Team Edward or Team Jacob?

Everyone knows the most important part of Twilight is which team you are: Edward or Jacob.So in anticipation of Thursday's class, I'm sharing the link to Taylor Lautner's epic Team Edward vs. Team Jacob skit on SNL. Just remember, if the debate ever gets too heated, we can all agree that Bella is a whiny do nothing that doesn't deserve either one of them.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/lab-partners/n12640

"Why Girls Love the Dad Bod"

    A lot of the time, society and media focuses on how girls have issues with their bodies. But guys have issues, too. This somewhat amusing article talks about how girls are actually more interested in guys who have a "dad bod" aka somewhere between appearing to workout everyday and a beer gut.
    However, I also find it a little bit interesting that even though girls are more accepting of a guy who isn't exactly perfect, there is still a lot of pressure on girls to look better than their male counterpart which is addressed in one of the reasons why girls are going for guys with the dad bod. They don't feel like they have to look their best all the time if their guy doesn't look like a Greek god.

Anyways, here is a link the article: http://theodysseyonline.com/clemson/dad-bod/97484

I just thought it was kind of interesting and amusing. Worth a read if you have a few minutes.

I'm 13 and in love and I don't care who knows it!

I'm sorry that the picture is blurry. So I just came across this and thought it was hilarious. But I think that it does a good job at showing something important about teen romance novels. The audience for books like Twilight, are typically high school maybe middle school girls. At this point in their lives, they might be having their first crush, boyfriend, love, or whatever they want to call it. At least for myself, I think that the first time that you ever experience a first crush when you're that young, you tend to hopelessly rush into it and go too far too fast. It's easy to think you've fallen in love with someone in a day. And something that these books tend to do is to feed off of this passion. Some posts have commented about how fast Bella fell in love with Edward even though they don't know much about each other. And when we were reading this book when we were 13, we just kind of went with it. Because at 13, you think that you're in love and that it's going to be the greatest love story in history and it's going to last forever.  

Twilight

I’d like to start out by saying that if you are a part of the Twilight fandom, you are wrong and you’ve obviously never read Harry Potter…or any book with a plot line thicker than an unoriginal love story. With that being said, I will get to the point…

When I think of the main themes of this book, vampires and love first come to mind. However, after reading this book for the second time since 6^th grade, I noticed a different theme that seemed to be all too important. Beauty.

When Bella first sees the collection of vampires, the only thing that held Bella’s interest was their beauty. “Their faces…were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful,” writes Meyer on page 19 when describing Bella’s initial reaction. The paragraphs prior to this statement were spent describing every detail of the vampires from their hair to their skin. She only noticed them, because they were beautiful, however, she does note how they are strange-not eating and what not. BUT she wouldn’t have noticed that if she weren’t staring at them for their beauty.

Bella has no shortage of men. I mean Eric, Mike, Jacob, and Edward?! This girl is awkward, skinny, deathly pale, and is majorly lacking in the spunk department! Yet every boy that crosses her path is instantly charmed and wildly in love. What?! So obviously Bella’s own thoughts on her looks (as narrated through Meyer’s writing) must be somewhat inaccurate-or so I’m led to believe. In other words she’s beautiful…at least she is to the four of the five/six main male characters.

What if Edward were ugly? What if Bella were ugly? What if Bella had no other suitors? Would there even be a story? I don’t think so. The fact that the most desirable boy in Forks High School got with the awkward (though equally desired) new girl made the love story so popular. Throwing in the vampire aspect just made it a bit more unique…although I could list numerous other TV shows and fantasy novels were this idea came first-like Buffy the Vampire Slayer which came just two short years prior to the publishing of Twilight. Anyway the crappy love story is, what I believe, makes the novel so popular. Without every main character being absolutely “inhumanly” beautiful, the love story wouldn't have existed. Which leads me to ask why love and beauty are such popular topics among adolescents? Are beauty and love really more desirable than adventure and personal, intellectual growth to a fourteen year old girl?

Twilight

I was never super into reading Twilight or any of the following books or watching the movies. In fact, I’ve only ever read the first book and watched the first movie. I don’t even remember what my thoughts or opinions were on the book the first time I read it. But wow, do I have some opinions now!

First of all, although I practically shudder to admit this, I couldn’t put the book down. Yes, I know how terrible it is and what a horrible representation of love it portrays, but I found myself wanting to know what was going to happen next (although this may be contributed to my personality, since I’m usually the type of person who has to reach the end of a book as soon as possible to find out what happens to the characters). But whether or not I like to admit it, there is something about the book that kept me semi-interested. I do think part of it is that almost every teenage girl ever can find some way to relate to Bella; whether through her awkward clumsiness or her far-away desire for a dream boy. Bella is a very relatable character, which makes for an interesting and easy read.

On the other hand, one reason I was so interested in finishing the chapters was because of the shock/mild horror I felt. I never really thought about it until now, but Edward is one controlling guy! I found it disturbing that he followed Bella and ridiculous that he wanted to stay with her always to protect her. He walked her to and from every single class and was jealous if another guy so much as thought about her. While some teenage girls may find that adoration and “love” charming, it’s actually quite a disturbing relationship if you think about it. I will be interested to see what everyone else’s reactions were during our conversation in class tomorrow!   

Twilight: Then and Now

I first read Twilight when I was in seventh grade. Rereading it, I have a much different impression than I did when I was 12. As a prepubescent tween, I knew that if a real-life “Edward” were to pop up in my life, I would find the extreme way in which he pursued Bella disturbing. I knew their relationship wasn’t a healthy one. If someone stalked me that way in real life, I would probably file a restraining order. But I didn’t care. As a preteen reading it, I found it romantic.

As I read the chapters for today, I was confused by how soon Bella falls in love with Edward. At the end of chapter 9, Bella says, “ I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him” (Meyer 195), after the first car ride and dinner together on the way back from dress shopping. They had had lunch together twice and he had barely talked to her up to this point. How could she already be in love with him? They knew nothing about each other, have barely talked and Edward’s mood swings from day to day. One day he loathes her, the next he loves her. I was shocked by how little they had interacted before she made this proclamation of love.

And what about the characters? The most interesting thing about Bella is the fact that Edward can’t read her mind. She is described as average, clumsy, painfully shy and awkward, yet everyone she meets in Forks is completely enamored by her. Perhaps it is as Josie said, that readers are supposed to identify with Bella, that she is intentionally bland so more can identify with her. Edward and the other vampires exemplify everything that most teenagers wish to be. They are beautiful, graceful, powerful and rich. They are an ideal that most hope to attain. Is that what makes it so appealing? Is it the contrast between the normal and an elevated, supernatural “other”?

The Bruce Jenner Interview

So last Friday night, 20/20 aired an interview between Diane Sawyer and Bruce Jenner, in which he details his internal struggles with being transgender (I am referring to Bruce Jenner using male pronouns because that is how he referred to himself throughout the interview).  Since I am doing my project about trans representation in the media and conducting a study that is examining predictors of prejudice against trans individuals for my thesis, I found myself struggling with how I felt about the interview. 

On one hand, I was very glad that ABC aired this interview and I thought that they did a great job at letting Jenner tell his story.  The interview provided the opportunity for millions of people to learn about someone who is transgender, and perhaps opened their eyes to what being trans means.  On the other hand though, the interview is just another example of the media and our culture being hung up on the coming out spectacle. In fact, Jenner is being featured in a docuseries on E! and at the end of the interview Jenner invited Sawyer to “come back in a year” to check in on his progress. The problem with this is that Jenner’s transition is all that people are going to talk about. Yes, they are being exposed to someone who is transgender, but there are way more newsworthy and important things that involve the trans community than Jenner’s transition. As Laverne Cox explained to Katie Couric, "The reality of transpeople's lives is that we are targets of violence. We experience discrimination disproportionately to the rest of the community. Our unemployment rate is twice the national average; if you are a trans person of color, that rate is four times the national average. The homicide rate is highest among transwomen. If we focus on transition, we don't actually get to talk about those things." Like Cox said, these are the things that society should be discussing. The discrimination and oppression that are lived realities for so many in the community, as well as the accomplishments of trans people, and their day-to-day actions, not just their transitions.

Even so, I am left wondering if coming out interviews, like Jenner’s, are needed in order for society to be exposed to and discuss those issues in the trans community? Without people like Jenner or Laverne Cox, would this community even be talked about in the first place? I’m not so sure that it would, and isn’t positive exposure better than no or negative exposure?