises were beginning to blossom

across the pale skin of my arm. My eyes followed the trail they made up to my

shoulder, and then down across my ribs. I pulled my hand free to poke at a

discoloration on my left forearm, watching it fade where I touched and then

reappear. It throbbed a little.

Typical morning after! In light of the fact that Bella is not dead, her injuries are positively insignificant and she is overjoyed in her new self. In fact, her self seems remarkably new, and remarkably hungry. That’s right: although possessing no pulse and no blood, Edward, apparently, has plenty of sperm and Bella is with vampire child.

The pregnancy is incredibly rapid and debilitating. As might be expected, the creation feeds on blood and kills Bella from the inside out. Ignoring all wishes that she abort the mystery fetus, she dies after the baby breaks her spine in two in an effort to deliver itself. But just as her heart slows to nothing, Edward “shoved the needle straight into her heart. 'My venom,' he answered as he pushed the plunger down. [Jacob] heard the jolt in her heart, like he’d shocked her with paddles.” And so there she is, an undead eighteen-year-old bride and mother. Although Breaking Dawn stretches on for four-hundred more pages, this is the essential resolution. Bella finds that vampirism becomes her, and discovers confidence, strength and joy not only in her newfound immortality but also in her family (the accidentally matricidal baby turned out to be an absolute peach).

The Twilight Saga—Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn—are strange, sinister books. They are made all the more so by their reception. Meyer, Mormon housewife cum powerhouse novelist, had the singular honor of holding all four top spots on USA Today’s best-sellers list of 2008, with an astonishing twenty-two million books sold this past year alone; practically all have been sold to women, young and not so young alike. Much like the Harry Potter franchise to which Twilight is often compared, Twilight fans—‘twilighters’ or ‘twi-hards’ as they call themselves—are hugely active on the internet².  But unlike Potter fans, there is a clear age division in the fan base. This is perhaps understandable in that mothers need a different forum for fandom than do their daughters. TwilightMOMS.com is the virtual home of many elder Twilight fans: ‘Welcome to TwilightMoms Where Fans of Stephenie Meyer at Our Unique Phase of Life (balancing family, work AND our Twilight addiction) Become Friends.’ The Twilight Saga (hereafter referred to as TTS) is as popular with mothers as it is with teenage daughters, a strange, thought-provoking, thing.

What is it about this story that has so captivated this peculiar crowd? Women, and more recently teenage girls, have long been the target of the romance genre, but rarely has the same notion of romance spoken to both groups. Female adolescence, as most any young woman can tell you, is often marked by the generational differences in concepts of romance between mothers and daughters. Although every generation claims that its successors are the worst yet, current popular depictions of sexuality may really be the most awful ever. Because sex does indeed sell, whether in its refutation through figures like those waiting Jonas brothers, or its rabid depiction in media campaigns like the Gossip Girl OMFG and American Apparel posters³,  it is absolutely everywhere. As illustrated by the Pennsylvanian teenagers charged with felony child pornography for picture texting (or ‘sexting’) themselves naked to classmates, the older generation has no idea how to deal with contemporary youth’s assertions of sexuality.

But this is where TTS is bizarrely brilliant: while the books concern (eternally) teenage vampires and werewolves, these are, in fact, abstinent, chaste teenagers who are waiting for marriage. Meyer—having picked (or rather dreamed, as she often says that the series came to her in a June night’s sleep) the literary figure most diametrically opposed to images of restraint—indeed, the literary figure most synonymous with sinful indulgence—and turned it into the conservative mother’s un-wet dream of masculine self-denial—has created, intentionally or not, an age-inclusive blockbuster.

Age-inclusive TTS may be, but there is an interesting specificity to the scope of the age range. On the older side, we have women generally in their late 30s to early 40s. These are women who came of age during the downturn of the second wave of American feminism in the late 1970s and early 80s⁴,  and their daughters, who are the first young women of this ‘postfeminist’ world. How did feminism, the ‘radical notion that women are people,’ help create not only the women, young and old, who read TTS, but also TTS itself, with its mushy-mouthed, weak-bodied female protagonist whose closest brush with human heroism is when Edward calls her ‘my own brand of heroin’?

Law, Culture, Choice

If the first wave of feminism focused on the political inequality of women, especially the issue of suffrage, the second wave sought a reformation in women’s cultural lives. This shift is both a move towards and away from radicalism in that the first wave did not follow the roots of discrimination back to the bedroom as the second wave did, but it did bring about concrete change in the legal definition of woman citizenship in ways that the second wave did not. Instead of rights, the second wave concerned itself with choice. Such a change in tone belies a distinct authorship, and indeed, second-wave feminists were largely well-educated, not-working-class, heterosexual white women⁵.  Women of such socioeconomic and racial backgrounds could afford to concern themselves with the more intellectual and less tangible aspects of prejudice. This is illustrated nowhere better than in the rhetoric surrounding the last vestige of popular feminism: abortion⁶.  The ‘feminist’ side of this debate is presented as ‘pro-choice,’ whereas the opposition tags itself ‘pro-life.’ But both forms of rhetorical legerdemain obfuscate the true issue, which must concern how and why women are getting pregnant.

Once feminism took this path of choice rather than rights and became synonymous with the sexual liberation movement, choice, as it were, devolved into one choice, and that choice became whether or not to have sex. It is as much the failure of feminism as it is the strength of patriarchy to note that the two options are an equal boon to men. Bound by sheets or walls, a woman is equally beneficial to men in bed or in the home⁷.  The sad legacy of feminism at this moment is that it has not done away with Rebecca West’s doormat/prostitute dichotomy, it has only introduced the illusion of a choice between the two. My argument is not that a woman cannot honestly want sex or domesticity, not at all, but rather that I am against seeing these options as not only opposites but as the only options.

Such rigid strictures have created a massive amount of anxiety and hysteria concerning sex and sexuality in America. Romance, the feminine representation of what desire should look like, has long had no vocabulary for consummation, forever depicting the bosom heaving, but still beneath clothing. If romance is constant story, then pornography, romance’s masculine counterpart, is the complete lack thereof, primarily existing, even in film, as images of orifices and their filling. Although the two forms ostensibly speak to the same subject of human desire, there is no serious overlap between the two—as seen in Charlie Call’s short film Peep Show in which a woman goes to a peep show and gets sexually aroused at the sight of two men talking about stopping for directions or loving Laura Ashley sheet sets, the resultant combination has usually been comedic. But TTS shows that the process of attempting to negotiate a sense of non-cartoonish female sexuality in this day and age is, at the very least, not comedic.

Although Bella and Edward do wait until marriage for sex, I imagine that many would argue that Bella does not fit into my division because she does want sex, she wants it bad, and it is Edward that stops her. Her sexuality is so potent that it is depicted as dangerous to both Edward and Bella:

I knew I had about three seconds before he would sigh and slide me deftly away,

saying something about how we’d risked my life enough for one afternoon. Making

the most of my last seconds, I crushed myself closer, molding myself to the shape

of him. The tip of my tongue traced the curve of his lower lip; it was as flawlessly

smooth as if it had been polished, and the taste—

He pulled my face away from his, breaking my hold with ease—he probably didn’t

even realize that I was using all my strength.

Besides the damning implications that such a description holds for the presentation of female desirability in general, it must be noted that Bella’s sexuality is never presented ‘in general.’ Bella is not a sexual being on her own terms (Bella is defined by nothing on her own terms, instead made up of meek reactions to the powerful figures around her), but only in relation to Edward Cullen. She does not want sex; she wants sex with him. So singularly focused is she on this individual and their triumphant union that her sexuality becomes subsumed, existing only for this one man:

“Have you ever. . . ?” He trailed off suggestively.

“Of course not.” I flushed. “I told you that I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”

“I know. It’s just that I know other people’s thoughts. I know love and lust don’t always keep the same company.”

“They do for me. Now, anyway, that they exist for me at all.”

This is not sexuality, but magic born from a perfect union—Bella has never experienced erotic feelings before in her brief life, but neither has Edward in his century of youth and devastating good looks. Their fleshy desire is created by and exists strictly for the other.

But not only does Bella have to be married to finalize her love— by spreading her legs—she also has to die. Even within the saving graces of the nuptial bond, Bella is still not safe in her desire for Edward. As seen above, she wakes covered in a multitude of bruises after losing her virginity, and the fruit of their loins is a life-sucker. It is not until Bella leaves her humanity behind that she is able to reconcile her wants and her physical and emotional limitations. As a vampire, she is wonderfully beautiful, fearfully strong and powerfully self-assured. She knows limitless wealth, dispelling the fears and doubts that plagued her as a teenage girl. And she is finally physically appropriate for her new-found sexuality:

I was never going to get tired, and neither was he. We didn’t have to catch our breath

or even use the bathroom; we had no more mundane human needs. He had the most

beautiful, perfect body in the world and I had him all to myself, and it didn’t feel like

I was ever going to find a point where I would think, Now I’ve had enough for one

day. I was always going to want more. And the day was never going to end. So, in

such a situation, how did we ever stop?

It didn’t bother me at all that I had no answer.

In other words, there is no true reconciliation for female desire and female sexuality. Bella leaves this world behind to live in a world that looks so much like our own but with those miraculous differences. The appeal of this world—in which one becomes the perfected version of herself and the terrifying consequences of sex are removed—is understandable to young girls who are constantly inundated both with the signs of their inadequacy and the all-importance (but dangerousness) of sex.

But the escapism involved is different for these girls’ mothers. These are women who have had sex and have not found in it either the liberation promised by feminists or the salvation promised by conservatives. They instead have found something—and I do believe that the tenor of this finding must be in some way unique to each woman—in The Twilight Saga. As the introductory statement to TwilightMOMS.com reads:

Do you think you are the only one whose life turned upside down when you

read Twilight? Is your house a disaster with piles of piles of laundry in every

corner and stacks of dirty dishes at record breaking heights? Have you

imagined your husband is a vampire (or werewolf) and suddenly have the

libido of newlywed again? Do you convince yourself that "cold cereal" makes

a perfectly wholesome dinner? Is the pizza delivery boy now on your Christmas

card list? Are your children free to run a muck as long as no one comes to you

bleeding . . .(too badly)? Oh, you feel guilty, but that's not enough! You still

can't tear yourself away from the book and damned be the consequences!

These women have found the world of TTS, in which supernatural death is the only means of reconciling desires and constraints, as preferable to the ones they currently inhabit, as preferable to the world in which they leave their daughters to become women.

1 TTS is emphatically not camp, however, as it lacks any element of the Sontag wink. There is no sign that the author or her audience feels that these books are even remotely kitschy.

2 But unlike JK Rowling, Meyer has made herself incredibly receptive to her online popularity and used the Internet in remarkably savvy ways. This is an entirely different topic, but it is fascinating nonetheless to see how Meyer encourages, rather than sues (as Rowling does), those who attempt to continue her work through the rapidly expanding world of fan fiction.

3 The blatant pornographic elements of American Apparel ads have reached their apotheosis with the company’s recent hiring of porn stars Laura Phoenix and Sasha Grey as models. The assertion that these images are not negatively pornographic because some have been shot by a woman—the same woman who infamously appears decapitated in an LA AA marquee which was defaced with graffiti reading ‘Gee I wonder why women get raped’—is absurd. The argument that women are incapable of misogyny due to their anatomy is as stupidly essentialist as the argument that women, due to their anatomy, belong in the kitchen.

4 The decline of second-wave feminism coincides with the ascent of Reagan, a president vocally opposed to any kind of ERA platform.

5 This is not to say that second-wave feminism was always such; poor gay women of color decried their voicelessness in what would become third-wave feminism and queer theory.

6 Although Roe v. Wade is often touted as a feminist victory, its loophole legality is troubling: rather than the decision actually being about a ‘woman’s right to choose,’ the law instead calls for protection from the 4th Amendment which concerns privacy. Consider further that an Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified, due to insufficient state support. Also consider that the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was just signed into law, and that this law does not speak to wage discrimination itself, but rather the time period in which one can take legal action against it. And finally, consider that every single Republican woman in the House of Representatives, whose very political careers must be in some way owed to feminism, voted against this Act.

7 By not having sex, I do not mean (the far more radical choice of) celibacy. I simply mean women who choose to postpone sex for any variety of reasons. I am also excluding homosexuality, as it is not, in my mind, societally depicted as a matter of choice as is akin to the embrace or disavowal of sexuality.

Layla Forrest-White lives in San Francisco & wants you to read a gay vampire joke here.