Being a Girl

[qos]

mamadar posted a link to a review of the Twilight series in The Atlantic Online. Neither she nor I have read the series, but the review is very interesting in its perspective on why the story is so powerful for teenage girls. The author of the review certainly captured my experience, as I remember it, especially in this passage:


The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.

I too spent many, many hours behind the closed door of my bedroom reading in order to work out the big questions of my life -- and when I wasn't reading, I was writing my own stories in my secret code, trying to figure out What I Thought About Things and working out Who I Wanted To Be.

Wolfling just sent me a URL to a website with Twilight-themed t-shirts as part of her Christmas wish-list. It's fun to see her so passionately engaged with a story and with characters like this. It makes me feel even closer to her.

Comments

[elevengirl.livejournal.com]

Ah. I was also a creature designed for reading and writing, both of which my mother uunderstood and promoted. And luckily, we lived across the street from the local branch of our couunty's library. Bliss.

[elevengirl.livejournal.com]

Please excuse my not spell-checking and removing the extra u's...that key sticks sometimes.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

My one dissatisfaction with that series is from everything I've read about it, it's exceptionally regressive and misogynistic. I compare it to fun, utterly fluffy, and generally feminist-positive YA fiction like Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen trilogy or Tamora Pierce's Lioness or Immortals series and the fact that Twilight and its sequels are significantly more popular than those books were makes me very sad indeed. I'd vastly rather see young people reading works of authors like Diane Duane, Garth Nix, Mercedes Lackey, or Tamora Pierce than work by anyone at all like Stephenie Meyer.

[qos.livejournal.com]

I haven't been paying all that much attention to reviews of Twilight. Thanks for pointing out the misogynistic element. I'll see what I can do about getting more perspective on that -- and about Wolfling's impressions.

I feel pretty comfortable that the other things she's reading and watching have strong, positive female characters -- and we have a discussion whenever I feel that a story is presenting any particular kind of person inappropriately or priveleging viewpoints that are counter to the ethics with which I'm trying to raise her. (I've had some very sharp comments, for example, regarding a couple of episodes of Bones).

Thanks for the comment.

[redsonjasea.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed all the books in the series very much and think it is a good series for teenaged girls and guys, too. In a better way than Harry Potter books, at least in my opinion!